LAFC is trying to find the winning blend of youth and aging stars

Seven seasons after its MLS debut, LAFC is beginning to show its age.

A team built around young, dynamic South Americans, including Brian Rodríguez, Diego Rossi, Diego Palacios, Francisco Ginella and José Cifuentes, had the youngest starting lineup in the league in 2020. It was a relatively new approach to roster building in a league that had long been mocked as a retirement home for big-name European stars.

And it was wildly successful, with LAFC winning two Supporters’ Shields and reaching two MLS Cup finals and two CONCACAF Champions League finals in six years.

Those five South Americans are all gone, sold for nearly $13 million in transfer fees, and this year’s LAFC roster is the 26th-oldest in the 29-team league. It will grow even older in July when Olivier Giroud, a World Cup champion with France, joins the team on a designated player contract 10 weeks shy of his 38th birthday.

Yet for general manager John Thorrington, the maturing of the team isn’t so much a change of strategy as it is a seizing of opportunities.

“[It’s] adapting to the current climate,” said Thorrington, who certainly knows what he’s doing since he’s the most successful general manager in MLS since 2018.

Read more: Olivier Giroud will join LAFC after 2 more matches with AC Milan

Changes in MLS budget rules, such as the U-22 initiative, and increases in targeted allocation money have given Thorrington the freedom to spend in different ways. So when Giorgio Chiellini, the 38-year-old captain of the Italian national team, and Gareth Bale, the 32-year-old Welsh captain, became available midway through the 2022 season, LAFC signed both.

Five months later it won an MLS Cup.

Both players have since retired, replaced on this season’s roster by Hugo Lloris, 37, the former captain of the French national team whose 20 World Cup appearances are the most ever by a goalkeeper. Lloris signed for $350,000, less than what 25 MLS keepers will earn this season, a bargain Thorrington said he couldn’t pass up.

Unlike Lloris, Giroud isn’t coming cheap, receiving a designated-player contract that runs through 2025, with an option for 2026. He was reportedly paid $4.76 million in his final season in Milan. Yet unlike Lloris, who didn’t play in his final seven months at Tottenham, Giroud is at the top of his game, with his 14 goals for AC Milan tied for fourth in Italy’s Serie A with a game to play.

“It's not as though we have abandoned this idea that we are going to invest in young talent that will help us win here and then sell them. That's a part of what we've always done,” said Thorrington, whose team is 6-4-3, good for fifth in the MLS Western Conference standings heading into Tuesday’s U.S. Open Cup round-of-16 match against Loudoun United. “Are you a player-development club or are you going for championships? We don't see those as mutually exclusive concepts. We are both.”

LAFC’s roster is indeed a mix of young and old. Eight players are under the age of 23, among them teenager David Martínez, the sixth-youngest player to appear in an MLS game this season. Giroud’s arrival after this summer’s European Championship, will give LAFC eight players over 31, among them 39-year-old striker Kei Kamara, the league’s oldest player.

Thorrington is especially high on Martínez, a Venezuelan forward three months past his 18th birthday, while 22-year-old forwards Mateusz Bogusz and Cristian Olivera are tied for second on the team in scoring with four goals each.

As for established players such as Chiellini, Bale, Lloris and Giroud choosing to end their careers with LAFC, Thorrington said that’s a product of the young team’s success, something the team had to build before it could be exploited.

Read more: Denis Bouanga scores twice to lead LAFC past St. Louis

“At the beginning we were a concept,” he said. “Now that people see and feel what LAFC is, those opportunities from top players in Europe with interest in coming here have certainly increased. For us, signing players at economic terms that make sense for us to help us achieve our objectives of winning and also help our young players develop by showing them the right example and what it means to be a pro, that still fits well within our strategic aims as a club.”

When that door opens, more than one player can walk through. Consider that the Arizona-based Elite Athletes Agency, whose founder Jerome Meary was in the social media photo that announced Giroud’s signing last week, also has ties to several European-born players, among them Lloris, Denis Bouanga, Stipe Biuk, Filip Krastev and Maxime Chanot, all of whom have played for LAFC.

Four of those players — Giroud, Bouanga, Lloris and Chanot — were born in France. Lloris, the French national team leader in caps, and Giroud, the team’s all-time leader in goals, played together in the last two World Cup finals, winning the title in 2018. Certainly they all spoke to one another before they wound up together in L.A.

That has fueled rumors another Frenchman, Antoine Griezmann, could be in LAFC’s future. Griezmann, 33, is under contract with Atlético Madrid through 2026 but has long expressed a desire to finish his career in MLS.

Part of that desire was to reunite with former Real Sociedad teammate Carlos Vela, who hasn’t played anywhere since his contract with LAFC expired in December. And that raises a question: If LAFC has money and a roster spot to wager on a soon-to-be-38 Giroud, who is a great player but an unknown quality in MLS, why doesn’t it have the same for Vela, 35, a former league MVP, the single-season scoring leader and the team’s captain through its first six seasons?

Thorrington said he has had discussions with Vela’s agent, but the talks have so far been fruitless.

“It's been a bit of a frustrating process trying to find a match between what we could afford to do and what we felt like we needed as a club on the field,” he said. “We, unfortunately, have not been able to find that balance with Carlos.”

When it comes to mixing young players with old, however, LAFC has gotten that balance just right.

⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.