Past visits to the Soccer Den explored the nature of Vanney-ball and the characteristics of its success. Examples from Galaxy teams of yore illustrated the principles behind the Vanney philosophy. The way the Galaxy converted a dominant performance into a 1-1 draw reminds Galaxy fans of last year. This article takes a look at the factors that contributed to the disastrous 2023 season.
A quick excursion into the past provides context for the thirteenth place finish and sixty-seven goals conceded in 2023. Greg Vanney gained fame for his exploits with Toronto FC, winning the treble in 2017—The Canadian Championship, MLS Supporters Shield and MLS Cup. Tim Leiweke, a name familiar to Galaxy fans, built the infrastructure that resulted in the only period of success in the history of Toronto FC. Vanney-ball emerged during the anomaly what was the Leiweke era in Toronto.
When Vanney arrived in LA, he found a mere shell of a franchise. With all the hype of the high school and academy, the Galaxy soccer operations lagged at least ten years behind the recruiting, development and scouting infrastructure at Toronto FC. To play Vanney-ball the whole organization needed a rebuild to match what Leiweke had done in Canada.
Few realize that Vanney co-founded the Arizona Futbol Club, that eventually merged with the Sereno Soccer Club, using a business plan developed in college at UCLA. After founding the first private residential soccer academy in the United States, he landed a job as Director of Soccer Operations for Arizona based Grande Sports World, developing a state-of-the-art soccer training facility that included eight professional quality fields.
He established and directed the Real Salt Lake-Arizona Youth academy, attracting the Colorado, Seattle and Vancouver youth development academies to the facility. Vanney realized that the return to Galaxy glory would require rebuilding the dilapidated soccer infrastructure. He had done it before and in 2021 he began the process again in LA.
Saddled with an old-boy scouting network, his first signings landed with a thud. Kevin Cabral, Douglas Costa, Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez and Samuel Grandsir lacked the fitness or qualities necessary to make Vanney-ball succeed. As the new infrastructure emerged, Gaston Brugman, Martin Caceres and Calegari provided a glimpse of the new Galaxy. The signing of Riqui Puig signaled the end of old-boy recruiting.
It remains somewhat of a mystery whether the fan-boycott in 2023 unseated President Chris Klein and Scouting Director, Jovan Kirovski. However, the hiring of Will Kuntz as President of Soccer Operations allowed Vanney to turn the newly minted soccer infrastructure over to a talented executive who played an important role building rival LAFC. Over the winter, owner Phil Anschutz provided Kuntz with a blank check, resulting in record signings Gabriel Pec and Joseph Paintsil. It can be argued that the first genuine season of Vanney-ball began on February 25, 2024.
So how does Vanney-ball allow sixty-seven goals in a single season? In large part the whole of 2023 can be explained as the cost of remodeling a broken franchise. The Mark Delgado, Brugman and Puig combination proved capable supplying Chicharito and Dejan Jovelic with enough service for a playoff showing in 2022. Remove Brugman and Chicharito from the equation and not even the impressive Tyler Boyd could make up the difference.
Players like Raheem Edwards and Chris Mavinga contributed with effort and grit, but lacked the essential qualities necessary to grasp and implement Vanney-ball. The slow start, six points from ten games, can be attributed to incorporating new players who never really sync’d with the possession based philosophy. Time and again players would see an opportunity to counter-attack and end up alone with no options.
They seemed to be incapable of coordinating transitions and possession, ignoring clear line splitting passes in favor of a safe pass or playing a hero ball into the teeth of the defense. Positive attacking movements pulled apart the the Galaxy defensive shape. As the opposition counter-attacked, attempts to close on the ball without defensive cover created a chain reaction of mistakes leaving goalkeeper Jonathan Bond with little chance of making a save.
Injuries ended the season for Calegari, Brugman, Caceres, Chicharito and Jalen Neal. Despite an infirmary resembling a mash unit, the Galaxy managed to win important games, including a dramatic El Traffico victory at the Rose Bowl. They assembled a playoff quality record after earning only six points in the first ten games. The push for the playoff took its toll, and when Puig and Delgado fell prey to injury, all hope of a playoff appearance vanished.
Without accounting for other factors, like a month without soccer during the Leagues Cup and fixture congestion throughout the rest of the season, it is remarkable that the Galaxy managed to score fifty-one goals, and quite unremarkable that they conceded sixty-seven. Saddled with legacy players mismatched with the coaching philosophy, and injuries to all the key components that make a cohesive system work, perhaps no other team could have made even a modest run at the playoffs.
With Chef Kuntz cooking roster recipes in his spanking new infrastructure kitchen and Vanney free to focus on implementing his philosophy, the Galaxy may be on the cusp of a new era. However, the Galaxy fans relived the 2023 nightmare in the first game.
In the final installment of the Vanney-ball series, I’ll look at how the first game of the 2024 season reveals the challenges Kuntz and Vanney still face before they can return the Galaxy to the top of MLS once again.