Inside the Union’s controversial recruitment of top prospect David Vazquez

The Union were not surprised to see the Athletic publicize earlier this year that they’ve been guilty of breaking MLS rules when it comes to tampering with academy prospects. Nor were they surprised to see that as many as nine of the league’s 29 teams have been guilty in recent times, though the Union have been guiltier than others.

But one of the team’s most significant cases wasn’t as simple as recruiting a player from another part of the country. Multiple sources across the American soccer landscape told The Inquirer that the Union had to navigate a fraught and occasionally ill-tempered path to sign Los Angeles-born attacking prospect David Vazquez from LAFC and the Galaxy’s backyards.

Few of the people who spoke for this article object to MLS’s homegrown territory rules as they’re currently written. Teams can protect up to 45 players from their youth academies at any given time, across the under-15, under-17, and under-19 age groups. They can also claim rights to nine players from their local areas who aren’t in their academies.

The issue is what happens when a team has passed on a player, whether directly or by clear inaction, but tries to claim him retroactively. Or when a team disbands its academy setup, as Minnesota United did a few years ago, then goes back to claim players who were in it but moved elsewhere.

It’s such a touchy subject for so many people that almost everyone who spoke for this story requested anonymity. There was fear of retribution from within American soccer, including from MLS headquarters.

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Vazquez grew up in the Total Futbol Academy, a separate entity from the LAFC and Galaxy systems. (Its famous products include teenage U.S. women’s national team phenom Alyssa Thompson, who went from the No. 1 pick in this year’s NWSL draft to the World Cup squad in just over six months.)

The Union made a recruiting pitch to Vazquez when one of their teams played his TFA squad. While that may not have been legal within MLS rules, the team knew the Galaxy hadn’t recruited him, and that Vazquez had visited LAFC’s academy but not committed there.

In fact, as Vazquez’s parents Denise and Manny told The Inquirer earlier this year, their son was on the way to signing for Mexican club Chivas until American Airlines lost a bag carrying David and Manny’s passports on the trip south.

The family really liked the residency aspect of the Union’s academy, and saw David’s potential there. In January of last year, he came east and joined up. The Union registered him as their player three months later. And in those three months, a lot of fur went flying behind the scenes.

From the moment the Union first desired to acquire Vazquez, they wanted to do so via trade to secure his rights from the Los Angeles clubs in an above-board manner. But the Union didn’t ask permission first, and Vazquez enrolled in the team’s academy without either Los Angeles team’s permission.

Because LAFC had previously had Vazquez in its academy, it was the first club the Union would look to negotiate with. But LAFC played hardball, including filing a tampering charge. All things considered, that wasn’t too surprising, even if the Union wanted to negotiate to keep that from happening.

Now came the biggest flashpoint in the story: MLS headquarters didn’t play peacemaker. Instead, multiple sources told The Inquirer, at a point after the clubs’ negotiations were progressing, the league office started an investigation — and kept it going even though it knew a deal was in the works.

The Union were quite upset. At one point in the months of back-and-forths, principal owner Jay Sugarman even called MLS commissioner Don Garber.

LAFC allegedly was not as upset. The club felt Vazquez was “its” player (even though he was at another youth academy), and did not initially agree to a deal with the Union.

In early August of last year, MLS asked all of its teams to submit all outstanding tampering charges to the league office, before new rules on homegrown players started later that month.

Eventually, the Union negotiated compensation deals with both L.A. clubs, and paid a punishment fine to MLS. LAFC received a six-figure sum of cash, which is a lot for an MLS academy prospect. The Galaxy received an unknown sum.

All the deals were finished in April 2022, and once they were done, Vazquez’s registration became official.

The sums the Union paid to the L.A. teams might become public this winter, because there’s a real possibility Vazquez signs a first-team deal with the Union for next season. Traditionally, when an MLS team signs a homegrown player from another team’s territory, the compensation is disclosed in the announcement of that player’s pro contract.

The Union know that if the 17-year-old Vazquez fulfills his potential, they’ll earn back what they paid for him and a whole lot more with a sale abroad. We saw some of that potential at the under-17 World Cup last month, where Vazquez played in all four games of the United States’ run to the round of 16. He scored a free-kick goal in the 3-2 knockout loss to Germany.

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“It has been great to see his development since he has joined [the] Philadelphia Union, and how he has improved his level in every aspect of the game,” said U.S. under-17 coach Gonzalo Segares, who played with Union manager Jim Curtin on the Chicago Fire in the 2000s.

“A player that is very capable of taking defenders one-v-one, has an incredible left foot for service or for shooting, great mentality,” Segares added. “And I think most important for me is that he’s also a great kid, a great professional.”

When Jack McGlynn started drawing MLS scouts’ attention in New York, his parents were also attracted to the Union’s residency setup. Neither New York City FC or the Red Bulls offered that, and daily travel from the McGlynns’ home in Queens to those academies — respectively 30 miles away in Orangeburg, N.Y., and 37 miles away in Whippany, N.J. — was not feasible.

Sources said McGlynn would have gone to Europe instead of either New York team had he not been allowed to join the Union.

Various sources also said the Union were sanctioned for bringing McGlynn in. But the point still stood that he wanted to join the Union, and his family wanted that for him.

This poses a philosophical question that MLS has yet to fully answer: What happens when a player and his family want to join another team instead of the local one?

» READ MORE: Jack McGlynn has hit the heights he and the Union hoped for, and now can rise even higher

Now here’s another one: Should a player who is formally passed over become a free agent, or should local teams be able to claim players retroactively?

Minnesota United has taken a lot of heat over this in recent times. The Loons shut down their academy in June of 2020, then launched a new setup a few months later. But they have tried to claim players who left the club in the interim period, including some who left the Twin Cities altogether. One of them, Bajung Darboe, joined the Union in the summer of 2020, and was highly regarded.

The Union wanted to offer the then-16-year-old a deal for a path to the pros, but Minnesota tried to re-claim his rights. Documents seen by The Inquirer show the team wanted the Union to pay well into the six figures, plus a large piece of a potential future transfer fee abroad.

The negotiations grew difficult, and fell apart. Darboe left for Europe in January instead of signing for either team.

After training stints with multiple clubs abroad, Darboe decided to come back to the United States. With circumstances now different, LAFC was able to sign him and acquire his homegrown rights from Minnesota for just $50,000 and a sell-on clause.

The saga provoked criticism of the Loons on social media, and stronger remarks from sources across the country to The Inquirer. Why, they asked, should Minnesota have been allowed to retain players’ rights after shutting down its academy? It hurt those prospects’ ability to turn pro when and where they wanted to. And if they were to go abroad, that would hurt MLS as a whole.

It can hurt the U.S. national team too, which matters to some MLS teams and plenty of paying customers. McGlynn has been pursued by the Republic of Ireland, even as he seems on track to make next year’s U.S. men’s Olympic team. Had Vazquez gone to Chivas, he would likely have been tracked into the Mexican national team program, because Chivas doesn’t let its players play for any other country.

» READ MORE: 11 big questions facing the Union this offseason following their playoff exit

What’s driving all of this shouting and obstruction behind the scenes?

“It’s absolute jealousy,” one source said, adding that it creates an atmosphere where “you start to get paranoid.”

The response in some quarters is that the Union should pipe down and follow the rules. But there’s a widespread belief that some of those respondents are indeed jealous, especially those who don’t have robust youth academies of their own.

The real answer is known to everyone: scrap the territorial restrictions and let MLS teams recruit wherever they want. Or not recruit, if they don’t want to. The restrictions were implemented when MLS first started emphasizing youth development years ago to encourage teams to make the most of their local talents. Now enough teams have the infrastructure and interest that those training wheels are no longer necessary.

All that’s standing in the way is a group of teams trying to protect its home areas from the effects of a free market. So far, they hold enough votes to keep the current rules in place. When the day comes that they don’t, it will be big news, for the Union and the country as a whole.