How The MLS's Biggest & Richest Club Collapsed

LA Galaxy of the highest earning the highest spending and the most successful team in the history of Major League Soccer the poster boys of the amalas for the best part of two decades LA Galaxy haven't just reached the most MLS Cup finals and won the most MLS Cup titles and the joint most supporters shell crowns they've also helped to shape the MLS over the years through their marketing and recruitments the galaxies 2007 signing of David Beckham the most famous player in all of world football at the time brought Global attention to the league and led to a spike in both interest and attendances within the United States it also led to the creation of the so-called Beckham rule officially the designated player rule relaxing the League's spending regulations by allowing MLS teams to sign three designated Players whose wages fell outside of their overall salary cap since then no MLS team has signed more Superstars than LA Galaxy Beckham was followed by Juan Pablo angal Robbie Keane Stephen Gerrard Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Javier Hernandez amongst others meanwhile London Donovan Remains the most iconic and to many people's minds the greatest MLS player of all time yet since Bruce Arena left the Galaxy to take charge of the usmnt in 2016 having won nine trophies during his eight years in Los Angeles L.A Galaxy haven't won either the supporters Shield the MLS cup or the Western Conference even was they haven't finished higher than fifth in the Western Conference let alone in the MLS overall and they have failed to reach a single MLS Cup Final even Zlatan Ibrahimovic who scored 53 goals in 58 games over two seasons in California before returning to Europe could only Inspire LA Galaxy to an 8th Place finish in the MLS overall and a 5-3 defeat to their much younger rivals lafc in the quarter-finals of the MLS Cup this season however LA Galaxy have gone from a state of stagnation to outright turmoil just one win from their opening 10 matches constituted the club's worst ever starts with season having been founding members of the MLS back in 1996 they are currently joint last in the overall MLS table tied with Colorado Rapids and their presidents of more than a decade Chris Klein was sacked last month having been suspended by the league in December for violating salary budgets and Squad guidelines during the 2019 season facts are in the club's current transfer embargo dwindling crowds persistent protests one of their three designated players just having ruptured his ACL and another one having had a warrant put out for his arrest all whilst LA Galaxy are still one of the highest earning franchises in the MLS and it's probably fairly reasonable to ask the question what on Earth is going on at LA Galaxy thankfully that's a question that I ask and attempt to answer quite often about football clubs on this channel even the most fickle of subscribers will probably have noticed so sit back relax and join me on a journey to Los Angeles not literally of course I don't have anything like that kind of a budget as we take a look at how the richest and most successful team in a league which aims for parity and has no relegation has still somehow managed to fall apart as I mentioned just then the MLS unlike most football or soccer leagues around the world is designed to make total collapses extremely difficult the lack of relegation from the MLS means that both the sporting and the financial consequences of having a bad season are much smaller than they are in let's say the Bundesliga or most notably of all the Premier League where the threat of relegation functions as a cliff Edge for a handful of teams every season in short there ought to be less Jeopardy in the MLS as is the case in most U.S Sports and that is reflected in the valuation of MLS franchises which are higher on average than Premier League teams despite the popularity and overall revenue of the MLS being nowhere near the Premier League at this stage it is almost impressive therefore in a deeply unimpressive sort of way the LA Galaxy have somehow managed to become the first MLS team to feature in this series when LA Galaxy were at the peak of their powers which was really at the end of the 2000s and at the beginning of the 2010s they had the League's best designated players built around a solid core of domestic players all of whom were well marshaled and organized by the best head coach in the revision it is no great surprise then that it proved to be a winning formula in the 2011 season which was the Galaxy's most successful as they am asked 67 points lost just five games and won the Western Conference the supporters shield and the MLS Cup they had an All-American back four all of whom were us MNT Internationals and only one of whom spent less than five years at the club a Midfield star-studded Midfield I should say made up of London Donovan journino David Beckham and Mike McGee and a forward line containing another U.S International Juan Pablo Angell and by the time that the MLS Cup Final came around a 31 year old Robbie Keane just to be clear they were separate the U.S International I'm not suggesting that Juan Pablo angle was American 10 or so years ago then that was enough to dominate Major League Soccer over the past decade though the MLS has changed becoming more technical tactical athletic and above all else professional meanwhile LA Galaxy of not while significantly regressing in fact becoming a poor imitation of the team that they once were just take the Galaxy's recent designated players since striking gold with Zlatan Ibrahimovic who was at that time the highest paid player in the history of the MLS LA Galaxy have afforded designated player status to Christian pavon Javier as Kevin Cabral Douglas Costa and Ricky Pooch pavon was an interesting and actually a fairly Progressive signing who performed well particularly during the 2020 season but he was only ever on loan with the Galaxy from Boca Juniors meaning that he was never actually their player and the club's decision to make payments to pavon outside of their allocated salary budget and to classify him as a targeted allocation money or Tam player rather than a designated player saw the Galaxy hit with a significant transfer ban which we will come to at some point their president being suspended and the loss of one million dollars of General allocation money being imposed upon them as punishment by the league Hernandez is now in his fourth and most likely his final season in Los Angeles following a slow start in which he only scored two goals in 12 games during his debut campaign Hernandez scored 17 and dating goals in the 2021 and 2022 Seasons before slumping back down in a really miserable fashion and having a terrible 2023 campaign in which he scored just one goal All Season before tearing the ACL it is right knee last week that might seem like a bit of a mixed bag then but when wonkon said as that Hernandez is paid seven and a half million dollars a season the third most in the league and the most up until Toronto FC's 2022 signing of Jordan shakiri the reality is that Hernandez hasn't Justified the Sky High salary throughout most of his time in Los Angeles particularly given that he contributes little other than goals Kevin Cabral who LA Galaxy brought to the MLS from France as a 21 year old for a fear of 5.9 million dollars in 2021 was allowed to join Colorado Rapids after less than two seasons of the club for just one million dollars in general allocation money the same amount incidentally the Galaxy were fined for their suspect's Accounting in regard to Pavel Douglas Costa meanwhile is without doubt not just the worst signing of the lot but one of the worst designated player investments in the history of Major League Soccer a Serial title winner in Europe with shaktar Donetsk Bayern Munich and Juventus who has been cut 31 times by Brazil Costa joined LA Galaxy initially on a six-month loan deal and subsequently on a one and a half year contract becoming one of the highest paid players in the league during his time in Los Angeles Costa has scored a miserable five goals and has made just two assists in 35 appearances having received more red cards than he has registered assists so far this season Costa has one goal one assist one red card and one arrest warrant issued by a Brazilian in court three weeks ago for failure to pay child support in exchange for that enormous contribution cost runs over one million dollars a season more than Carlos Baylor and over twice as much as the League's top scorer Dennis boanga I do apologize there to LA Galaxy fans for using references exclusively from their Rivals Ricky Pooch is arguably the exception that proves the rule then having been excellent since his arrival one of if not the most gifted midfielder in the MLS Pooch was a real coup for LA Galaxy signed at the age of 22 in 2022 have been a squad player at Barcelona for the past three years Pooch plays football exactly as one would expect a midfielder who came through the lamazia youth ranks to play football with his head up at all times silky on the ball and Cape love splitting a defense in half with a single pass even in the case of Pooch though who is Comfortably the Galaxy's best player one could argue that he hasn't been properly utilized and that is largely due to the total lack of a Midfield enforcer in alongside him Purge is a technical Marvel certainly by MLS standards and one of the best players in the league with the ball at his feet without the ball at his feet though he is largely ineffective to facilitate that type of a luxury player and Pooja is absolutely good enough to be facilitated LA Galaxy need both a system and the Personnel to pick up that slack the two most glaring weaknesses of this galaxy team are the softness of their core it is far too easy to play through them great open Innings and there is a little intensity from them to win the ball back and the sheer dearth of talent and depth in wide areas Gaston brugman and Mark Delgado who have tended to partner pooch in Midfield this season are not terrible players brugman has probably been Galaxy's second best player this season but neither offer the kind of athleticism combativeness and ball winning Tendencies required to bring some stability to the Galaxy Midfield and complement the play-making abilities of pooch in the wide areas the situation is even more Bleak in theory Douglas Costa ought to be one of the best players in the league but he has been anything but only having opened his account for this season this month with a consolation goal in the U.S open Cup against Real Salt Lake and yet to find the back of the net this season in the league if Costa wasn't earning a salary of an early 5 million dollars a season and occupying a designated player slot at all a Galaxy he almost certainly would have been dropped by now and there are still plenty of Galaxy fans who would rather the club just bit the bullets and bought out the remainder of his contract as New England Revolution have just done with Josie alcidor the reality however is that there is next to no one of Eddie caliber in the LA Galaxy Squad to replace him none of Tyler Boyd Mamo Rodriguez or Efrain Alvarez are good enough to be regularly starting games for a team with aspirations of competing in the top half of the MLS table Alvarez May well be with time having just turned 21 but overall the Outlook is Bleak and what's more none of these issues are new LA Galaxy softcore and Dreadful wide options have been long-term issues and it is a blatant failure of squad planning or roster planning as the Americans call it to have allowed those problems to fester for this long it's at this point that we need to start looking a little further at the food chain at LA Galaxy when it comes to the club's current woes LA Galaxy's Club president until the end of last month for more than a decade was former U.S MNT International Chris Klein Klein ended his career in Los Angeles spending Four Seasons at what was then known as The Home Depot Center between 2007 and 2010 racking up 90 League appearances before hanging up his boots following his retirement Klein immediately became the senior director of the Galaxy Academy before being promoted to the role of Vice President in 2012. vice presidents of LA Galaxy that is not the vice president of the United States just in case there was any confusion in January 2013 Klein became the Galaxy's new president from his arrival as a player in 2007 through to his appointment as president in 2013 six years later then clana experienced the Golden Age of LA Galaxy the team of Beckham Donovan and Keane victory in the MLS Cup in 2014 it only Klein's second season as president saw him being hailed as one of the brightest and most capable young operators in the MLS but Galaxy haven't come close to in the MLS Cup since 2014 and Klein has since overseen a decade of Staggering decline the relationship between Klein and LA Galaxy supporters became strained long ago but this season that conflict has come to a head last December Klein was issued with a temporary suspension by the MLS for his role in the misreporting of Christine pavon's earnings and designated Squad role in spite of that Scandal and Punishment twinned with 10 years of regression and underperformance out on the pitch LA Galaxy's parent company AEG hand declined an extended deal in January that was the final straw draw for many Galaxy fans and the club's five largest supporters groups the LA Riot Squad Angel City brigade the galaxians ghost Ultras Galaxy and Galaxy Outlaws published a cross-organization statement outlining their intentions of boycott the team's matches until Klein had been sacked that led to a notable decline in Galaxy's attendances which had been falling consistently for the last six seasons regardless this season is currently on course to witness the Galaxy's lowest average attendance in 14 years excluding Seasons impacted by covid-19 and for the first time since the MLS was born in 1996 Galaxy aren't among the top 10 teams in the division in terms of their average attendance the Angel City brigade ended their boycotts on May 6th meanwhile every other supporters group was scheduled to return on June 21st but Klein was very belatedly in most Galaxy fans eyes sacked on May 30th it is a start but whilst climb was sacked Jovan karovsky who was the first american-born player to be signed by Manchester United and who like Klein ended his career at LA Galaxy during the club's Golden Era has been retained karovsky was appointed as Galaxy's technical director at the same time as Klein was appointed president and is seeing as being indelibly tied to him and equally culpable for the way in which the club has been run during that time the decision to sack one of them and not the other therefore as far as some people are concerned is a strange one and whilst client's successor is yet to be named so long as korovsky is still in the picture there will be lingering suspicions that the clean break required hasn't yet been implemented for the time being Greg Vani LA Galaxy's head coach has taken on those additional responsibilities it puts Vani in the rather unusual predicament of being an Under Fire and underachieving manager who rather than be sacked has been temporarily at least given two senior jobs rather than one the extent to which Vani is to blame for Galaxy's failures in their two and a half years since he became head coach is a matter of of some debates Vani arrived with an awful lot of Goodwill as a famous face at LA Galaxy owing to his Seven Seasons playing for the club but primarily due to the job that he had done at Toronto FC then he took a Toronto team that had finished third from bottom in the MLS this season before he arrived and led them to a historic quadruple in 2017. Toronto hadn't previously won either the MLS Cup the supporters Shield or the Eastern Conference and nor have they done since that was vany's first job in Senior Management in his mid-40s and he would have had the pick of most MLS teams following his departure in 2020. he chose LA Galaxy in January 2021 citing excitement at the prospect of rebuilding the club and orchestrating his long-term projects despite their recent struggles Galaxy will always have significant pull within the MLS and so it proved in his instance Vani got some of his wishes on the ground level with the club hiring a director of high performance and Innovation an assistance of high performance a director of sports medicine a director of cognitive performance a new Chief Scout and a director of methodology and development following his arrival but above him were the biggest decisions of all are made very little has changed LA Galaxy's recruitment still seems to be impacted by commercial as much if not more so than sporting consideration Stephen Gerrard was signed in 2015 due to being such a big name within the world of football despite the Galaxy head coach at the time Bruce Arena reportedly not once again it also come as no great surprise therefore that Gerard was never properly utilized and wound up being a major flop in the MLS the same was apparently true of Giovanni Dos Santos who arrived in the same summer as Gerard despite Arena not wanting him either dos Santos might not have been as big of a name in World football as Gerard but he has been over 100 caps for Mexico and Los Angeles is a city with an enormous Hispanic Latino and Mexican or Mexican diaspora population that would appear to be a major justification behind Galaxy targeting so many Spanish-speaking players and in some ways it has worked for them as I mentioned during the introduction despite not having been very successful for the last decade LA Galaxy are still one of the two highest earning teams in the division along with their Rivals lafc last season and they are still ranked as one of the two most valuable MLS franchises again along with lafc in some ways it's easy to draw a comparison between LA Galaxy and an American context and Manchester United in an English one both have continued to spend over the last decade and to expand their commercial interests and revenue as their respective League's most successful clubs but because those commercial decisions outweigh the sporting ones and the club has long been run from the very top by people who are not serious football operators there has been a combination of neglect and incompetence in terms of squad planning for over 10 years which has resulted in massively underperforming teams if you want to stay in the US it's difficult not to draw a comparison between LA Galaxy and the m mls's original Dynasty DC United who are trophylla since 2014 and haven't lifted the MLS Cup since all the way back in 2004. LA Galaxy is owned by the anshuts Entertainment Group otherwise known as AEG which is the world's largest owner of sports teams and sports events but as itself a subsidiary of the Anschutz corporation which is owned by Philip Anschutz one of America's best-known nepo babies Philip inherited the answers Corporation from his father and is a major donor to anti-lgbt anti-abortion and other conservative causes in the United States he's also the richest owner in the MLS and the sixth richest owner in World football though that isn't as integral to LA Galaxy's fortunes as European audiences might imagine due to the way in which MLS financing functions Anschutz was one of the founders of Major League Soccer and the League's most significant financial backer a one-time owning seven different MLS franchises which accounted for over half of the league these days aged 83 and schutz only owns LA Galaxy and is much less Hands-On the president and CEO of AG Dan Beckerman is ultimately responsible for overseeing the management of LA Galaxy and for hiring and firing the club's Executives it is a slight drawback there for the Beckerman doesn't appear to know very much about football or soccer and has Illustrated fairly Dreadful judgment when it comes to his appointments it was after all beckerman's decisions had Klein a contract extension following his MLS suspension just a few months before caving to pressure from supporters groups and continued poor results and finally dismissing him it's not unreasonable to suggest that for real change and serious governance to be implemented Beckham and ought to be removed from overseeing the Galaxy and someone with far greater expertise and experience within the sport put in his place the transfer embargo that the Galaxy have been hit with by the MLS prohibits them from signing anyone who isn't either already registered with an MLs club or is a free agent based in the United States during the summer transfer window for a club desperately in need of a major rebuild and an overhaul of that first team squad that is a pretty major impediment to make matters worse it is during the summer transfer window that most non-us leagues conclude meaning that it is when most of their transfer business is done contracts tend to come to an end and players become available even if the Galaxy consider this season's be a write-off then which quite frankly it already is only starting a proper rebuild in a winter window is far from ideal so things don't look great for the mls's most successful club and whilst Revenue remains High how long that can be maintained for whilst it isn't accompanied by success on the pitch is an ongoing question both within and Beyond the United States I started this video by alluding to why this is the first MLS team to feature in this series because the league ultimately does have less Jeopardy and it is much harder for clubs to totally collapse LA Galaxy's current plate therefore is not comparable to West Brom scunthorpe or Saint etiennes fortunes can turn around very quickly in the somewhat ironically much more egalitarian world of U.S Sports San Jose Earthquakes finish bottom of the Western Conference last season for example winning only eight games all season but are currently fifth halfway through the 2023 campaign just three points off the top having already won seven times in half the number of watches the MLS is structured in such a way that teams are not supposed to dominate as LA Galaxy did for as long as they did and their aggression over the past decade whilst others of Triumph could be viewed as the League's system working as intended parity may be the aim of the MLS though but inevitably it is not the aim of specific clubs or of specific sets of supporters who will always want to see their teams win LA Galaxy's decline hasn't just been the result of the cyclical nature of U.S Sports either though whilst others have modernized and professionalized particularly in terms of their recruitment LA Galaxy of not it's worth noting the relay Galaxy are not alone this certainly appears to be a broader malaise among the mls's nine surviving founding franchises only one out of the last eight MLS cups since LA Galaxy last won it in 2004 14 has been won by one of the League's founding teams the overall MLS tables current league leaders FC Cincinnati first competed in the 2019 season the team in second Nashville SC only played their first season in 2020. last season's MLS Cup winners lafc only entered the league as an expansion franchise in 2018. it is a distinct Trend then and one that the likes of the Galaxy who have gone from being the best soccer team in the entire United States to the worst MLS team representing the city of Los Angeles in less than a decade when their Rivals have only been competing in the league for five years will be Keen to address I ought to talk more about the El trafico rivalry and how it ought to be good for the Galaxy and force them to improve but it has so far had the opposite effect injury problems which have been severe this season no not more noticeable perhaps than the injuries to Jonathan bond which have forced Jurgen klinsmann's son Jonathan klinsman into action who hasn't looked anything like an MLs standard goalkeeper when called upon the strength of LA Galaxy's woefully underutilized Academy system and how Gaston brugman stated earlier this season that the Galaxy players were quote not hungry which is an extraordinary admission before being immediately contradicted by Greg Vani who claimed that their problem was that they were trying too hard but as tends to be the case on this channel this video is already fairly substantial and it is impossible to give adequate time and attention to every single issue LA Galaxy's two High sterners Mr arrest warrant Douglas Costa and now sidelined long-term Javier Hernandez are both out of contract to the end of the season that frees up to designated player slots and provides the perfect platform for the Galaxy to begin their much needed rebuild but with korovsky still in the job Beckerman ultimately still calling the shots and Vani who has as yet failed to improve the team in any meaningful way albeit in difficult circumstances functioning as both the head coach and as the interim Club president there is little sign at this stage that that opportunity will be seized upon that is it for today's video but thank you all very much as ever for watching hit the like button if you enjoyed it let me know your thoughts Down Below in the comments and of course make sure that you are subscribed and have notifications turned on for both this Channel hitc7s and my backup Channel or second Channel alfiebot Samba both of which should be on your screens or about to appear on your screens now along with a couple of videos that you might want to watch after this one you can also find me on Twitter or on Instagram via the username at hrtc Samsung both should you wish to do so

Channel: HITC Sevens

Views: 353,033

Keywords: HITC Sevens, Football, Soccer, LA Galaxy, MLS, Major League Soccer, Documentary, What On Earth, Is Going On, Galaxy, Los Angeles Galaxy, Los Angeles, Javier Hernandez, Owner, Finances, Downfall, Demise, David Beckham, Beckham, LAFC

Id: LyTGRAPs_2s

Length: 29min 5sec (1745 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 20 2023