For all of the big names who have been key to the Los Angeles Galaxy’s impressive success in 2011, two of the most important pieces to their championship-contending puzzle are players Bruce Arena picked up off the MLS scrap heap: two players who came into MLS nine years ago with so much promise; two players who are enjoying career years almost a decade after becoming pros.
Todd Dunivant isn’t just having a good season He’s having a career year in a career that has seen him win two MLS Cups and start for four different teams before returning for a second stint with the Galaxy. He has gone from being a steady yet overlooked defender to a Best XI candidate considered by many to be the best left back in the league.
Eight years after being drafted into Major League Soccer, Mike Magee is having his best season. (Photo credit: Jeff Golden/Getty Images)
Mike Magee didn’t set any personal records this season - he actually scored more goals as an 18-year-old rookie (7) than he did this year (5) - but his contributions as a versatile attacker, in midfield, and even as a game-saving goalkeeper have made him a vital contributor enjoying what he considers his best season as a pro.
That Dunivant and Magee are playing major roles on a title contending Galaxy squad for the third straight season is something almost as impressive as Arena landing both of them for the combined cost of a second round draft pick and small allocation.
It was the winter of 2009, and Arena been handed a Los Angeles Galaxy team in need of rebuilding. In his first off-season with the club, he had a real mess to clean up. The team was stumbling in the early days of the David Beckham-Landon Donovan tandem, and among the several quality players Arena added during his reconstruction were Dunivant and Magee.
There was a good reason whey Arena was able to get Dunivant and Magee so cheaply. At the time, Magee was out of contract with the New York Red Bulls, and having failed to live up to the expectations he came into MLS with, Magee was desperate for a new start.
Dunivant’s situation was even more dire. He had endured an eight-month ordeal of healing a broken ankle and damaged ankle ligaments while playing for an expansion Toronto FC side. Microfracture surgery ended his 2008 season, so when Arena acquired Dunivant from TFC, the move barely registered a ripple.
That would have been tough to imagine during Dunivant’s early years in the league, when he began his career by winning two MLS Cup titles in his first three seasons, including a 2005 campaign with the Galaxy that helped earn him a national team call-up from then-US coach Bruce Arena.
All was right in Dunivant’s world heading into the 2006 season, but things quickly changed. The sudden death of Galaxy general manager Doug Hamilton and subsequent firing of head coach Steve Sampson helped open the door for a trade to the New York Red Bulls, but the man who brought Dunivant to New York, Mo Johnston, promptly lost his job as head coach.
Johnston resurfaced with Toronto FC a year later and once again pulled off a trade for Dunivant, who watched his roller coaster ride of a career hit bottom with the first major injury of his career.
“It was definitely a tough time for me," Dunivant admits, "a long time to go without playing, but when the chance came to go back to Los Angeles I knew it would be a good move for me.
"Having the chance to work with Bruce, and knowing that he would build a winner, made it an exciting move.”
Todd Dunivant has become one of Major League Soccer's best left backs since moving to Los Angeles. (Photo credit: David Banks/Getty Images)
All Dunivant has done since rejoining the Galaxy is lock down the left back position on a team that lost in the 2009 MLS Cup Final and has now won consecutive Supporters Shields. The 2011 season has been the best of Dunivant’s career, and he is finally starting to earn the recognition.
"Todd has been a regular in his league his whole career, but this year he’s really turned it up a notch this year,” Arena said. “He’s more responsible on both sides of the ball than he’s ever been. He’s becoming a better passer, a little bit more physical.
“He’s a good person, one of these guys that helps make the team. A lot of credit to him.”
“He’s been fantastic,” LA Galaxy captain Landon Donovan said of Dunivant. “I don’t think there’s many games, if any, where you can say he wasn’t good for us, and on a lot of nights he’s been great.
“In my opinion, right now he’s the best left back in the league, and I would say he wholly deserves at least a look in the national team,” Donovan said. “With all the different guys who have gotten a look I would think he’s earned it to.”
Dunivant is aware of the growing praise for his 2011 form and credits it for his consistency and improved all-around game. He is also hoping his play for the Galaxy will catch the eye of US national team head coach Jurgen Klinsmann.
“The national team is certainly something that I strive for again,” said Dunivant, who was part of a US national team camp in 2006. “I think that I can help the team out a lot. It’s been a difficult position for the (United States), and I think my best attributes are consistency and reliability, and that would be a huge help for that area of the (national) team that, so far, has been difficult to fill over the last eight years.”
While Dunivant is enjoying a career year, so is Magee, who was drafted one pick before Dunivant in the first round of the 2003 MLS Draft. Magee’s path to a dream 2011 season has been different than Dunivant’s, though. He spent the first six years of his career with New York, a period when he mostly fell short of the high expectations he carried as a highly-regarded US youth national team player.
His move to Los Angeles was a turning point, even scoring a goal in the 2009 MLS Cup Final, though it took him longer to figure out what he needed to do to get the most out of his career.
“Last year was a year that I decided I was going to change things,” Magee said. “After we lost to Dallas (in the 2010 Western Conference final), I looked back on things and I realized that I’d played eight years in this league and didn’t have too much to show for it.
“I had to change everything I was doing or stop playing. I couldn’t keep playing half-ass, or playing through injuries, and not being a good pro, and it’s paying off this year.”
Magee always had the technical ability to be a good soccer player, but there have long been questions about his motivation and work ethic. He has answered those in 2011 by serving as a leader on a team filled with veterans.
“He’s a unique player, a real soccer player,” Arena said of Magee. “I have the greatest respect for his ability. He’s not going to win any foot races. He’s not the biggest, strongest guy but whatever you ask him to do he can get done.
“He can score goals, he can set up, he can defend. He’s done a wonderful job with Omar (Gonzalez) helping move him along so he’s accepted a leadership role as well.”
Magee’s newly-founded commitment to improving, as well as the birth of his first child (a daughter), have helped make his ninth season as a pro his best and his favorite.
“I’m enjoying myself. I’m healthy and fit, a lot of things I couldn’t say in the past couple of years,” Magee said. “A couple of things have happened over the past couple of years where you start to realize how much you love the game. This year I changed a lot of things in the off-season of how I train my body. I’m taking it all a lot more seriously.
“I think I definitely let some things slip by and took the game for granted. Years go by quicker than you think. Looking back, to say I’ve played nine years in this league is insane.”
“You look back and only a couple of years I can look back on and say I got something from them or they were great years.”
For Magee, 2011 is certainly shaping up to be one of those years, with the Galaxy are considered the prohibitive favorites to win the 2011 MLS Cup. Dunivant is no stranger to winning championships, but with six years having past since he and the Galaxy last won one, Dunivant is eager to end his championship drought.
“As the years go by, and you haven’t won one again , you appreciate it that much more,” Dunivant said. “You can ask Landon (Donovan) the same thing. He hasn’t won one since ’05 either. It’s something we’re hungry for, and it’s something we talk about on a regular basis, how hungry we are for another one.”
If Dunivant and the Galaxy are going to win their third MLS Cup titles, and first since 2005, the Galaxy will need to rely on Dunivant and Magee to keep playing at the high levels they have set all year. If they can do that through the rest of these playoffs, both Dunivant and Magee stand a great chance of providing the perfect endings to a pair of dream seasons.
