Will Kuntz knew something few others did when the MLS Cup final kicked off in December: The Galaxy team Kuntz had so carefully rebuilt, the one that would win the league title that day, would begin to be dismantled shortly after the game.

“We knew well in advance that change was coming,” said Kuntz, the Galaxy’s second-year general manager. “It’s math, not art in that respect. And the math was undeniable.”

The math said the player bonuses that came from reaching the MLS Cup final would make it impossible for Kuntz to keep his roster below the salary cap of $5.95 million. The math said the league’s complicated contract rules were about to make the Galaxy take another $1-million hit against that cap when Gabriel Pec and Dejan Joveljic grew out of their age-specific contracts.

As a result, the Galaxy will open their title defense Sunday against San Diego FC missing five key players from their championship team, including Gastón Brugman, the MLS Cup most valuable player and Joveljic, their leading scorer.

And the Galaxy aren’t the only team that has found success can bring punishment as well as reward. LAFC, which begins its eighth season Saturday against Minnesota United, has just three players remaining from its MLS Cup-winning team in 2022. Over the last three months it had to part with 15 players, including Carlos Vela, the franchise leader in goals, assists and appearances; Mateusz Bogusz, it’s second-leading scorer last year; and Eduard Atuesta, Ilie Sánchez and Jesús Murillo, who all rank in the top eight in games played for LAFC.

“It’s a challenge,” John Thorrington, LAFC’s co-president and general manager, said of the constant roster churn. “That does not come as a surprise to us because we understand the rules, we know the parameters and our model is such that we go for it every year.

“And there are consequences to that.”

Christina LaBrie, the MLS senior vice president for player relations, says the rules are fair because they’re the same for all 30 teams. Salaries for the first 20 players on the roster must fit under a $5.95-million cap, with the salaries for up to three designated players and up to three U22 initiative players counting only partially against that cap. Each team also receives a minimum of $2.93 million in allocation money to buy down the cap hits of other players.

Those rules are meant to induce parity by controlling salaries, preventing deep-pocketed owners from spending the rest of the league into bankruptcy. But it has made things difficult for ambitious clubs such as LAFC, the winningest team in MLS since it entered the league in 2018, because of the pressure that success puts on the salary cap through bonuses and other expenses that land more heavily on winning teams.

Mateusz Bogusz, LAFC’s second-leading scorer last season, will not be back with the team this season.

(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)

“In some cases the issue is not the roster rules but the CBA negotiated with the players,” said Steven A. Bank, the Paul Hastings professor of business law at UCLA and a close observer of soccer finances. “There are bonuses that go up each year and there are team bonus pools. The players could have held out for higher and more stable salaries and less bonus-based pay but they agreed to an approach that puts pressure on salary budgets.

“Stability hasn’t really been a goal of the players for a while.”

And some of those players have suffered as a result. Galaxy captain Maya Yoshida, who led the league in minutes played last season, had to take a pay cut to re-sign last month.

“Unfortunately this is where MLS is,” Yoshida said. “Everybody knows that shouldn’t be happening.”

Joveljic, who signed a three-year designated-played contract with Sporting Kansas City after being traded by the Galaxy this month, was similarly surprised.

“I thought I was going to stay in L.A. longer,” he told journalist Tom Bogart. “You know about MLS rules — hopefully one day it’ll change and this league will grow up. I think it’ll happen, but I don’t know when.”

Until it does, successful teams will be forced to make difficult decisions each winter.

“When we won the title in 2016 in Seattle, we literally had to tender options on contracts the next morning,” said Atlanta United president and chief executive Garth Lagerwey, who won two MLS Cups as general manager of the Sounders. “The game ended at 11 p.m. and at 9 a.m. the next morning we cut players off that championship-winning team. That is as ruthless as it comes.”

But Lagerwey said teams can see the budget crisis coming and sometimes push all their chips into the middle of the table anyway if they have a chance to win.

“We’re always in these cycles,” he said. “We all plan two or three years out and a lot of times your resources are maximized when you win or when you’re competitive. That’s how it’s supposed to work, right?

“You build the team methodically over a couple of years and then you spend all your money on that year, when you’re trying to win.”

The Galaxy, who hadn’t won an MLS Cup in a decade, did that last season when they acquired midfielder Marco Reus from Borussia Dortmund in August, signing him to multiyear contract worth $1.216 million in guaranteed compensation each season. And while Kuntz was rewarded with a championship, the money he spent on Reus was money he didn’t have to spend on Yoshida and Joveljic.

“That’s just the reality,” said Kuntz, whose rebuild has been so extensive that on Sunday the Galaxy won’t start a player who was with the team when Kuntz was hired 22 months ago. “We knew when we were putting this team together a year ago that it would be virtually impossible to retain everybody.

“Winning is expensive.”

So Kuntz traded Brugman, Joveljic, midfielder Mark Delgado and homegrown defender Jalen Neal, did not re-sign defender Martín Cáceres and cut Yoshida’s pay. Those six made more than $4.63 million combined last season.

In their places the Galaxy traded for forward Christian Ramírez and agreed to spend more than $5.5 million on transfer fees for defender Mathias Jorgensen, midfielder Elijah Wynder and U22 signings Lucas Sanabria and Matheus Nascimento, whose contracts are cap-friendly. That still left the team so tight against the salary budget it had to buy out its share of the $1.024 million owed to midfielder Sean Davis.

Kuntz could face another roster remake again next winter.

The high price of winning has been especially steep for LAFC, the only MLS team to win three trophies in the last four seasons. Still, Thorrington insists on pushing all his chips into the center of the table every summer, only to tear things up again every winter.

In 2022 he added Giorgio Chiellini, Gareth Bale, Denis Bouanga and Cristian Tello at midseason and won a Supporters’ Shield and MLS Cup that fall. By the time the next season started, only two of the four were left — and eight others had departed as well. In fact, there have been so many players coming and going at LAFC, the team has averaged more than 27 transactions a season over the last four years.

“Every year you get more experience with it,” Thorrington said. “The constraints and the budget and things, they’re not the same each year. Almost as a requirement, you have to make a sale each year to keep any form of continuity. That’s been something we’ve embraced at LAFC.”

This winter, for example, with no room in the budget for raises or new contracts, Thorrington did not try to re-sign Murillo, Sánchez or forward Kei Kamara, saving nearly $2 million. He also lost midfielders Atuesta and Lewis O’Brien — saving another $2.5 million — when their loans ran out and then he sold Bogusz, defender Omar Campos and winger Cristian Olivera for transfer fees reportedly worth more than $17 million.

That leaves LAFC without three of last year’s four leaders in goals and assists and six of the top 12 outfield players in terms of minutes played. The replacements include defender Artem Smolyakov and midfielder Igor Jesus, whose U22 initiative contracts both carry just $200,000 hits against the cap.

“Of course I would love to keep all of our good players,” Thorrington said. “But that’s just not our reality.”

LAFC 2025 MLS schedule

February: 22 — vs. Minnesota, 1:30 p.m.
March: 1 — vs. New York City, 7:30 p.m.; 8 — at Seattle, 1:30 p.m.; 15 — vs. Austin, 12:30 p.m.; 22 — at Kansas City, 5:30 p.m.; 29 — at San Diego, 7:30 p.m.
April: 5 — at Houston, 5:30 p.m.; 12 — vs. San José, 7:30 p.m.; 19 — at Portland, 7 p.m.; 27 — vs. St. Louis, 4 p.m.
May: 3 — vs. Houston, 7:30 p.m.; 11 — at Vancouver, 4 p.m.; 14 — vs. Seattle, 7:30 p.m.; 18 — at Galaxy, 6 p.m.; 24 — at Montreal, 4:30 p.m.; 28 — vs. Kansas City, 7:30 p.m.; 31 — vs. Colorado, 7:30 p.m.
June: 13 — vs. Toronto, 7:30 p.m.; 25 — at Salt Lake, 6:30 p.m.; 28 — vs. Vancouver, 7:30 p.m.
July: 5 — at Austin, 5:30 p.m.; 12 — vs. Dallas, 7:30 p.m.; 16 — at Minnesota, 5:30 p.m.; 19 — vs. Galaxy, 7:30 p.m.; 25 — vs. Portland, 7:30 p.m.
August: 9 — at Chicago, 5:30 p.m.; 16 — at New England, 4:30 p.m.; 23 — at Dallas, 5:30 p.m.; 31 — vs. San Diego, TBA
September: 13 — vs. San José at Levi’s Stadium, 4:30 p.m.; 21 — vs. Salt Lake, 6 p.m.; 27 — at St. Louis, 5:30 p.m.
October: 5 — vs. Atlanta, 7:30 p.m.; 18 — at Colorado, 6 p.m.

Galaxy 2025 MLS schedule

February: 23 — vs. San Diego, 4 p.m.
March: 2 — at Vancouver, 2 p.m.; 9 — vs. St. Louis, 4 p.m.; 16 — at Portland, 1:30 p.m.; 22 — vs. Minnesota, 1:30 p.m.; 29 — vs. Orlando, 7:30 p.m.
April: 5 — at Salt Lake, 1:30 p.m.; 12 — vs. Houston, 7:30 p.m.; 19 — at Austin, 10:30 a.m.; 27 — vs. Portland, 6 p.m.
May: 4 — at Kansas City, 4 p.m.; 10 — at New York Red Bulls, 4:30 p.m.; 14 — at Philadelphia, 4:30 p.m.; 18 — vs. LAFC, 6 p.m.; 24 — at San Diego, 1:30 p.m.; 28 — vs. San José, 7 p.m.; 31 — vs. Salt Lake, 7 p.m.
June: 14 — at St. Louis, 1:30 p.m.; 25 — at Colorado, 6:30 p.m.; 28 — vs. San José at Stanford Stadium, 7:30 p.m.
July: 4 — vs. Vancouver, 7:30 p.m.; 12 — vs. DC United, 7:30 p.m.; 16 — vs. Austin, 7:30 p.m.; 19 — at LAFC, 7:30 p.m.; 25 — at Houston, 5:30 p.m.
August: 10 — vs. Seattle, 7 p.m.; 16 — at Miami, 4:30 p.m,; 23 — vs. Colorado, 7:30 p.m.; 30 — vs. Dallas, 7:30 p.m.
September: 13 — at Seattle, 5:30 p.m.; 20 — vs. Cincinnati, 7:30 p.m.; 27 — vs. Kansas City, 7:30 p.m.
October: 4 — at Dallas, 1:30 p.m.; 18 — vs. Minnesota, 6 p.m.

All times Pacific