The juxtaposition, in January 2021, was stark. When Greg Vanney returned to Major League Soccer’s winningest franchise, the LA Galaxy, as head coach, he’d walk past statues and stocked trophy cases, into a club that seemed stuck in the past.
“There wasn’t really a scouting department,” Vanney said he remembers. The “sports science department … was one guy’s computer.” And the result was that the kings of MLS 2.0 were getting left behind.
The Galaxy once ruled this fledgling league. They transformed it with celebrity. They elevated it with spending. They became its most recognizable brand.
And they won. A lot. They reached nine of the first 19 MLS Cup finals. They won five.
They were the envy of the league, a destination for marketable stars, until MLS began to evolve. As its soccer got more sophisticated; and as its operations professionalized; and as club owners and sporting directors alike realized that the way to attract fans was with on-field quality more so than big-name stars, the Galaxy, for years, failed to evolve with it. And so, for nearly a decade, the Galaxy fell from their throne. Since their 2014 title, they have not advanced past the MLS quarterfinals; they missed the playoffs five times in seven years; they have not lifted a trophy of any kind.
They also violated roster rules. Their transfer business often felt unscientific or chaotic. By 2023, their most loyal fans had had enough. Prominent supporters groups began boycotting home games. Attendance dipped. Losses accumulated. The external discontent, Vanney admits, began affecting the humans inside the club.
That, in a nutshell, was the environment that Will Kuntz walked into last spring. His task, as senior vice president of player personnel and now general manager, was to revive this stumbling giant.
And a “major” part of his plan — the plan that pushed the Galaxy back toward the top of the Western Conference, into a home quarterfinal vs. Minnesota on Sunday (6 p.m. ET, FS1) — was to shed the club’s superficial identity, to “care less about who a player is, in terms of pedigree.”
“We wanted to shift away from star-taking,” Kuntz says, “to star-making.”
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Rebuilding the Galaxy: From star power to strategic scouting
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