I too was surprised about his views on Sanabria, especially since Parente has definitely outplayed him. Nevertheless, he's surely right that Sanabria hasn't had enough chances (including practice time) to show his best self yet, especially with the other injuries changing the players they envisioned would be surrounding him. In any event, here's some clips from the Kuntz interview. Most of it is the kind of "no-excuses, but here are some excuses" talk that you expect from a GM on a fan podcast. 1912176885598953638 is not a valid tweet id
That’s a little scary that he thinks of Edwin and Lucas as the core of our midfield. Edwin is ok, but as a support player only. He is not a ball advancer nor does he make killer passes. And Lucas has shown nothing so far. They certainly aren’t as dynamic as the central midfields we face.
Maybe it’s just supporting a new (and young) player, but Vanney, Fagundez and Cerrillo all seem to think highly of Sanabria. I haven’t seen it in game play either, but maybe he breaks out and proves us all wrong this week. Clearly the only creative spark remaining in our midfield is still in the team’s luxury box for a few months. Speaking of, why don’t we ever see Riqui hanging with Reus and Maya?
Sanabria hasn't shown much yet (in addition to his injury) and the injuries to Paintsil and Reus messed up the plan, but Kuntz makes it clear that the plan until Puig's return was: -------------Reus/Fagundez -------Cerrillo--------Sanabria With Fagundez spelling Reus as needed, as Reus is clearly not a 90-min every week player even when fit. Maybe soon we will get to see this and be able to evaluate it. Sanabria was highly regarded and being scouted by European teams and had the highest pedigree of our 3 U22 players, but so far he seems to be struggling to adapt to MLS and our team's style of play.
Not saying it’s the same thing, but I remember Juninho and Sarvas taking a while to adjust. Juninho didn’t really break out until mid to late summer if I remember correctly. Same for Sarvas. It took a few months for us to see his game. I loved those guys. Sarvas Juninho and Beckham all in the same midfield with LD and Keano up top? How spoiled were we?
The Apple announcers stated that he was rehabbing in Spain. During preseason, I believe that the Galaxy sent a physical therapist there to observe his rehabilitation therapy.
Pure speculation on my part, but it seems like the Galaxy could bring in a player like Gio Reyna as a U22 player if they wanted to jettison Naciamento.
Puig was sitting on the bench at the Houston game. He also signed autographs at the season ticketholder event (see below) https://www.instagram.com/reel/DIfJ4Jizbvr/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Matt Doyle just about sums up the Galaxy's winter transfer window https://www.mlssoccer.com/news/west...every-team-s-primary-transfer-window-mls-2025 D LA Galaxy Worth it. Best move: Christian Ramírez will score 8-to-14 goals across all competitions every year for the next three seasons, and will still be relevant when the Galaxy are finally good again (which will be, I think, next season).
Yup. We went all in for the cup last year, which crippled us this year as far as the salary cap goes. Then the injuries on top of that was the cherry on the "we suck 2025" sundae. The good news is that Josh Guesman of COTG hears that we are in good shape for 2026 salary cap and will have the ability to spend money and bring in some "in-prime" players.
Yes this all is true, but the Galaxy also had the ability to utilize the funds from the sale of Dejan to SKC to replenish the roster and to the best of my knowledge they didn't do it during the first transfer window. I don't know if they can use these funds in the summer transfer window or whether they went back into uncle Phil's coffers. I remain ever suspicious of AEG's management and afraid that 2024's willingness to spend was a one time thing.
Idk. As good as Kuntz was last year we got it all wrong this year. We could have sold Pec and Paintsill, or McCarthy all at peak value coming off MLS cup, kept Dejan and Delgado maybe and saved the $$ and not brought in any of the new guys and sat on that cap until the summer and I guarantee we wouldn’t be worse off. Easy to say in hindsight, of course, but not sure we got any move right.
This team is good enough to win games we're losing. We shouldn't be getting embarrassed by Portland at home. 2/3 DPs are back. Ramirez is actually scoring at a decent rate. Defense is shaky, yes, but I think the biggest issue is we're still playing like we have one the best midfield in MLS when we clearly don't. Our midfield isn't BAD, but clearly not at the caliber where we're going to dictate matches as we did last year.
It's probably not possible, but Luka Modric would be a great short term fix for the Galaxy midfield (i.e. someone capable of getting the ball to Paintsil and Pec on the break). He will be out of contract on June 30th and with Real Madrid probably bringing in a new Manager, I could see them not resigning him. By short term, I mean through the end of the current season as he will be 40 in September
A possible solution to GK could be Maxime Crépeau. If Pantemis continues to start for Portland, Crépeau would have to look for a place where he can start. He needs to be playing regularly to be Canada's no. 1 for the WC and hold off St. Clair. Galaxy gives him the opportunity wirh our Gk woes, and we can offload both McCarthy and Micovic.
Galaxy loan out CB Ascel Essengue to Phoenix Rising with a right to recall. This opens up a roster spot if we need it, but it's probably to raise the level of competition for him from MLS Next Pro, where he is physically bigger and stronger, as well as older, than many of the players he faces. They likely need to see if he could be a piece for the future on the defensive line of the senior squad with all but Garces among our center backs being pretty long in the tooth. On the other hand, for the last few players who have been loaned out to lower league squads - Ferkranus with the Rising, Bibout with Detroit City, and Vivi with a Costa Rican side - it was the beginning of the end for them as they didn't really make an impact on their transfers. 1918352656281813144 is not a valid tweet id
We don’t have a thread for Galaxy Under Vanney so I’ll stick this here. I noticed that we are the only team without a shutout this season so I got curious how our clean sheets (CS) compared to other teams. I ran the numbers from 2021-today, which comprises 4.29 seasons, for us as well as LAFC, SEA and PHI. I picked LAFC & SEA because they are our main WC rivals and PHI because I think of them as a decent representative of a well-coached and fairly consistent team. Team Total CS, Ave CS/season PHI 50, 11.6 LAFC 46, 10.7 SEA 46, 10.7 LAG 25, 5.8 So over Vanney’s 4 1/3 seasons we are averaging approximately one half as many shutouts as our main Western Conference competition. Here are our CS #s by year, along with rank. (If our CS # was tied I give the average rank for that # of CSs.) 2021 5 23.5th (of 27) 2022 7 17.5th (of 28) 2023 6 27th (of 29) 2024 7, 16th (of 29) 2025 0, 30th Our peak was 2024 where we were slightly below the median for the league. For three of the five seasons we were (are) in the bottom 5 of MLS. How much of this was goalkeeping? To look at this I compared the # of saves our keepers made vs other keepers. Total GK Saves ‘21-‘25 LAFC 372 SEA 381 PHI 412 LAG 478 So our keepers under Vanney save ~25% more shots on goal than either LAFC or SEA. That suggests our leaking of goals is a team D problem rather than a gk issue. This fits the eye test - most of our gk saves are needed because we leave players open in the box with alarming frequency. This clean sheet numbers provide yet another illustration of our main problem - our defenses under Vanney have been consistently mediocre or, more often, abysmal. It took one of the best scoring juggernauts in MLS history for us to go on last season’s miracle run. That level of productivity of offense likely won’t be seen in coming years, so, yeah, we have a problem Houston. Did I mention I think it’s time for a new LAG Coach?
What a great insight and analysis! I wonder if Kuntz looks at these type of things when evaluating Vanney.
Here is the Galaxy's roster profile after the close of the winter window. I think the only difference is Bibout's transfer https://mlssoccer.app.box.com/s/21uzjhm7j5cqrsi1rfch0aiaiisny9qv
Here's a in-depth and nuanced piece on whether the Galaxy should put Puig on the season-ending injury list https://footyanalyticmusings.substa...ith?r=1i9pg&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true
According to Kuntz, we were $2.5 million over the cap at the start of the offseason. Not sure exactly how that happened, but I guess it meant there was some combination of bonuses and salary increases kicking in, borrowing from this year to pay for last year, Reus' salary hitting for a full year instead of a pro-rated amount, and Jovelic aging out of U22 and Pec aging out of a U22 DP status. 1922071383980270014 is not a valid tweet id
Joveljic, Pec and Reus combined were going to be almost 1.5 million more this season. So that number seems legit when you factor in all the players who got bonuses for winning MLS Cup. If the bonus was 40k per player that is another 1 million right there.
Bonuses paid to all team members for team performance (especially if mandated by the league as prize money) should not count against any year's salary cap.