It's a story about how Gabriel Pec And the galaxy recovered its grooves.
For Pec, the GalaxyThe 23 -year -old spectacular winger, the change began last February when he left the Brazilian club Vasco da Gama, the only team he has ever known.
“In Vasco, there was a lot of pressure,” he said through a translator. “We had to approach all the time. My passion is to dribble the ball, to pass the ball, to help, goals. ”
For the galaxy, the change has also come When Pec left Brazil for Carson. In the past seven seasons, the team had done very little tackle, dribbling, passing Or Standing, losing more matches than they won and gets ahead of 53 goals. With PEC, they won 19 games for the first time in 13 years, equaled the record for the modern era franchise for goals and came to an equal break in their first regular season conference title since 2011.
And that leaves the Galaxy which needs a victory on Sunday on Minnesota United to reach the semi-finals of the MLS Cup for the first time since the second Obama administration. It was an amazing turnover, a nor Javier “Chicharito” Hernández neither Zlatan Ibrahimovic managed to accomplish in their stay in Carson.
But if the arrival of PEC managed to succeed in the galaxy, for the player who escapes from Vasco's strict style, it brought something more important. It rekindled a joy for football that he had not felt since he was a young boy playing in the dusty streets outside Rio de Janeiro, and this joy borne fruit with 16 goals and 14 assists. Only three players in the history of the franchise – Cobi Jones, Robbie Keane And Ibrahimovic – had more contributions to the objectives of the regular season and PEC did it during his first year, winning the newcomer's newcomer prize.
“Due to the pressure, the way we played is a little different,” he said about his Brazilian club. “So, coming to the galaxy, that's what I am. I have so much joy. I'm so excited to play every game. I really have fun.
“Here, I have the freedom to play football.”
The Galaxy coach Greg Vanney said the difference is noticeable. And infectious.
“I saw the evolution on the ground,” he said. “When he arrived, there was a lot of stress. You could say that he came from a club (where) winning and losing and producing were heavy.
“I saw a player who had unique talents, then inside this really, really great talent who has to go out.”
This does not mean that there was no assembly. Although PEC is a fast, powerful, qualified and wise attacker, when he arrived in MLS, he was a left -wing winger “heels on the touch,” said Vanney, the one waiting for the ball to come. It left him isolated, wasting his playing capacities.
The Galaxy Gabriel Pec striker controls the ball during an eliminatory match against Colorado on November 1.
(David Zalubowski / Associated Press)
“When we watched the video of him, the interesting thing was when he scored goals, he was constantly found inside the box,” said Vanney. “So the question was” how can we put this guy inside the box more often? “
“What was great with him is that he just had a lot of open -mindedness to develop different parts of his game.”
Because PEC has never lived outside Rio de Janeiro, his English remains a work in progress and the adjustment of southern California has taken time. Juninho, another Brazilian who won three MLS cups with the galaxy and is now a member of Vanney staff, helped to help Pec overcome the two obstacles.
“Juni was right next to us on the field every time I speak to him,” said Vanney. “Juni really helped him settle down, to feel like he is not lacking in things and helped him really understand and understand the concepts.”
The Brazilian also benefited from the altruism of his teammate Joseph Paintsil. Pec started the season on the left wing and only scored three goals and two assists in 12 games before Paintsil puts on the sidelines for a month with an injury to the hamstrings, allowing Vanney to move Pect on the ground. He responded with two goals and four assists in five games and on his return Paintsil, he agreed to play on the left. Since then, PEC has failed to score or help on a goal only four times in the last 21 games in all competitions.
“He's so competitive. I think it's the greatest thing I didn't know. As he is competitive.”
– Will Kuntz, Managing Director of Galaxy, on Gabriel Pec
“He sacrifices a little,” said Vanney about Paintsil, who signed with the Galaxy in February, three weeks after the PEC. New Managing Director Will Kuntz Completely redid the alignment of the team in the past 15 months, but PEC, which cost the club for record transfer fees of $ 10 million, was only a half -dozen players that Kuntz continued last winter – and his name was not necessarily at the top of this list.
“We definitely had several names,” said Kuntz. “What I wanted to avoid is some of the traps in which I think the galaxy fell in the past where you become too obsessed with a single player and chasing them until the end of the earth. It was really important to have options.”
Eleven months later, Kuntz is sure that the money he devoted to the PEC – which includes a guaranteed annual salary of $ 2.5 million in the 2028 season – will be well spent.
“We knew it was good. We knew that he had scored goals,” said Kuntz about Pec, who had a goal or aid in each of the last seven games of the Galaxy, including the playoffs. “But I don't think we thought that this chronology was going to be how it presented itself. He is so competitive. I think it is the greatest thing I did not know. How competitive.”
The question of whether the galaxy will have to pay PEC until the end of this contract seems unlikely. Given his age and huge ceiling, if PEC continues to produce as he did this year, he will probably play in Europe by 2028. The fact that he first stopped in MLS, he believes that this decision will only succeed once this will happen.
Not that all of this is his choice. Pec's faith is as deep as its talent, which is why it attributes its success to higher power. God, he believes, guides his career.
“If maybe I went to the Premier League, that wouldn't have been the best in cases,” said Pec by translator Camila Kawashita. “Coming to MLS, it was the plan that God had for me. Money, glory, nothing is more important than God.
“That said,” he adds, “I don't even think about it. All that matters to me is to focus on the galaxy.”
Which is great for the galaxy, because for them, it was really a boon.
⚽ You have read the last episode of soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and highlights unique stories. Listen to Baxter in the episode of this week of “Podcast Corner of the Galaxy.
