AJ DeLaGarza Opens Up On Miami Days to FiveReasons

After establishing himself as one of the most iconic soccer players of all time, David Beckham has spent the past decade building Inter Miami from the ground up as the club’s President and Co-Owner. Only two players have had the privilege of working alongside Beckham both as a teammate as well as an employee of his team: Blaise Matuidi, who played with Beckham at Paris Saint-Germain, and A.J. DeLaGarza, who played with him at LA Galaxy.

Born on November 4, 1987, Adolph Joseph DeLaGarza was raised in Bryans Road, MD and quickly established himself as one of the best young talents in the state, eventually earning a move to the University of Maryland, College Park. He led the Terrapins to the National Championship in his freshman and senior year, prompting the LA Galaxy to select him with the 19th overall pick of the 2009 MLS SuperDraft by LA Galaxy. DeLaGarza quickly emerged as a vital cog in defense, leading the Galaxy to three MLS Cups and becoming one of just a handful of players to make 200+ appearances for them. He also made a name for himself at the international level, playing two friendlies for the USMNT in January 2012 before switching to Guam and registering 11 caps – including their first-ever two World Cup qualifying wins vs. Turkmenistan and India.

DeLaGarza departed for Houston Dynamo in 2017, leading them to a first playoff spot in three years, before enjoying a brief sojourn with expansion side Inter Miami during the 2020 season. He spent the final two seasons of his career with New England Revolution before retiring in November 2022: since then, he’s passed his time raising his three children in the Carolinas, bouncing around from various startup companies like ZALA and Photon Sports, working as a Match Director for MLS, and launching The GoalDen, an elite indoor soccer facility in Charlotte. Five Reasons Sports spoke to DeLagarza about a number of topics, including:

You grew up in Charles County…what was it like playing in this region of Maryland, and trying to prove yourself as not just one of the best players in the state, but one of the best players in the country? It does seem like early on, you were recognized as one of the top young players in Maryland. Was that a lot of pressure dealing with that?

Well, just for geography, Charles County is in southern Maryland, so I was actually right outside of Washington D.C., but I did play for a club team that was in Baltimore. The travel and the commute there every week to get to training, I remember going to training right after high school ended, and I would go sit up there and just wait for practice to start because of that commute, and if you waited too long, you were gonna be stuck in traffic and potentially miss practice. I would go there and take a nap in the parking lot if I needed to and all that in high school, but yeah, I would say that I kind of felt some pressure not until I was in high school, when I was one of two freshmen to make varsity. I was a starter, and I was also a forward, and as a freshman in high school, I probably weighed 95 pounds. But here I was, playing against grown men, right?

There were guys who were 3-4 years older than me, which I was not used to. I ended my first year as the leading scorer, making the all-conference team and the all-county team. I won’t say I had a target on my back, but everyone knew who I was at that point, if they hadn’t already. I would say that freshman year in high school was really where my name really started to get out there. and then I had expectations to follow that, and unfortunately, my sophomore year did not go as well as my freshman year. Our team went 0-16, we didn’t win a single game, and I still had to show up every day and try to be a leader. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out, but I think that going through that tough year helped me be a better teammate and a better communicator.

It was a challenge that most kids nowadays are like, ‘I don’t want to do that,’ whereas that helped me and made me stronger. I remember crying on the field in our playoff game. We all make the playoffs, so we actually lost 10-0 in the playoffs, and it was on Halloween night, and a few of our starters decided to go trick-or-treating instead of coming to our playoff game. Unfortunately, that was the commitment level of some of my teammates, whereas I was out there doing whatever I could, and at the end of the day, I was still all-county, and still all-conference, and all that. I try to put my best foot forward, even under very difficult circumstances.

Talk to me about your move to Inter Miami; did your previous relationship with David Beckham play a role in your transfer, or not really?

I mean, I’m sure it did. Obviously, he knew who I was and my character and all that, so I’m sure he had a little bit of an influence on certain moves. It’s cool to be one of two players that he played with, and then employed as an owner alongside Matuidi…pretty cool experiences.

Overall, what did you make of your time in Miami? Obviously, they were just starting off at that point, what was it like playing with an expansion side?

 Yeah, that’s one of the biggest what-ifs. Obviously, we all wish COVID didn’t happen, but I wish the experience was a little bit different in year one, especially with that team. But also, I remember being in preseason, and I was actually doing finishing drills with the strikers, and the defenders were doing defending drills, and I was like, ‘Hold up, does this coach know who I am? He’s got me on the wrong side of the field, like, what am I doing up here? It was hard because we were not good; we were not playing well. I had asked manager Diego Alonso midway through the year, ‘What do I need to do to get on the field?

And he told me, ‘You do everything great, but I like my center backs to be taller and faster. And I was like, ‘You really don’t know who I am, right? It’s not all about being tall and fast. You have to be able to read the game and control moments, and give the balls to the proper people to make things happen, right? That’s what I felt like I was good at, and unfortunately, I wasn’t given that opportunity until really late into the season, and we started doing well, we were the last team to make the playoffs, and then the COVID bug hit us again. We were missing too many folks in the playoffs, and we got bounced by Nashville. I was a free agent again, and left to go to New England, so that’s one of the biggest what-ifs, because I really enjoyed my time in Miami and where we lived, and the culture, and all that.

Do you feel like that’s the biggest regret of your soccer career?

Yeah, I would’ve liked to have stayed there a little bit longer to see that club evolve, obviously, to what they are today. It would have been great to be a little bit more stable, right? Like, I had to move two cities in one year, so that was hard on my family, and I had young kids at the time as well.