OLIVIER GIROUD TO LAFC! - Inside details - Projected XI - LAFC favorites

What's going on, everybody? Welcome back. We've got some breaking news to come at you with this morning. As I reported late last night, Olivier Giroud is finalizing an agreement to sign with LAFC of MLS. Yes, he will join this summer after the Euros at some point. It would be a huge, huge deal for LAFC. It'd be an awesome fit, I think. I've been saying for years, I really hope that Olivier Giroud comes MLS. We're gonna break it all down. We're gonna talk about how Giroud would fit within this LAFC team, where he would kind of stand among the forwards in this league, what the kind of expectations would be. Again, details, analysis, whatever. All I gotta say is I'm sorry for not doing this at 11 p.m. last night. That's on me. That's just me being soft. You got to be better than that, right? But here we are, here this morning. Let's get into it. Olivier Giroud, LAFC. Alright, let's just start with the details straight up. LAFC is finalizing a deal to sign Olivier Giroud. His contract with AC Milan expires this summer. They've been in talks for months. Giroud's most likely destination has been MLS, and LAFC has been pushing for her for a while. This deal is through December 2025, so 18 months. I'm pretty sure that there's going to be an option to extend in this deal. If there's not a hard and fast option for both parties to extend for a year, it's something that they're talking about, at least. So again, we'll see when the announcement comes. But the initial deal is 18 months, and it could be extended for a year. Again, whether that's a formal clause in the contract or not remains to be seen. It's a DP deal. I know that, you know, it's not even something I feel like I would have had to specify or even ask about. If not for LAFC swinging non-DP deals for Gareth Bale, Hugo Lloris, and Giorgio Chiellini. And then you look in Miami, and Luis Suarez and Jordi Alba aren't on DP deals. So I'm told this is indeed a DP deal. Olivier Giroud had some very hefty offers in the Middle East and elsewhere. LAFC won the race to bring him in. The deal will start at some point after the Euros. He's firmly expected to be in that European Championship squad for France. He's a current France international. He's our all-time leading scorer. He was just with them in the March international window. He played in a friendly against Germany. So again, the Euros, the final for the Euros is July 14th. So, I don't know exactly when he'll come over. I guess it depends on how long France are in the tournament. And if he wants any sort of break, because he would have started last summer. And going through from last summer to this winter, like, it's normal for European players coming here to have a little bit of time off. It's just, again, it depends on if that will happen or not. It doesn't really matter a thousand percent in that the MLS summer transfer window doesn't open until July 18th. So even if he plays in the final, if he wants to come over right away, he'll be available to debut on July 20th when LAFC play Seattle. That's their last MLS game before the League's Cup break. They play the League's Cup on July 26th against Atlas. That'll be their first home game that Olivier Giroud would potentially be available for, again, if the agreement is for him to come immediately after the Euros or whether he's going to take time off. We'll see. That would leave him only available, potentially, for 10 MLS games. I think that's enough time for him to do damage. That's enough time, like, this team is going to be very good throughout the first half of this season. It's not like a Miami situation last year where Messi and Busquets and Alba joined when they were bottom of the League. This LAFC team is going to be towards the top of the West. This is about strengthening the team down the stretch. And again, there was no possibility to bring in Olivier Giroud before the summer because his contract with AC Milan goes until the summer. There's no reason why they would want to let Giroud go, and there's no real reason, I think, why Giroud would want to leave at this point with AC Milan. Again, continuing to push for Champions League for next year, and they're still in the Europa League, I believe. Lloris pushed for this. Lloris and Giroud are good friends. It's going to be really cool for them to be reunited here in LAFC. Again, like I said, he had options in the Middle East. He had some talks with AC Milan, but he's choosing to come to LAFC. And on a small note, my man has played in Milan, London, and now Los Angeles. Smart guy. Smart guy. Well, it's going to be a little bit different because it seems like Steve Trundle has been kind of allergic to playing a natural center forward at center forward. It took him a little while to consistently trust Chicho Arango if you go back to that 2022 season. He kept saying things like, you know, I need more work defensively as Chicho was scoring a goal game. Last year, the primary central forward was a false nine in Carlos Vela. This year, the primary center forward over the first five games has been, you know, number 10 or kind of winger. Kind of could be a box-to-box player. Mateusz Bogus, that's who's been playing at center forward. So, you can't really play Giroud anywhere else. Maybe goalkeeper, but I think Hugo Luis has that covered. So, Trundle will have no choice but to play with a natural center forward. And I think that that's going to give this team just another dynamic, another dimension, and it's going to improve them across all qualities of play. I think first and foremost, he's going to score a ton of goals in this league. I think that LEFC will create plenty of chances. His game is aging like Zlatan Ibrahimovic when he came to MLS and was scoring a goal game. More so than my favorite player of all time, Steven Gerrard or, you know, Andrea Pirlo. Or insert some of these big name European players that came to MLS at the end of their career and they were clearly washed. Like, Giroud's game is aging extremely gracefully. He's going to be really, really good for LEFC. Giroud, he's a total footballer. Like, his physical presence is going to be a very useful option. It's going to give them a dynamic that they haven't had ever. I mean, maybe Adama Diamande and Christian Ramirez comes to mind, but they never have had this kind of direct hold-up kind of play. Again, this isn't a takeaway from what Chicho Arango could do at center forward and what he brought to the game on the physical side of things. But, Giroud is going to be, like, his hold-up play, his physical ability, his aerial ability, they can go long. When they go long, now they have a player to play off of. They have somebody that can flick on for Danny Buonga and Kiki Oliveira. I think that this makes a lot of sense because he can do the false 9 stuff that Trundle clearly values. Like, he's so good in his hold-up play, his link-up play. Like, what he doesn't have is pace, but neither did Carlos Vela necessarily. Like, I mean, he could turn it on once in a while, but it's not like he's going to cover less ground than Carlos Vela, right? Like, Mateusz Bogus is obviously different because he's younger and he's got more of a work rate and more pace at this stage of his career. But again, Giroud can do a lot of the false 9 things in terms of technical ability, hold-up play, link-up play, while also giving you that physical edge. And, by the way, France's all-time leading scorer. Somebody who has 12 goals and 8 assists in about 1900 minutes with AC Milan and Serie A players this year. I think they currently sit second. This player is going to be elite in MLS, and I think he fits so very well with this team. If you add me, like, again, taking away any realism, right? Like, again, in reality, right? Like, Giroud's going to come to Los Angeles. I mean, come on, right? Like, you know, maybe Miami in a different circumstance if they needed him, or maybe New York in a different circumstance. But, like, in reality, this was an obvious landing spot. Taking that all away, I think that he fits within this team extraordinarily well. I think that, like, Nashville, when they were looking for Sam Surge, like, maybe that would have worked. But, like, I think his skill set is perfect for this LFC team. So, it's really a perfect marriage for me. The gravity that he's going to pull for Danny Buonga to give Danny Buonga more space, and vice versa, the gravity that Danny Buonga pulls for defenses having to worry about his pace, his technical ability, his excellence, all that, that's going to give Giroud more space. I think that the two of them are going to work extremely well as a team. I am a little bit worried about Nathan Ordaz and Tomas Angel. Those are two talented young players. I think Ordaz can play on the wing, and I'm sure he will. I'm not familiar enough if Tomas Angel is able to play on the wing, but I'm sure Truandolo and the staff will work on it. Truandolo and the staff have been very creative in terms of rotation and managing minutes to get more players minutes in this team. So, I think that they've earned the benefit of the doubt that, like, Tomas Angel, David Martinez, Nathan Ordaz, that these are all players that are still going to get minutes, even with Olivier Giroud leading the lines and taking up, again, he's going to start in every big game, he's going to play every minute that's reasonable for a player of his age to play. And that's a good thing, but I don't think that they're going to completely disregard some of those younger attacking pieces. I feel the need to say something and kind of pat myself on the back just a little bit. Please humor me, because usually when I say something, it can very quickly look extraordinarily dumb. See Orlando City's supporter shield? Yeah, they started the season off horrifically, that take looked awful immediately. So, I want to say, last week I had LAFC pretty high on my power rankings. And I got a little bit of stick for it about, hey, like, you know, how's that, whatever, blah, blah, blah. It's fair. But my rationale was, I think this team is going to be fine, regardless right now. And also, I think that they're going to sign Giroud or somebody else this summer, and they're going to be awesome. And since I had that take, they thrashed Nashville 5-0. Danny Buonga scored twice. And now I broke the news that Olivier Giroud is finalizing a deal with LAFC. Look, that take looks pretty good a couple days later. I'm just saying, I'm just saying, I'm just saying. Last one here, you know, what this does to LAFC in terms of their top-end talent, I think that this pretty clearly puts them in that elite tier of the best starting XI in MLS, when Giroud comes. For me, that tier is Miami, Columbus, Cincy, Atlanta, LAFC. Whatever order you want, I'm good with it. There's no real holes in any of those teams. All of those teams have super high-impact, high-end talent. Again, like Messi, Cucho, Lucho, Almada, and now Giroud and Buonga. Like, all of them have multiple options in attack. Again, you could quibble probably with Atlanta goalkeeper or Miami right-back or whatever you want to say. But like, there are no real holes in any of these teams. And look, like, I think that LAFC are deep enough that they're going to be fine in the regular season and be pushing towards the top of the West. But come playoff time, they're going to have Giroud, Buonga, Edward at West, Elias Sanchez. You kind of go on down the line, Kiki Olvera. Like, this team is going to be, for me right now, they're the favorite in the West. Individually, for me, this puts Giroud in the conversation of the elite center forwards in the league. Like, I think he's in that bracket with Cucho and Bentake and Iakoumakis and Arango and Suarez and whoever else. Like, I think that he's in that top tier. I think it'd be unfair to try to rank them without Giroud coming in. And I don't want to be disrespectful to all the excellence that all those players have displayed already in MLS. But for me, like, I think Giroud's going to come and he's going to be right in that top tier. And LAFC haven't had this. Like, they've had, again, they have the reigning Golden Boot winner. They've had the best individual season ever with Carlos Vela. They've had the Cucho-Arango season. But like, this is a different type of player, a different type of profile, resume, everything else. Like, I'm extremely excited for this move. Not just because he's going to be the most handsome player in the league. Guys, I made it 10 minutes without making that joke. I'm only human, man. I'm only human. Shout out to the Happy Foot, Sad Foot podcast. Those guys will give you better jokes about his handsomeness than I can say. But I couldn't resist myself. But yeah, so I'm extremely excited about Giroud coming to MLS. I've been saying for years, honestly, like, he's somebody I really hope comes to the league. Because I think that his skill set, his age profile, everything is going to be very, very conducive to this league. I think he's going to be a star. Last year, I was joking with the GM of another team saying, I was like, dude, can you just do me a favor and like, please sign Olivier Giroud? I was just like messing around. I was like, ah, he's one of my favorite players. He's going to be great. Like, all this. And he's like, dude, you know how old he is? Like, it was kind of being dismissed. I mean, we were just kind of joking around back and forth. But it's fun to see that he's on the verge of coming to MLS now. And we'll get to see, if I'm proven right or wrong, that I think that he's going to be well worth a DP spot. And I think he's going to be an excellent player in this league, but we'll see. All right, everybody. That'll do it today. Go read The Athletic as I'm wearing a sweatshirt. Me and Paul Tenorio did our anonymous GM survey. There are plenty of good quotes. Part 1 came out Wednesday. Part 2 is coming out Thursday. Let me just tell you guys, it is well worth it. Even if you just want to skip to the graphs, to the quotes. Like, these guys were unfiltered. I appreciated their honesty, their candor, their trust. Everything they gave. They talk about the sport the way that we do. The way that you and I on Twitter yelled each other about, right? The way that we do this on videos. Like, they're all fans here. They all love talking about this game. They all have their own opinions and takes that they can't necessarily put their name on because of their positions in the league. So, again, please read that. Open Cup, everything else. Me and Paul did a lot of work. Our editors did a ton of work. I think it came out really well, but I'm biased, obviously. So, please read that. We got a lot of other great content for you on The Athletic. Please always read it. That's the implicit reminder of all these videos. Go support us at The Athletic. Again, I promise you, you'll enjoy it if you don't subscribe. If you do, thank you for subscribing. Thank you for reading. Until next time.