A.J. DeLaGarza Reflects on MLS Career and New Beginnings in the Carolinas
He may have won American soccer’s biggest prize in California, but A.J. DeLaGarza’s soccer journey started in Maryland. Born on November 4, 1987, Adolph Joseph DeLaGarza was raised in Bryans Road, MD, by a Mexican-Chamorro father and a Native American mother. Ever since he started kicking a ball at the age of four, soccer was all that he could think about, with DeLaGarza eventually joining the D.C. United’s U-12 side at the Danone Cup in France under coach Dave Sarachan, in addition to winning two USYSA National Championships with Baltimore Casa Mia’s Bays.
After a sensational career at Henry E. Lackey High School that saw him be named all-state twice, all-county four times, and all-conference four times, DeLaGarza made the move to one of the biggest powerhouses in collegiate soccer: the University of Maryland, College Park. It didn’t take long for him to make an impact for the Terrapins, with the teenager being named College Soccer News Second Team All-Freshman after helping Maryland win the National Championship in 2005, starting in the final vs. New Mexico and prevailing 1-0. It was here where he made the transition from an attacking to a defensive player, culminating in a prestigious senior year that saw him make the College Cup All-Tournament Team, Second Team All-ACC selection, and be named his team’s Co-Most Valuable Defensive Player en route to the 2008 National Championship and 2008 ACC Championship.
“I won two national championships with Casa Mia’s when I was 15/16, and we had a lot of guys end up going to Maryland or top D1 schools like Wake Forest and Duke,” stated DeLaGarza in an exclusive R.org interview. “Getting to Maryland, that was the biggest jump in terms of quality that I’d ever seen, and I remember being a freshman and watching these guys pass the ball in one touch, and I was like, ‘Holy cow, like, that looks so clean.’ I had to quickly adjust and get to that level.”
“I remember my first collegiate game, I was in uniform, we’re in Cal State Fullerton, and we’re winning 5-0 already, and it’s late in the game, and I remember Sasho Cirovski came over to me, and he says, ‘I think I want to redshirt you for the year,’ and I didn’t know what that meant at the time. I just knew it meant you’re not gonna play all year. I was like, ‘I don’t want to do that.’ Fast-forward a couple of weeks, and I was starting for the team in the Final Four and the National Championship. I look at that moment and think, ‘What could have happened if I just agreed to what Sasho wanted to do? How would my college career have turned out, but also my professional career?”
Dominating MLS with LA Galaxy
He departed the Old Line State in 2009 after being selected in the second round (19th overall) of the MLS SuperDraft by LA Galaxy. Despite entering the league as an unheralded, undersized fullback, DeLaGarza would emerge as a revelation in Southern California, making 24 appearances and helping the Galaxy reach the MLS Cup Final, where they lost on penalties to Real Salt Lake. Bolstered by DeLaGarza’s defensive intuition and shrewd anticipation in defense, the Galaxy would continue to dominate the league and win the MLS Cup in 2011 and 2012. Fast-forward 14 years, and no team has managed to match their feat of winning back-to-back MLS Cups.
DeLaGarza didn’t just make his mark at the club level but also at the international level, playing two friendlies for the USMNT in January 2012 before switching to Guam and registering 11 caps – including 8 World Cup qualifiers – leading them to their first two World Cup qualifying wins vs. Turkmenistan and India. Whilst he never quite stole the spotlight, DeLaGarza emerged as an ever-present across the Galaxy’s backline.
“He’s been a rock now for years, and he makes plays,” stated Landon Donovan. “He’s always in the right spot; he’s always dependable. You know if something goes wrong, then he’s going to be in the right spot.”
Capable of deputizing at right back, center back, or left back, DeLaGarza flourished into one of the top defenders in Major League Soccer, and he delivered his magnum opus in 2014, a campaign that was marked with tragedy.
One week after welcoming their first child into the world, A.J. and his high school sweetheart, Megan, watched their son, Luca Wyatt DeLaGarza, pass away due to a congenital heart defect. Rather than stifle him, though, this merely served as the fuel to A.J.’s fire. On the pitch, DeLaGarza proved essential alongside fellow ex-Terp Omar Gonzalez as the Galaxy took home another MLS Cup. Off the pitch, he joined the likes of Jimmy Conrad as one of the few players to win the MLS Humanitarian of the Year Award, with MLS awarding him $5,000 to donate to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) and spcaLA. DeLaGarza took an active role in shaping his community, whether that meant visiting patients at CHLA or launching a public soccer field for youth in Los Angeles, or buying tickets for military veterans or taking part in events like the LA Galaxy Foundation’s Annual Golf Tournament and the LA Galaxy 5K & Cozmo Family Run, or raising $25,000 to fund heart care and research.
“Out of my three MLS Cups, the third one was the sweetest for sure. It was 2014, and during that year. Landon Donovan was cut from the World Cup roster. I had been going through personal problems with our son, who ended up passing away that same year, and then just a couple of months after putting him to rest, we won an MLS Cup. I think that was the most special one, obviously, for the year that we had endured as a team, and we came together, and it was a real brotherhood there. I think the game actually saved me from depression, because it was a place where I could go for 90 minutes, or however long training was, and focus on what I was good at, and that was playing soccer.
Whereas in the outside world, I couldn’t control what was going on while my son was in my wife’s belly developing, and when he came out, he passed away a week after he was born, after having open-heart surgery. I remember that week going to one of our home games just to watch and get out of the hospital…soccer was kind of my safe space, where I could actually control what happened rather than worrying and the stress of all the outside factors that were actually going on in my life at that time.”
Building a Legacy Off the Pitch
DeLaGarza would join Cobi Jones, Kevin Hartman, Mauricio Cienfuegos, and Donovan as the only Galaxy players to make over 200 regular-season appearances. All things considered, he scored three goals and tallied six assists in 250 appearances before being traded to the Houston Dynamo in 2017. DeLaGarza helped restore the Dynamo’s defensive solidity and led them to their first playoff berth in three years, but on the final game of the regular season, he tore his ACL and missed the next 11 months. Whilst he denied his former team a playoff spot with a 3-2 win on the final day, he nevertheless missed out on the playoffs for the first time in his career. DeLaGarza reestablished himself as Houston’s starting right back but nevertheless failed to qualify them for the playoffs, departing on the back of five assists in 61 appearances and making the move to expansion side Inter Miami.
He managed just five appearances over the course of the COVID-shortened season before taking his talents to the New England Revolution, where he played 15 times across the course of two seasons. On November 17, 2022, DeLaGarza signed a ceremonial one-day contract with LA Galaxy and retired from playing professional soccer. And although he has played for Des Moines Menace in the 2024 and 2025 U.S. Open Cup, DeLaGarza has spent the past few years raising his three children in the Carolinas and bouncing around from various startup companies like ZALA and Photon Sports, as well as working as a Match Director for MLS.
Right now, though, he’s focused on his latest project: The GoalDen, a “gateway to top-level training in Charlotte’s premier indoor soccer facility, designed for dedicated players, with state-of-the-art technology and expert programming.”
“We moved here in the summer of 2023, and it’s been good. I unfortunately joined a couple of startup companies that had problems, and I had to make adjustments. When that kept happening, it was like, ‘Alright, it’s just time to focus on my own career in business, and that’s when I opened up a training facility here in the Charlotte area. Just last week, we actually broke ground on an outdoor field, so we’re trying to expand it and do some really cool things for the community here. I think just the impact that I’ve been able to have with the kids is the biggest thing. They come there, and they have fun, and they want to be there, and I think that is the best thing I could ask for as a business owner.”