He played in the preseason. I don't expect to see him on the field until Vanney thinks its time to give Villafana a rest or the Galaxy blow out an opponent early and Vanney decides to clear the bench. There aren't any US Open games this summer, so it wouldn't surprise me to see him get loaned to GII to get some work in. He also had ACL surgery last Feb, which he should be over. It could be worse, Pipo hasn't even made the 18 the last 3 games. I can't see the Galaxy keeping in with Sega Coulibaly coming in.
RUMOR: #LAGalaxy have signed 24 year old French Defensive Midfielder, Rayan Raveloson. pic.twitter.com/gqxfmKmiVR— LA Galaxy Rumors (@LAG_Rumors) May 18, 2021
Great points, I agree. The early turn-around has been remarkably impressive, partially due to a turn of form in Chicharito that could be described almost as miraculous. I'm not sure how anyone, including Vanney, could've predicted it, but here we are. We can chalk it up to a lot of other positives coming together. I think so far we have beaten teams we should beat, given our relative level, which is not a small thing. We struggled to play to our level a lot in recent years, so hitting par is a good sign and I didn't expect us to be achieving with a rebuilt squad this early, even against weaker sides. We'll learn a lot when we face actual good western conference teams: the Portlands, RSLs, SKCs, Seattles of the world. Teams that are not just comparably stacked with talent, but are well-drilled as team -- a level it'll take us a while to get to. Hopefully we can keep grinding out these results in the meantime.
Just to clarify, I don't want to downplay how important the moves have been. Vanney's hit on most of them so far, especially Bond, who not only is an improvement on Bingham, but looks like he could be a championship caliber GK. But I'm just sorta flabbergasted by how good Chicharito has been.
Baxter indirectly confirms Raveloson and suggests there may be more coming from France. According to @kbaxter11, #LAGalaxy are in talks for ANOTHER player. (@GalaxyPodcast)— LA Galaxy Rumors (@LAG_Rumors) May 18, 2021 It may just be Sega and Raveloson for now. But the Galaxy folks who have been scouting there are apparently staying a while longer. Transfer window coming up! https://t.co/Y4BFPzgujb— Kevin Baxter 🇺🇦🏳️🌈 (@kbaxter11) May 18, 2021
Okay, someone has to say it...Antoine Greizmann??? He has to be on his way out of Barca no? Would it even work DP wise? I know the Gs have 3 DPs currently with the Cabral signing.
I am as well. Scoring is streaky and it's a small sample but it's been a remarkable run so far. This is not what I expected at all and that is why I was all doom and gloom about our offense this season. Because if Chich didn't come alive I knew we were going to really struggle putting the ball in the net. But this version of Chich? Wow. Wow, wow, wow.
I doubt it would work for Greizmann, or moneywise, but a forward seems like the right way to look. I'm not sure how we're doing this with international slots and money, but I guess we have Gonzalez's salary to play with this summer.
RE: Edin Dzeko to GalaxyCoG has talked to a source that indicates that Edin Dzeko is not in discussions or talks with the LA Galaxy. Nothing there.#LAGalaxy #MLS— Corner Of The Galaxy (@GalaxyPodcast) May 19, 2021 Fun rumor, good try!
Wow, I just looked at the now published 2021 MLS Roster rules and did my own rough budget analysis. GAM increased for all teams to $1.525mm, with an additional unpublished amount for not making the playoffs. I assumed $200K which is similar to what I believe the Galaxy got the last time they didn't make the playoffs. For 2021 TAM is $2.8mm. With a salary cap ( ) of $4.9 million, this raises the total the Galaxy could have for players to $9.225 to $9.425mm. Not even vaguely close to the $2.1mm cap in place when I started attending Galaxy games in 2007 and the number of players with off budget cap money has increased from just DPs to HG and U22 Initiative players. Next I looked at the Player's Union released salary information adding 4% to the guaranteed cap amount to get to close to the unpublished budget charge for each player. If the Galaxy put Dunbar and Alvarez into HG status, the total Galaxy salary budget is approximately $6.871mm which doesn't include the salaries for Sega and Raveloson. I assume they fit within the $2.4mm that the Galaxy appear to have available without a roster move with money left over. Signing them puts the Galaxy roster at 30. To sign someone else, the Galaxy would need to reduce the roster. Again I think the Galaxy will release Pipo. If they recover 50% of Pipo's salary, they would have approximately $3mm to spread between the 3 players. My guess is that we may be seeing one or more U22 Initiative signings (accompanied by another roster move) but I guess another a regular signing is possible via careful allocation of GAM and TAM.
Can you just see Dan Beckerman's face, when Klein presents that as an option. "Dan, this is a deal, Barca is in trouble because of the fair play rules. They will let us buy Griezman now for only $60mm!" Hell just for grins and to carry the French theme forward, Kylian Mbappe seems to fit the rough parameters of a U22 Initiative player. assuming he doesn't mind a slight wage cut and Dan is willing to fork out $160mm as a transfer fee.
Chris might as well go all in at that point then, and go after Neymar. He's French adjacent enough playing for PSG! Ok, I'll stop now as I don't want to feel the wrath of Skevin...lol
We have a revolution going on here guys and gals: Acosta 24 *Alvarez 18 *Araujo 19 *Cabral 21 *Coulibaly 24 Dunbar 18 *Grandsir 24 Harvey 21 Koreniuk 23 Perez 18 *Saldana 19 *Zubak 23 *Raveloson 24 [depth: Ferkranus 18, Klinnsmann 24, Vom Steeg 24, Neal 17] * Indicates (likely) regular starter quality right now. Notice any pattern, lol? That’s 13 roster slots held by 18-22 yo’s, not counting the 4 for-emergency-use-only depth players. Eight of these youngsters will probably be realistically competing for starter positions be the end of the month. And probably five or six of Alvarez, Araujo, Cabral, Coulibaly, Ravelson and Grandsir will end up in our best 11 at the end of the season. Add in 28 yo Bond and it is theoretically possible for a half-dozen or more of our current roster to be Galaxy starters through 2030! That probably won’t happen - but amazingly we are young enough for that to be a possibility. What a change from just last season, when our team often looked geriatric in comparison to our opponents. Some of the new additions may not work out but Vanney deserves a mountain of credit for how much he has already done to improve our roster. Only problem is that he may have to consider adding in half-time orange slices and Chuck E. Cheese outings!
We got our D-Mid. Viva la France! https://www.latimes.com/sports/socc...-midfielder-rayan-raveloson-signs-with-galaxy
Interesting development: Gonzalez getting his green card, which helps us bring in Raveloson and Coulibaly, but counters the narrative that we’re selling him to Costa Rica and suggests he’s either staying with the Galaxy or at least staying in MLS Here's the answer to the international slot problem: Pipo is getting a green card. Who saw that coming? https://t.co/H2enlWAG8C— Kevin Baxter 🇺🇦🏳️🌈 (@kbaxter11) May 20, 2021 UPDATE: Here's CoG's view on it I don't see the Green Card as indicating anything other than the player wanting to get it to be valuable within MLS and the team wanting him to get it to open up some options. I wouldn't read into that any further. #LAGalaxy #MLS https://t.co/bg10L9pbzr— Corner Of The Galaxy (@GalaxyPodcast) May 20, 2021
Digging into French opinions on Raveloson, two words come often : - versatility : DM seems to be the position were he played the most during his career, but he also played as a RB and as a CB this season. According to Troyes fans, he looked better as a CB. Someone also mentioned he can play as a box-to-box midfielder, he's a clever guy who can adapt everywhere. His versatily helped a lot Troyes on their championship season. - mentality : I've only read positive opinions on him, that's as simple as that. Everybody wished him well, saying he's a hard worker. Nothing to do with what I've read on Grandsir (Coulibaly too, but in a much smaller way). He looks like a complete player, good on both sides of the ball, but in a certain way his versatility could hurt him as he was not a projected starter in Ligue 1 for Troyes. If I have to guess, based on talent and expectations, he could be the good surprise of our four "French" signings. Based on talent, I think it's Cabral > Grandsir > Raveloson > Coulibaly, but from what I've read he was not signed with TAM (could be another great move from DTK), so much lower expectations than Grandsir (as of now he has not justified being the fourth salary on the team) and Cabral (very young and a DP contract).
Thank you as always for the break down of French players @LEM-LAG!! I'd be super happy with Raveloson if he can at minimum, provide the same level of play as Sarvas.
Curious about our new additions, let's look at Coulibaly. Coulibaly is a 24yo cb who played only: 18 games in 2016-17 for 4th tier Fr team Sedan 13 games in 2017-18 for 3rd tier Fr team Avranches 14 games in 2018-19 for 2nd tier Fr team Nancy 17 games in 2019-20, loaned back down to Avranches. So why the interest to this non-regular on 2nd and 3rd tier teams? Because in 2020-21 he re-joined Nancy and played 22 out of 30 before they shut him down on April 3, 2021 likely due to his impending departure. Of those 30 games: First five, minutes played: 0, 5, 4, 4, 0. Over the next 25, he played 90 minutes 18 times, stayed on the bench 6 games, and was subbed out at minute 69 in one game. So he was a full time regular for Nancy this past season, with occasional rest/injury games. That indicates a player on the way up! Now on to an area of possible concern. Despite Sega being at the beginning of his prime his transfermarkt value is only $330k?!? By comparison 30 yo (really?!) Steres is valued over twice that amount, at $825k. Even DePuy, our part-timer is valued at $550k, 67% more than Sega. I realize these transfermarkt values are rough estimates but still… Good cb’s especially are highly coveted and worth a fortune. So why the low value for Sega? So that is one green flag in favor of Sega and one red flag against. His market value suggests a backup role player but his regular starts for Nancy (a team of comparable quality to us) suggests he's better than that. So the question is - should Steres be worried? Or did we just add bench depth and injury coverage? Either way it will be interesting to find out!