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Sunday Night Soccer

LA Galaxy chase return to MLS elite with roster refresh

Charles Boehm

The LA Galaxy’s technical staff faced a long, tricky to-do list over the winter, with the clock ticking loudly toward their MLS home opener vs. New York City FC on Sunday Night Soccer presented by Continental Tire (7 pm ET | Apple TV).

Their euphoric run to 2024 MLS Cup glory had crashed into a brutal 2025, which began with a record-breaking 16-game winless skid in league play and ended with the gutting news that Riqui Puig, the superstar playmaker the Gs’ lineup was built around, had to miss a second consecutive season due to complications from a torn ACL.

“Definitely a roller-coaster last few months,” Galaxy general manager Will Kuntz told MLSsoccer.com last week during a one-on-one conversation at their preseason camp in La Quinta, California.

Roster refresh

Making a rapid return to the league’s elite would require replacing a fundamentally irreplaceable player without changing the game model entirely, while also addressing defensive frailties further down the pitch. And all this would be happening in the shadow of the headline-dominating arrival of South Korean icon Son Heung-Min at crosstown rivals LAFC, to say nothing of Inter Miami CF’s Lionel Messi-powered capture of the catbird seat that once belonged to LA.

“Look, there's always an expectation for us to win championships. It's just what you get when you play for the Galaxy, or you coach the Galaxy,” said head coach Greg Vanney. “That's always our goal.

“But now there's 30 teams vying, and there's teams with huge budgets that are also spending, and so it's getting more and more challenging to do that every year. But I think we have to come back, and we have to put ourselves in the mix of being a team that is capable of winning a championship.”

First and foremost, the Gs’ brain trust decided that for all its technical quality and attacking verve, their squad had too often been exposed as lightweight, too easy to play through last year – they conceded 66 goals, second-worst in MLS – and needed some beefing up. Literally.

“It's just a tonnage thing that we really wanted to address,” explained Kuntz. “In the past, teams maybe felt tired after playing us, because they would be chasing and we'd have the ball a lot. But they weren't really sore, right?

“This year, the idea is they're tired, but they're also a little sore afterwards – maybe the ribs or their chest is a little bruised. I don't think that's the worst thing.”

Even last summer’s uptick in form carried complications. By finishing third in last year’s Leagues Cup, LA gained a valuable consolation prize: qualification for the 2026 Concacaf Champions Cup, both a rare opportunity and a massive challenge that would require Vanney’s group to hit the ground running.

Early stumbles are often harshly punished by the pressure and travel of continental competition, as they quickly learned in Panama Thursday night, narrowly avoiding an upset loss to Sporting San Miguelito in Leg 1 of their CCC Round One series.

MLS-proven quality

So in contrast to 2024, when the Galaxy looked abroad for their biggest signings with the likes of Gabriel Pec, Joseph Paintsil, Marco Reus and Emiro Garcés, they focused on the domestic marketplace this time.

“The floor is higher on all those guys; they're all known commodities,” explained Kuntz. “But also the ability to get everybody here at the very start of preseason was huge, so you're not dealing with immigration issues or prolonged contract negotiations.”

In came rugged Norwegian center back Jakob Glesnes, a three-time MLS All-Star, two-time MLS Best XI honoree and 2022 MLS Defender of the Year, via a trade with the Philadelphia Union.

“He brings a certain defensive tenacity, someone who really likes to be aggressive,” noted Vanney. “Sometimes behind our attacks, we were too soft in terms of getting up underneath and counter-pressing, because we were just conceding territory and teams [found it] just so easy to get out of our attacks and back into our half of the field.

“Coming from Philadelphia, their whole game is based on counter-pressing and transition defending, so we felt like he would be a good fit for us and leadership-wise.”

Two weeks later, NYCFC homegrown product Justin Haak, a tall, rangy center back/defensive midfield hybrid with both a tenacious edge and a 90% career pass completion rate, was signed off the free-agency market to both complement and compete with incumbent holding midfielder Edwin Cerrillo. Another free agent, Sporting Kansas City alum Erik Thommy, also arrived to bolster depth and creativity.

“Another guy who just knows our league, but is also versatile. He can cover in the midfield, he can play in the back, he's played in three in the back [formations],” said Vanney of Haak. “I call him our joker; we can do a lot of different things with him.”

Welcome to Los Angeles, Jakob 💫 pic.twitter.com/settMN4VhA
— LA Galaxy (@LAGalaxy) December 15, 2025

Enter Klauss

Their biggest swing was the trickiest.

Ruling Puig out for the entire year opened up his Designated Player slot for use in ‘26, but with the inimitable Spanish maestro still at the heart of the Galaxy’s identity, that spot is essentially only for rent. So Kuntz and Vanney got creative, swinging a cash-for-player trade with St. Louis CITY SC for their DP striker, João Klauss.

The Brazilian No. 9 offers another physical presence and attacking reference point, with a back-to-goal skill set capable of unleashing the pace and guile of Paintsil and Pec. And he’s on a one-year contract, in essence bolstering LA’s 2026 front line without tying the Gs down to a longer-term commitment.

“It's a very difficult needle to thread,” said Kuntz, calling Puig’s injury situation a “unique curveball” to navigate. “Do we maximize flexibility, or do we just get the best available player we can and kind of figure it out afterwards?

“It's just a very different proposition of potentially tying yourself up into something that means that going into next year, in January, you've got a real problem because you've got four DPs, and something's got to give.”

If all goes well for both parties, Klauss could later re-sign on a non-DP deal, and if he overperforms to the point of drawing high-dollar offers from elsewhere, the Galaxy will consider that a champagne problem.

“When you stand up next to him, you realize that he really is a horse,” noted Kuntz. “We spend a lot of time looking at the physical data that the guys have. In terms of output, he works, he presses, by all accounts, a great teammate, a guy who can combine.

"So he's not just purely a guy who stands close to goal and knocks things in, but a guy who really wants to play football.”

Welcome to Los Angeles, @joaoklauss 💫 pic.twitter.com/QV03cGwNEP
— LA Galaxy (@LAGalaxy) January 27, 2026

Squad takes shape

Klauss’ acquisition also influenced the decision to extend their U22 Initiative loan of young forward Matheus Nascimento from Botafogo after the Brazilian youth international’s mixed returns (six goals and four assists in 28 games across all competitions) in 2025. The 21-year-old seemed to settle in as the year unfolded, and the presence of elder compatriots like Klauss, Pec and Juninho, a former Galaxy star midfielder now on the coaching staff, could foster that process.

Then there’s the club’s academy pipeline, rich in potential yet short on success stories relative to Southern California’s massive talent pool. Vanney believes they’re set to turn a corner there, with teenage homegrowns Harbor Miller and Ruben Ramos Jr. headlining a solid 2007 age-year crop and contributing to the first team in preseason.

Will all this be enough to restore the record six-time MLS Cup champions' trophy-hunting aura? That’s the $10,000 question around Dignity Health Sports Park, and Sunday Night Soccer is their first close-up.

“We just have a better starting point,” said Vanney. “Training sessions have been super competitive; I feel like we're a way more competitive and mature group this year than we were last year, and it's been interesting. So I'm curious.”

Charles Boehm - @cboehm