Before the latest edition of the California Clasico kicked off at the Stubhub Center on Sunday, LA Galaxy president Chris Klein appeared on the FS1 pregame show to discuss the state of the team.
With the team in one of its most serious slumps in years, Klein acknowledged that they’re undertaking a major rebuild.
“We’ve moved on [from] a team that was old, that was built to win last year,” he said. “I don’t know if I’d call it a youth movement, but we needed a reset with our team.”
But while injuries, departures, and other factors have created what Klein described as a “perfect storm” for the Galaxy, he stressed that he still believes in the team’s major building blocks. Namely, he said, that means newish head coach Sigi Schmid, as well as the current crop of Designated Players, the recently arrived Jonathan Dos Santos among them.
“We have good DPs that are in the prime of their career,” he said. “[We’ll have] guys like Sebastian Lletget back; hopefully Gyasi [Zardes] starts to play like Gyasi. We can continue to build.”
That building, he said, will unsurprisingly focus on defense and up top, particularly after the departure of Jelle Van Damme.
“We know that we haven’t gotten the production up top. We know that in the back we have some pieces we have to add,” Klein said. “We have every ambition to be the best club in this league.”
