Giovani Dos Santos: Another Impact Signing for Galaxy, MLS

Mexican star Giovani Dos Santos is joining the Los Angeles Galaxy, giving MLS yet another high-profile, big-money designated player signing. Dos Santos will reportedly earn $6 million, which doesn’t quite trump the $8 million NYCFC handed to Andrea Pirlo last week. Now MLS has a handful of high-priced earners making more than most of the rank-and-file of the league combined.

The Los Angeles Times reports the Galaxy paid close to $7 million to Villarreal to acquire dos Santos, who’ll join up with the Galaxy after the Gold Cup. The club confirmed it Wednesday afternoon.

MLS being MLS, it invented some new rules to allow the Galaxy to circumvent the league’s salary cap and add a fourth high-priced player to the fold — Steven Gerrard, Robbie Keane and Omar Gonzalez are the others. The league is calling it “Targeted Allocation Money” and well, as usual with MLS, the explanation is byzantine and not exactly transparent.

That doesn’t matter much, dos Santos will soon be a Galaxy player. With more teams joining the league and more money being spent — NYCFC as the prime example — expect more of these types of moves to happen as the ghost of the old NASL isn’t the specter it once was to the league’s original group of owners and investors 20 years ago. There’s a chance Javier Hernandez, dos Santos’ international teammate, could follow him to MLS with Orlando City targeting the current Manchester United striker.

How good will dos Santos be at the StubHub Center? He certainly maintains a great reputation in the United States due to a series of great performances for Mexico against the USMNT. His floated goal in the 2011 Gold Cup final helped end the Bob Bradley era.

The 26-year-old has knocked around Europe, bouncing from Barcelona to Tottenham to many places in between before finally finding a home a Villarreal in 2013. In this regard MLS is paying a premium on name recognition and the hopes dos Santos marquee value resonates within the Hispanic market — a goal of the league’s since its inception in 1996.

As with most moves by MLS, there are two ways to look at this: on-field value vs. everything else.

Production-wise, MLS teams are getting a little smarter with their Designated Player money. As of Wednesday morning, four of the top five goal-scorers in the 2015 are Designated Players — Sebastian Giovinco, David Villa, Kaka and Chris Wondolowski (Columbus’ Kei Kamara, a non DP, leads MLS with 12 goals). Other DPs such as Bradley Wright-Phillips, Clint Dempsey, Obafemi Martins and Robbie Keane dot the Top 10. So if nothing else, the Galaxy should be fun to watch with Keane and dos Santos, who played briefly together at Tottenham, in the attacking third and whatever Gerrard is able to contribute — namely on set piece delivery.

Signing dos Santos again shows MLS is willing to spend and compete on high-end players with Liga MX, however players filling out the rest of the clubs rosters are still routinely going to earn more in Mexico so long as MLS’ salary cap remains in place.

By himself dos Santos is unlikely to increase MLS television ratings on ESPN and Fox overnight. The Galaxy are scheduled to appear on ESPN twice in August, including dos Santos’ potential debut on Aug. 9 vs. Seattle and MLS executives will certainly hope dos Santos’ arrival helps draw more viewers to UniMas’ scheduled Galaxy/Earthquakes game on Aug. 28.

Dos Santos does give television producers another well-known face to plaster alongside Kaka, Frank Lampard, etc. in promo title cards, but getting soccer fans in America to sit on their couches to watch MLS remains one of the league’s biggest challenges given the myriad of options for the sport now available with the mere press of a button. Optimistically, dos Santos is a full decade younger than both Lampard and Pirlo and seven years younger than Kaka.

The Los Angeles Times story from late Tuesday also adds this perspective to the signing:

"Almost as important for the Galaxy, however, is what Dos Santos will bring the team off the field. Despite playing in a heavily Mexican American community, the Galaxy has never fielded a top-name Mexican star at the height of his career. In addition, Galaxy officials quietly say the 2018 debut of Southern California’s second MLS team, the Los Angeles Football Club, also figured in their thinking. Signing Dos Santos now gives the Galaxy more than two years to build a following in the Latino community before LAFC plays its first game."

So on the micro-level for the Galaxy, without worrying too much about the financial,s this appears to be a smart play. A good indication of where MLS is in terms of overall growth is when a player of dos Santos’ caliber enters the league the first thoughts are about what he’ll do as a soccer player, less so what he’ll do to help sell tickets or television ratings.

Even so, dos Santos may be the rarest type of MLS Designated Player, a player in his prime whose name value and on-field value coincide.

[Photo via Getty]