Is this confirmation?! Rocking the 💙🤍💛 this weekend ✨ pic.twitter.com/R3qsNiHgzv— LA Galaxy (@LAGalaxy) August 7, 2021
The degree to which signings are a crap shoot depends a lot on the evaluator. If you really don’t know what to look for you are going to have a lot of misses. But if you are a good talent evaluator (in any sport) and really do your homework you will be right much more often than wrong. Klein, Jovan, Pete, GBS snd even DTK made a lot of atrocious signing mistakes. So many many bad signings - Skjggfk, Rolf, Kitchen, Bingham, Ciani, Yony Gonzalez, Giancarlo Gonzalez, Traore, Harvey, older beaten down Juninho, Cuello, McInerny, Diallo, Nathan Smith, some guy named Kliminta, Katai, Acosta, Carrasco, Joao Pedro, Sheanon Williams, and promoted players who just aren’t good enough like Zubak, Lassiter, McBean, Hillard-Arce, Arellano, Koreniuk. So many keepers who never made it- Sylvestre, Vom Steeg, Lopez, Lampson And even the successful ones weren’t long term solutions - they all left us or were too old within a year or, at most 2 years: Pontius, Corona, Antuna, Polenta, Pavon, Zlatan. And don’t forget who we jettisoned - Romney, Ola Kamara, even AJDLG. Contrast that to Vanney’s picks - mostly young, only one possibly overrated. All seem to buy into his vision and I don’t expect high turnover. He knows exactly what he is looking for, knows where to find it and doesn’t fall for fools gold - oh Kitchen has a good resume and looks like a good player, oh look at these USL players who are unremarkable but kind of good against other USL players, lets promote them and watch them magically become faster, stronger, and more skilled and save us $! Plus Vanney does his homework. And he’s - what’s the term? - oh yeah, smart! Not something anyone would accuse our FO of being.
I could listen to Vanney talk forever. Ok, I actually lasted 10 minutes but thats longer than I usually listen to these pressers.
TBF to DTK 90% of the signings that were listed weren’t his, and the ones that were were probably more to do with all of the awful contracts that Klein and Co had signed over the past few seasons. His biggest mistake was hiring GBS, but I’m pretty most of us wanted GBS over Caleb Porter and were happy with the hiring at the time. I think most of his signings have worked and he’s done a great job revamping Los Dos and strengthening the pipeline between the academy, Los Dos, and the fist team. The only name I care enough to speak about that you listed is Juninho. He was signed for free (or dirt cheap) and took a small contract. I don’t think they expected him to play much, but it was a culture signing and let a Galaxy legend retire at the club and move into a coaching role at the Galaxy. Removing people like Juni, AJ, and other long time Galaxy veterans from the club was a major part of the decline in the culture that Vanney is now rebuilding. Obviously Vanney is doing a fantastic job with his recruitment, coaching and all that. The only signing that hasn’t hit is Cabral. I don’t want to take credit off of him, but I do think DTK deserves some credit as well.
While I agree with the essential point of Skydog's that there were many poor signings prior to this year, IMO it is totally over the top. Roster construction is not just talent evaluation, especially in MLS with the its Salary cap and numerous rules. The availability of talent is hardly even from one yearn to the next. Even if you do everything right like Bruce did when he tried to sign Sasha, the soup nazi can pop up and say no Sasha for you. Meanwhile, bad signings like Gio and Gerrard (under Bruce) have impacts for years in some cases long after the players have left and limited the options of and caused issues for Bruce's successors. IMO, these big money failures did a lot more to hurt the Galaxy then a ton of secondary roster signings and draft choice misses, Bruce also was the one who promoted players listed such as Jack McBean (who actually started playing for the Sr. Squad in 2013), and Ariel Lassiter. Blaming prior FO for their draft choices like Hillard Arce and Cuello without listing the players who were overlooked seems unfair at best. Furthermore blaming DtK for Antuna and Pavon leaving is ridiculous. Both of these players came to the Galaxy on loan. Does anyone really think Antuna was worth the a $10mm transfer fee that Chivas paid City? Or that Pavon was worth $8mm, $12mm, or whatever the eventual amount Boca wanted for Pavon? I think the Galaxy dodged a bullet by not buying him. Personally I think that DtK did a great job clearing the roster heading into this season and that incudes not protecting Joe Corona in the expansion draft (addition by subtraction). Finally, Vanney admits to having benefited from the monetary crunch that the pandemic left many of the French Ligue 2 teams in. Without Covid who knows what talent would have been available to evaluate. He also did not rebuild the roster this year under the same MLS roster rules that any of the prior front offices had. Consider the increased in the cap and the amounts of GAM and TAM. Finally, it is possible that AEG learned that there was more to having a profitable MLS team than having a lot of jersey sales and loosened up the purse strings more than they might have in the past. Bottom line, Cadaver's point about there being an element of a crap shoot in signings is doubtlessly also true.
You can quibble with certain examples but my general point stands. And some, like Juninho, can easily be defended in isolation -- if they were the exception rather than the rule. Our signings year after year were a mix of the picking players who couldn't really help us and finding shorter term band-aids. Again nothing wrong with signing good short timers - it's the absence of any good long term signings that is the problem. And several had red flags but we signed them anyway. One for a million per year. And there were three or four players that it took me all of one game to tell they were a mistake. That's just poor player evaluation. But we can agree to disagree. PS - Yes Vanney did benefit from covid making the Ligue 2 players affordable. But he also took advantage of the breaks that were out there - those players were recruitable by every other coach in the world. We got our new striker because Vanney had a good relationship with a Chicago assistant coach who knew Dejan, and that assistant recommended Vanney to him. But Vanny had built that good relationship and reputation with the assistant coach and took advantage of the opportunity it provided. The good managers often make their breaks.
Same injury. Incidentally, Sergio Aguero was just diagnosed with a calf injury and they are predicting he will be out 10 weeks Sergio Aguero has been ruled out for 10 weeks with a calf injury ❌Things go from bad to worse for Barcelona 😨 pic.twitter.com/fpyUjw87yf— GOAL (@goal) August 9, 2021
Source: Former @miseleccionmx director and current LA Galaxy general manager Dennis te Kloese is a potential candidate for the new #FCCincy GM job.— Joseph Même (@ThreeDEF) August 11, 2021
That is an interesting rumor. I fail to see why he would leave Galaxy as what he has helped build is a team roaring back to life but which still hasn't achieved anything yet. If I was him I would be proud of my work so far and I'd want to stay around to see the project out. I mean, Cincy??? Maybe the money but if he's only about the money, maybe he should go.
I doubt if te Kloese would be thinking about a move, unless the writing is on the wall and he and Vanney aren't on the same page. But it is probably just rumor and I don't mean to create issues where there are none.
I am wondering a little about this. It seems that we are looking more at Europe for players and less at Latin America. I know te Kloese's Dutch but his experience is in Mexico and they rely much more on players from South America. Maybe Cincinnati offered him the opportunity to go after the players he wants.
It’s hilarious for Cincy to be linked to more Dutch people. It has not gone well to date fir their apparent “must be Dutch” policy
Dejan’s first day in 💙🤍💛 pic.twitter.com/1paaRMSe9j— LA Galaxy (@LAGalaxy) August 12, 2021 we have a striker.
And he has a P-1 Visa NEWS: Dejan Joveljić has received his Work permit (confirmed).Galaxy have a scheduled media call tomorrow after 12 or so. We’ll confirm with Vanney that he’ll be available for selection on Saturday against MIN.#LAGalaxy #MLS— Corner Of The Galaxy (@GalaxyPodcast) August 12, 2021
That would explain the rumor. If he feels like others are doing his job and he's the odd man out, then a move would make sense.
Opens up a spot for Giovinco? Seriously, I guess Auggie is no longer necessary now that we signed Dejan, but it seems like we are done with him. We typically don't loan a player out to a non-G2 USL team unless he is no longer in our long range plans. The #LAGalaxy loan Augustine Williams to @SanDiegoLoyal for the remainder of the 2021 @USLChampionship campaign.📰 https://t.co/vdmyztBApl pic.twitter.com/sVQlFmiiP3— LA Galaxy (@LAGalaxy) August 20, 2021