Will Kuntz
Appearances
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
The LA Galaxy general manager, Will Koontz. The toughest thing about MLS is that the rules make it impossible to have deep rosters. If you lose a guy like Ricky Pooch, it's impossible to replace them. With a guy like Jovalich, in any other league in the world, a club like the Galaxy and where we sit relative to spend, it's like, you just, you just re-sign him.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
I'm here in my childhood bedroom in Brooklyn, New York. So I came back ahead of our game against the Red Bulls.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
Yeah, I got really lucky. I was a freshman at Williams College at Western Mass. I played basketball there, and it was a Friday night during the season.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
We took our basketball really seriously, and so while the rest of the school was out doing whatever college kids do on a Friday night, I was thumbing through an alumni directory, and I saw that George Steinbrenner, the late owner of the Yankees, was a Williams alum, and I was like, you know what? Let me take a shot, right? So I wrote him a letter and asked for an internship.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
I lied and said I was a Yankee fan. I grew up like a lifelong Mets fan, but...
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
you know, like I wrote this letter.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
I didn't want to just send it to Georgetown or Yankee stadium. So I emailed the school president and introduced myself and said, Hey, I have this letter. Do you have an address? And that turned into, um, yeah, an internship working for the Yankees.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
Uh, and I was in the baseball operations department at 19 and, you know, like summer job working for the Yankees in the Bronx, like Brian Cashman, like just, just the dream. Right. But, um, a really like eye-opening experience to see what everything is like at the highest level. And you guys know this better as well as I do, right?
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
Like just because there's all the money in the world doesn't mean that you've got the best people necessarily or that people are working hard, right? You've got lazy people everywhere. You've got people who are checked out everywhere. And it was just a really good way to understand how
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
um you know an organization runs especially because as an intern you got to run to the ticket office and drop off tickets you got to go to the marketing department for x y or z and you get you get a feel for how everybody at the club interacts and then you also you know work for brian cashman you get a sense for like what it's like to put together a roster of hyper competitive guys at the highest level every little you know percentage point matters oftentimes you learn well
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
Yeah, you know, I've always been a big soccer fan, right? And just always followed, always loved it. Thought there's something really romantic about it. When you're working in baseball, because the, you know, the soccer, the international soccer off season is the summer, you have all these clubs from Europe who come through Yankee Stadium.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
And, you know, when you're talking to other baseball teams, you're really guarded when you're talking about scouting or player development. these soccer teams, they didn't care. They're like, you guys are a baseball team. So you sit with, you know, guys from premier league clubs or La Liga clubs and, and you talk, you talk shop, right.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
And it's different sports, but you kind of get a feel for how they do things and what their scouting process is like. Um, And I had just turned 30 and I went to law school at night when I was with the Yankees. I'd passed the bar and a buddy of mine worked at MLS with Tim Bezbachenko right before he had gone to Toronto. And this is my buddy who's a lifelong soccer fan. We'd watch Premier League.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
We saw you guys play in England like every Saturday. And I was just like, Hey, what's going on with this guy in Toronto, right? He signed Michael Bradley. He signed Jermaine Defoe. And he was like, oh, that's my buddy, Bez. He just left the league office. I was like, well, what did he do? He's like, well, he worked on contracts and salary budgets. He has a law background.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
I'm like, well, I work on contracts. I got a law background. I do salary stuff. I was like, you got to you got to get me in there. And he's like, all right, yeah, sure. So he threw my name in and it came back like a quick note from MLS. They're like, you take all the boxes, but but no, because we want somebody who's got soccer playing experience.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
And then I kind of just, you know, said, no worries. And they called me a few months later and brought me in.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
uh and i was i was like look if i don't leave baseball now this is my life and it's sexy and it's funny but i was worried that i'm always going to wonder what if right like if i could work for a team in europe if i could work like a high level uh you know mls team as the sport continues to grow like i never want to be regretting that right and then uh
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
So I was really excited to go work at the league office. And I get to the league office, and it's really cool because you're working with different clubs on different issues all the time, right? So I got Bruce Arena yelling at me and telling me I'm dumb. No surprise. And then I've got Garth Loggerway in Salt Lake trying to pull an okey-doke on me with some technicality on a rule.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
And it was really great and interesting. The one thing that just killed me, though, is that we weren't competing, right? Like Friday, five o'clock comes. you know, we're, we're dipped out on Monday. And after 10 years in baseball, the Yankees, I was, I, I missed that. Right. And I really believe this world breaks out like really cleanly into like, you know, two camps at different times.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
And one of those is like, you're either a league person or a club person. Right. And there's, I was just like, man, I'm a club guy and I need to get back to a club. And that eventually turned into, you know, my, my time at LAFC.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
You know, for me, it's everything, right? Like this is a relationship-based business. And again, you guys know this better than I do because you've been in locker rooms. Sports are unique, right? Because the rest of the world kind of sees it as a one or a zero. If you won, it's great. And if you lost, it's terrible. And there's so much external pressure, right?
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
And so much of what makes a team great or an organization great is that ability to come together and like face that external pressure together. And so, and you guys, again, you know this as well as I do, like that's so much of that is based on trust, right? Like Do I trust you to have my back? Can you trust me to have yours? How do we get there?
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
And I think understanding where people are coming from is key. And I really take a lot of pride in grinding my way up from an intern because it let me see kind of what everybody goes through. Now, if I'm walking through the front office, if it's
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
know people in the um you know the supporter relations department i'm like i know what you guys are going through and i apologize because maybe it's my fault right but um you know you have to be able to connect to people and then and then it's also like sports is a really small pond and so there might be somebody that i worked with 10 years ago
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
who comes back around now and you're like, yeah, I remember what it was like working with you on something totally different 10 years ago. But, you know, it's somebody you consider for this new role, right? And keep in that Rolodex of people you like working with, people that, you know, show up, you know, you made a point like grinding is boring, right?
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
I say it's not hard, it's just hard work, right? And everybody, I think, in this age of social media, you're like, well, I could do that. It's like, yeah, but the reason you're not doing it is because you haven't done it. Right. Like there is just a, a value in, you know, just doing it repetitions. Right.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
Um, but so much of that, like I said, is relationships and connecting with people and making sure that, you know, I set the standard, right? Like if I can't be approachable and if I can't relate to you, like then we're, we're lost. Right. Cause it starts from the top down. Um, You've just got to find a way to make people feel comfortable, know that this is a crazy world.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
It's not real estate, it's not finance. We deal with wild stuff and MLS is even wilder. Making sure that you set that steady, open, encouraging environment is really important.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
No, definitely. And look, let me just say, Jamie Alvarez, our comms director, she told me you guys want to talk to me about the Knicks. So I was like, oh, yeah, Jason Kiddock. Great. Look, MLS, you know, it's a really difficult league because it's got such strict rules that are, I think, really difficult from the outside to understand.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
And having been inside, I understand why they exist, but sometimes that doesn't make it any easier to live with. And I think
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
you know the the toughest thing about mls is that um the rules make it impossible to have deep rosters right i mean think about the teams you guys had you know manu and everton like so many like good players um and on that roster and that means that not just you have a good team but like the quality and training is high every day right when you got 16 dudes fighting for 10 spots every day like
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
you know, that, that constant pressure and competition makes the group better and gives results. And that's not to say that we don't have really good players who try hard, but the reality is if you lose a guy like Ricky Pooch, or if you have DPs like Chicharito and Douglas Costa in 2023, who aren't playing, it's impossible to replace them. Right.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
So we have no way of replacing a guy like Ricky who's, who's kind of irreplaceable to begin with, but you know, there's, there's no mechanism for doing that. And then, you know, with, with a guy like Jovalich, so, you know, we, It's a really crazy thing, but again, I'm going to get maybe into the weeds here, but he was a U22 player. So his budget charge was a fixed number, right?
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
But because he turned 26 this year, his budget charge jumped $500,000. And so even if I gave him $1,000 more, he's still a half a million dollars more expensive, right? On the cap. On the cap, right? So he's sitting there being like, hey, I just scored... 20 goals, whatever, I want a contract raise. And he deserves it. He deserves it, right? I would give it to you if I had it.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
But the reality is to give you a $10,000 raise, that's a $510,000 raise on the salary. And so any offer I make you while trying to keep this team together is going to be... And I told him this. I was like, look, I can't offer you what you worth. I'll give you my best bowl. You're not going to love it, but it's just a math problem, right?
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
we're kind of having this conversation and all of a sudden tigris comes in it's like well good news we'll triple your salary right and and now we just can't compete right there is literally no way for me to triple down salary and then kansas city comes in and it's like well quadruple right and and it's even further away and look and one hand it's a great thing for day on he gets life-changing
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
you know bump and he deserves that but in any other league in the world a club like the galaxy and where we sit relative to spend it's like you just you just resign right you you sign the guys you have and you add on top of that and um it's the depth piece for me it's right so if ricky then gets hurt and you have to sell dan although we'll say christian ramirez has come in and done a really good job and really productive for us um and and a guy like marco royce is dealing with knee issues
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
and you've got schedule congestion early, it's like, you're down your DP, you're down your highest paid TAM player. You can't replace either one. And you had to sell your 20 goal striker. And then you also have to make decisions on guys like, You know, Marky Delgado and Gaston Brugman. And that's the way the league is designed, right?
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
We don't, we want to have sort of parity and want to make sure that nobody gets dominant, but it just becomes crushing in depth. And if you lose the wrong guys, it becomes impossible to catch up. Last year, on the flip side, we were really healthy, right? And we were able to run out Ricky and Joe and Gabe and the whole group a lot. And there's a continuity that comes there.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
And the other piece of it, too, is because the rosters are so tight, if something happens to a guy like Joe Paintsill, then, all right, now we're using Diego Fagundes on the wing, which means we're not using him inside, which means you then have to sort of go further down the depth chart. That's one thing I think is really difficult because we have owners that are willing to invest.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
And I think even with the money we're spending now, and you guys were talking about this the other day, you can have deeper rosters. But, man, it's really punishing if you have the wrong injuries in MLS.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
I think it's, in all these things, it's our ownership, right? And that's a group of now 30 owners. And that's a really, that's a big pool of people. It's the biggest ownership group in any international football league in the world. And they all need to be aligned. It's like a majority or super majority in order to affect something like this. And
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
it's difficult right you have some people who've been in the league for a long time who say we need to keep the structures in place to protect growth you've got you know some of these new ownership groups that have paid you know 150 300 500 million dollars just to get into the league or like hey i just broke this big check let me do it what i want right and you have people in the middle i think the issue becomes you know when you've kind of been around these conversations is what's the right
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
sort of like loosening that doesn't totally create an imbalance. Now, look, you're talking to a GM of a team in Los Angeles. I would just make it unlimited, right? Or really raise that ceiling. Because I think the reality is most GMs would tell you, you'd be better off with a team of like,
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
18 to 20 guys making one and a half million dollars 100 a team of three guys making 20 and 15 guys making you know six and a half between them right it's absolutely this is a weakest link sport it's a depth sport uh you know i think part of it too is you know 32 years ago the issue was that soccer wasn't popular right we needed the world cup here to to kind of grow the game but everybody younger than you know i'm a little bit younger you guys but everybody younger than us like
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
They've grown up with soccer on PlayStation and Xbox. You can watch whatever Premier League game you want. Yeah, like RAI in New York when I was growing up, you could watch a random Italian league game. Yeah, the same. Champions League final on a Wednesday, right? But now you can watch whatever you want. And the issue isn't that people aren't watching soccer.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
It's that people are watching really, really good soccer, right?
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
um that dynamic has flipped and that's a great thing right and you guys get a lot of credit for that but we're now in a different world we're like we don't need to justify ourselves as a league or soccer anymore but we need to find ways to increase the product because i'm a big believer in better teams make for better product make for better league make for better revenue
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
But that's a big shift and an uncomfortable shift for a lot of our owners to come to.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
they just put out these valuations right it's like it's like ac milan inter milan lafc miami galaxy right i mean like we're top 15 i mean that's 30 years ago 25 years ago that would have been unheard of right yeah sure um all right well well you've given us a lot of time i feel like we could sit here for hours yeah so many questions but i don't want to get you fired so we're going to stop now um
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
yeah ricky's ricky's progressing really well right i mean it's he did his acl in late november right and got surgery in december and there's a there's a pretty fixed timeline for what acl luckily you know these days it's there's not like a lot of you know question involved ricky's a little bit of a slighter guy you know he's got a slight build and his game is a little more based on agility and and being shifted deceptive so i think that there's some uh you know just it's going to take him some time to get fully comfortable on it and you guys know like
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
usually you come back a hundred percent before you fully trust it. Right. So, um, you know, Ricky will be in town for the LAFC game next weekend. So we'll get to touch base with him and, you know, he's working on his move back over to LA from Barcelona where he's been doing his initial rehab. So, uh, but he's been, he's been over a couple of times already and we check in with him on a daily basis.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
We've got trainers go out there. So, The most important thing for us is that he comes back fully healthy. If you let Ricky decide, he'd push him back on one leg, right? Never let the player decide.
Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard
LA Galaxy GM Will Kuntz Talks the Financial Side of Soccer
We have a bromance. It's fine. Galaxy legends stick together, you know? Amen.