When we get Paintsil back, it's going to feel like a roster addition! "Joe is starting to enter good chunks of training. He'll get into full training as we get into the early part of next week and then be available to help the team on the weekend." - Greg Vanney on Joseph Paintsil #mls #lagalaxy pic.twitter.com/NJ1Nu0gEsl— El Escudero de LA (@ElEscuderoDeLA) March 20, 2025
Once a G. Always a G.We have transferred forward Aaron Bibout to Swedish second-division side Västerås SK for an undisclosed fee.📰: https://t.co/dsMIMb3AOe | @kinecta pic.twitter.com/YnuUyaVkzL— LA Galaxy (@LAGalaxy) March 25, 2025 A little bit strange on the timing, but I don't think it's a bad decision in the end. Bibout has some qualities, but has always lacked consistency in his finishing.
I think the only difference between Bibout and his predecessor G2 strikers is Bibout never got domestic status.
i can only assume that Nascimento (who just turned 21 this month) has taken whatever role Bibout (who is turning 21 in September) might have had for the first team.
I think this is it. The salary cap (and international roster spots) situation is too much for 4 center forwards. I also assume as some point we are gonna move one of our goalkeepers if we can make it work out.
Doyle in his “Western Conference: Primary Transfer Window needs for every team” https://www.mlssoccer.com/news/western-conference-primary-transfer-window-needs-for-every-team-2025
He’s not wrong. But I’m not sure if we have that much time. If we don’t start at least slowly turning things around prior to the window we may pass the point of no return on this season. The guys we have will need to step up.
Doyle is wrong in saying that there's nothing we could do to bring in new players. We still can buyout a guaranteed contract player before the end of the secondary transfer window and open up the corresponding salary budget space. That could apply to someone like Reus or maybe one of the veteran center backs. We also could do a player trade within MLS as long as we were able to match or go down in salaries. With 4 goalkeepers on the roster, that seems the most likely trade asset on the roster.
I would love to know why our signings went from A+ to F in one season? I think I read that Kuntz was actively involved in getting the $ for Pec and Paintsil but I don’t know if he was the one who selected them. I’ve been giving him credit because that was his job the last offseason (winter 2023) and because his work history (Yankees, LAFC) has been all about successfully identifying talent. Maybe for 2025 he turned these duties over to Densher or Curry? It’s also possible he never was the decision-maker behind these 3 organizations better signings, but that seems unlikely. But it also seems unlikely he would completely back away from guiding our new signings for 2025. And if he is as gifted as we thought why would he sign off on Sanabria and Nascimento? (For the former maybe he got the wrong Lucas like I did, lol!) I think Ramirez was a good signing given the extremely short notice and limited budget. And I think Zanka may have been just signed as cheap depth. But no matter how you frame it our recent offseason roster decisions were a disaster. Some losses were expected bc of salary cap problems but even with that constraint it should have been handled a LOT better. As GM this is Kuntz’s first fu. Wonder what it means long-term?
To be fair to Kuntz (or Mikkel Dencher, who was brought in as Technical Director after last year's signings and may be the one primarily responsible for the signings), U22 signings Sanabria and Nascimento and USL signing Wynder should probably be considered long-term projects. Aude has taken awhile to develop and Jovelic wasn't immediately a player who could make an impact as a starter when defenders were still fresh. The problem was that they tried to use cheaper (MLS salary cap-wise) options to sign plug and play replacements for long-time veterans, but young, inexperienced players from outside MLS and either outside the country or at a lower-level than MLS are not going to be plug and play. To make it worse, all but Nascimento were signed because they were projected to be able to play different positions or positions with different responsibilities than they had in their previous teams. Parente and Lepley have done better than Sanabria and Wynder in part because they have had multiple years of exposure to MLS play and training and playing Vanney's system in the second team. It's possible Sanabria and Wynder will end up better than them because of superior athleticism or skill, but they aren't there yet. Ramirez was a plug-and-play replacement and he has more or less lived up to that billing. He may not be as good as Jovelic, but he is a vet who can provide similar results with the same service. Zanka was probably plug-and-play, too, but that was when he was replacing Caceres and not as a regular 90 minute starter replacing Yoshida. And the problem is 2025 Yoshida isn't a like-for-like for 2024 Yoshida either. The biggest mistake might have been viewing Reus and Fagundez as adequate temporary replacements for Puig. Reus proved injury prone from the start and he's neither a 90 minute player, nor a like-for-like for Puig, and Fagundez ended up also being needed as a replacement for Paintsil, which effectively weakened two positions rather than just one. Ultimately, we needed a different playing system if we were going to a more traditional AM. We didn't really have the pieces or the training time to do that. The result is that we are a (poor) hybrid between last year's system and this year's system, which has led Pec to push inside to be more of a playmaker and that makes us easier to defend and susceptible to attacks down his side. Beyond that, we have had roster depth issues that were more unforeseeable, like both Yamane and Cuevas going down at the same time. Miller has been a revelation in a sense, but we have given up goals that proved to be the difference in the games in part because Miller is a 17 year-old kid still learning how to play defense. Also, we have had to play Ramos more than he was ready to play because of the injuries. He is another 17 year-old who has great promise, but doesn't have the speed or skill to play wing consistently and is a little green to rely upon at attacking midfield. We will benefit in the long-term from the minutes both kids are getting in MLS and the CCC, but growing pains are inevitable.
To add on to the above. Looks like Stephens got a promotion in July 2024 from Chief Scout to Assistant GM at the same time the club named Mikkel Dencher as Technical Director with the responsibility of evaluating talent. Four months later the Fire hired Mike as Chief Scout. Tinfoil-hat time. Stephens’s “promotion” was a lateral move; Dencher was his replacement and Mike wasn’t happy about. It’s also possible Mike just wanted to go back home. “… we are very proud to announce the addition of Mikkel and his extensive experience as a talent evaluator with FC Copenhagen” source: https://www.lagalaxy.com/news/la-galaxy-hire-mikkel-dencher-as-technical-director
When I look at Nascimento’s career trajectory I’m not impressed. This was a wunderkid signed to the first team at age 15. He started 6 matches at that tender age, and played in a total of 11. But the 4 full seasons after that he had a grand total of 6 starts. His busy year was 2022 where he started 4 times and played in 23 total. That added up to 612 minutes (~=7 full games) during which he wracked up a whopping 0 goals and 0 assists. In fact his lifetime domestic club contribution spanning a bit over 5 years, 47 matches and 12 starts has been 1 goal and 1 assist! His scoring rate is 0.06g and 0,06a/90 minutes. Now I believe he was injured for a while in 2023 & 2024, so that partly explains his lack of appearances those years. But put it all together and I come up with - Why did we sign this guy? I understand the concept of potential but how do you get “potential” from 1 goal in five years! Methinks he’s like a lot of wunderkids who get a lot of press early. People just don’t give up their preconceived trajectory for them no matter how much the results suggest an alternate reality. A wasted pick, imo. We should be developing someone who is actually improving each and every season.
Yes, and I think his contributions to last year's success may have been undervalued. Kuntz, you may recall, is not a soccer guy. He played basketball in college and his first job in sports was in baseball. He's never played it (at least not beyond youth), nor been a scout. That doesn't mean he isn't good at his job though. He's more of a guy who can help identify the profile of player the coach is looking for and sends out the real scouts to find that profile among players who can fit the profile of the player Kuntz believes we can afford under MLS salary budget rules. But at best he's applying analytics to double-check the scouts or he asks the right questions to double-check their reports and creates systems to make sure we always have a list of possible players to go after when openings arise. He's only going to be good if he picks really good scouts (or picks really good people to pick the scouts).
I suspect that Kuntz thought he could find another Puig-like player who was a "wunderkind" that didn't break through for some reason and could in MLS. I also suspect that the reason he is on a loan is because Kuntz knew this was a lottery ticket. Given the presence of Ramirez and Berry, I think we can probably afford a lottery ticket as our third striker on a one year loan deal, but I might give him some run at VCFC especially now that Bibout is gone. I don't really see how he is going to pay off getting a few minutes here and there with the senior team in late game situations when we're often playing from behind.
Benny Dargle posted a quote from Alex Ruiz last October where Alex called it a "massive loss". I think that we have seen how right Alex and Benny were.
⚽️🎙 LIVE SHOW RIGHT NOW! 🎙⚽️We're about 10 mins away from being joined by LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz. We're talking the draw with Houston and how the Galaxy can fix everything that is going wrong. 📆 TONIGHT⏰ 8 PM👥 @jguesman & @kbaxter11📺 https://t.co/FTwDBjfTwf…— Corner Of The Galaxy (@GalaxyPodcast) April 15, 2025 I guess Kurtz is on this show. Will be interesting if he has anything of substance to say.
He indicated that they there are some ways they can add some players, which the hosts interpreted to mean MLS player trades, sales overseas (if Micovic) and possibly borrowing GAM from next season. He didn't throw players under the bus, but did concede Zanka was making mistakes you wouldn't anticipate when signing a veteran with his pedigree. He also said they want to sign Vanney, so that was a stamp of approval.
What else can he say...It was interesting that he gave Vanney such a stamp of approval. Basically said it's a completely new midfield and not Vanneys fault, that it takes time for them to gel. Very high on Sanabria.