When coach Greg Vanney stepped onto the LA Galaxy Carson campus in January of 2021, he saw how far the franchise had fallen behind its MLS competitors. At Toronto FC, Garth Lagerway and Tim Bezbatchenko handled the MLS rules and contracts, while Vanney concentrated on building an organization with a winning culture. It took three years for the team to challenge for the MLS Cup, finally lifting the trophy in the fourth year.
In his introductory interview at the Galaxy in January of 2021, Vanney described the culture-building process, “For me, we establish a culture based on how we work daily as a group. It’s the expectations we create once the guys walk in the door every single morning to put in the work. It’s in the team of guys that I have working with me and the staff. So when guys walk in the door, they have things to work on from the second they arrive to the second they leave. Humility, character, discipline, and a lot of important factors go into that.”
His hodgepodge roster consisted of Sebastian Lleget, a holdover from the Bruce Area era, the enigmatic DP striker Javier Hernandez, his Mexican teammate Jonathan Dos Santos, promising right back Julian Araujo, the wildly talented but disappointing Efrain Alvarez, and English Championship-level goalkeeper Jonathan Bond. Under previous manager Guillermo Barros Schelotto, the Galaxy led the league in crosses into the box. Nothing about the roster fit Vanney’s vision for a game-controlling possession to support a quick, dynamic attack.
“Ideally, we want to be in possession. We want to be aggressive in an attacking-oriented way. On the defending side, we cannot just concede goals. We want to be aggressive in how we defend as well. It’s about proactivity and not reactivity.”
He put in an order with scouting director Jovan Kirovski for some fleet-footed attackers to stretch the field. Hampered by COVID restrictions, they flipped through the rolodex and made some calls. Based on contacts from his playing days in France and Kirovski’s connections, Vanney settled on the pacy DP forward Kevin Cabral and left-winger Samuel Grandsier. Cabral’s speed and movement found dangerous spaces, but he lacked the final product in the offensive third. Grandsier fit the profile Vanney wanted but never seemed comfortable in Los Angeles. The Galaxy finished below the playoff line, fifteenth overall, and eighth in the Western Conference.
Vanney served as director of the academy and helped to build the soccer operations infrastructure in Toronto. He needed a proper scouting department that could identify player profiles that fit his vision. Academy player development needed a clear pathway to the first team, aligned with his principles of play. The club hired former player Michael Stephens as Director of Scouting in April of 2022. But Vanney’s front office duties increasingly encroached on his coaching.
The Galaxy improved in 2022. After the midseason signing of Barcelona midfield starlet Riqui Puig, they charged into the playoffs with only one loss in their final ten matches, placing fourth in the West and eighth overall. Bitter cross-town rival LAFC bounced them from the playoffs in the Conference semi-finals. The loss to LAFC proved to be more than the loyal supporters could bear. After eight long years of futility and Galaxy President Chris Klein’s contract about to expire, the supporters wanted a change in the front office.
The Galaxy faithful will want to forget those dark days of dawn in 2023. Instead, Anschutz Entertainment Group CEO Dan Beckerman signed Klein to a new contract. The four organized Galaxy supporters groups boycotted the start of the 2023 season. The team stumbled to a miserable start, unable to win a game until the end of April. Playing in a strangely empty stadium, midfielder Puig lost his only credible attacking threat when Chicharito suffered a season-ending knee injury.
Philip Anschutz noticed. The owner of the vast AEG empire and founder and financier of MLS soccer flew in from his Colorado headquarters to consult with Beckerman, Vanney, and Klein. Apparently, Mr. Anschutz agreed with the fans because Beckerman fired Klein and eventually Kirovski, separating the business side from the soccer side of the operation. Vanney survived the purge, urging Beckerman to hire LAFC executive Will Kuntz to assume the contractual duties like Lagerway and Bezbatchenko did in Toronto.
On a CoG podcast, current General Manager Will Kuntz revealed how Vanney impressed him as far back as 2014. “When I first joined the league office in 2014, I took over Tim Bezbatchenko’s role when he went to Toronto FC. When I’d go to visit Toronto, there was this academy director Greg Vanney attached to the hip with Tim. I spent a good chunk of time with Greg. Fast forward to 2019 at my old place (LAFC), we were crushing everybody, and we got absolutely handled by Toronto under Greg Vanney.”
Kuntz cited Vanney as an important reason for choosing to join the Galaxy, “Greg’s vision, the way he sees the players, the way he thought about the game. When you think about where the Galaxy were when he came in. I mean building a dedicated video room, streamlining the offices downstairs, the high-performance sports science department, building out a cognitive department, and just the infrastructure. He was really instrumental in a lot of stuff that people on the sidelines don’t get to see. I’m a believer in what Greg is trying to do.”
Kuntz wasted no time revamping the roster. Taking advantage of his stint at LAFC and the improved scouting department, he acquired Japanese International center-back Maya Yoshida and two-time Japanese champion Miki Yamane at right back. The fallout from roster violations under Klein and former General Manager Denis te Klose limited Kuntz to signing free-agent internationals and trading for domestic players.
Having written the roster rules while working at league headquarters, he cleverly landed three MLS gems over the summer: journeyman attacker Diego Fagundez from Austin, career substitute fullback John Nelson from St. Louis, and promising defensive midfielder Edwin Cerrillo from Dallas. Combined with the technically gifted Uruguayan Gaston Brugman and workhorse Mark Delgado, Vanney finally had the physical and technical quality in the midfield to support chance creator Puig.
When Kirovski left the club for greener pastures at Milan, Beckerman elevated Kuntz to General Manager, finally freeing Vanney to concentrate exclusively on coaching. The structure that catapulted Toronto to the championship had finally been recreated in Los Angeles. Though the fans returned to the stadium, injuries spread through the locker room like a virus, with as few as sixteen of the preferred twenty-three-man roster available on a given game day. Vanney and Kuntz managed to fend off the wooden spoon awarded for last place, but without Puig, defenders Martin Caceres and Jalen Neal, and midfielders Brugman and Delgado in the final stretch, they crashed to fourth from the bottom of the MLS table.
After many years studying Vanney, Kuntz knew that he needed young, pacy, goal-dangerous wingers, an expensive commodity on the global transfer market. His two prime targets would cost north of twenty million dollars on top of a multi-million dollar designated player salary over multiple years. In the past, Anschutz paid for established stars as much for their notoriety as their talent. Big-name players like David Beckham, Robbie Keane, Steven Gerrard, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic brought attention to the club and the league before they set foot on the pitch. Kuntz convinced Anschutz to ante up similar sums for two promising unknowns, Ghanaian Joseph Paintsil and Brazilian Gabriel Pec.
Unlike his predecessors, who forced the coach to integrate new players with the season underway, Kuntz signed and delivered the nearly completed roster at the start of the 2024 season. The final piece to the championship puzzle arrived in April, the athletic twenty-two-year-old Columbian center-back Emiro Garces. Enculturating the South American into the Galaxy required nearly five months before Garces started his first game in September against Vancouver. With Garces starting, the Galaxy suffered only one loss on the road to lifting the MLS Cup.
Vanney revealed why he left Toronto for LA after so much success, “I knew thinking through the (seven-year) process in Toronto that my time there was coming to an end. I needed some time to reflect, talk to my family, and process what we endured and enjoyed in Toronto. When I announced my mind that I wasn’t going to be resigning there, it had nothing to do with LA or any other team.”
“I obviously knew that the Galaxy were searching for a coach, but I didn’t know if the Galaxy were interested. Dennis and Chris reached out to Toronto for the opportunity to speak to me. When I look at an opportunity and a club. I don’t just think about the first team I think the entire project has to fit together. I couldn’t be more excited about the decision we made for myself and my family. They’re excited to be coming back (home) to LA.”
It took seven years for Vanney to realize his vision in Toronto. At the Galaxy, it took only four. We want to be in possession—check. We want to be aggressive in an attacking sort of way—check. We want flexibility—check. We want to be aggressive in how we defend—check. It’s about proactivity, not reactivity—check. We want to establish a championship mentality—check. Win a sixth MLS Cup trophy—check. Welcome home, Greg.
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