Gabriel Pec’s evolution a central part of Galaxy’s MLS Cup run

This is a story about how Gabriel Pec and the Galaxy got their grooves back.

For Pec, the Galaxy’s spectacular 23-year-old winger, the change started last February, when he left Brazilian club Vasco da Gama, the only team he had ever known.

“At Vasco there was a lot of pressure,” he said through a translator. “We had to tackle all the time. My passion is dribbling the ball, passing the ball, assisting, goals.”

For the Galaxy, the change also came when Pec left Brazil for Carson. Through the past seven seasons the team had done very little tackling, dribbling, passing or scoring, losing more games than they won and getting outscored by 53 goals. With Pec, they won 19 games for the first time in 13 years, matched the franchise modern-era record for goals and came within a tiebreaker of their first regular-season conference title since 2011.

And that leaves the Galaxy needing a win Sunday over Minnesota United to reach the MLS Cup semifinals for the first time since the middle of the second Obama administration. It’s been a stunning turnover, one neither Javier “Chicharito” Hernández nor Zlatan Ibrahimovic managed to accomplish in their time in Carson.

But if Pec’s arrival brought success for the Galaxy, for the player escaping the strict style of Vasco it brought something more important. It rekindled a joy for soccer he hadn’t felt since he was a young boy playing on the dusty streets outside Rio de Janeiro, and that joy has paid off with 16 goals and 14 assists. Only three players in franchise history — Cobi Jones, Robbie Keane and Ibrahimovic — have had more regular-season goal contributions and Pec did it in his first year, earning the league’s newcomer of the year award.

“Because of the pressure, the way that we played is a bit different,” he said of his Brazilian club. “So coming to the Galaxy, this is who I am. I have so much joy. I’m so excited to play every single game. I’m really having fun.

“Here I have the freedom to play soccer.”

Galaxy coach Greg Vanney said the difference is noticeable. And infectious.

“I’ve seen the evolution on the field,” he said. “When he first came there was a lot of stress. You could tell he came from a club [where] winning and losing and producing were heavy.

“I saw a player who had unique talents and then inside of that some really, really great talent that needs to come out.”

That’s not to say there wasn’t some assembly required. Although Pec is a fast, powerful, skilled and savvy attacker, when he arrived in MLS he was a “heels on the sideline” left winger, Vanney said, one who waited for the ball to come to him. That left him isolated, wasting his play-making abilities.

“When we watched video of him, the interesting thing was when he was scoring goals, he was constantly ending up inside the box,” Vanney said. “So the question was ‘how do we get this guy inside the box more often?’

“What’s been great with him is he’s just had a lot of open-mindedness to develop different parts of his game.”

Because Pec has never lived outside Rio de Janeiro, his English remains a work in progress and the adjustment to Southern California took time. Juninho, another Brazilian who won three MLS Cups with the Galaxy and is now a member of Vanney’s staff, has been instrumental in helping Pec overcome both hurdles.

“Juni has been right next to us on the field every time I talk to him,” Vanney said. “Juni’s really helped him to settle in, to feel like he’s not missing things and has helped him to really kind of grasp and understand concepts.”

The Brazilian also benefited from the selflessness of teammate Joseph Paintsil. Pec started the season on the left wing and had just three goals and two assists through 12 games before Paintsil went to the sidelines for a month with a hamstring injury, allowing Vanney to move Pec across the field. He responded with two goals and four assists in five games and when Paintsil returned, he agreed to play on the left. Since then Pec has failed to score or assist on a goal just four times in the last 21 games in all competitions.

“He is sacrificing a little bit,” Vanney said of Paintsil, who signed with the Galaxy in February, three weeks after Pec did. New general manager Will Kuntz has completely remade the team’s roster in the last 15 months, but Pec, who cost the club a record $10-million transfer fee, was just one of a half-dozen players Kuntz pursued last winter — and his name wasn’t necessarily at the top of that list.

“We definitely had multiple names,” Kuntz said. “What I wanted to avoid was some of the pitfalls I think the Galaxy has fallen into in the past where you become too fixated on one player and kind of chase them to the end of the Earth. It was really important to have options.”

Eleven months later Kuntz is sure the money he devoted to Pec — which includes a guaranteed annual salary of $2.5 million through the 2028 season — will be money well spent.

“We knew he was good. We knew he scored goals,” Kuntz said of Pec, who has had a goal or assist in each of the Galaxy’s last seven games, including the playoffs. “But I don’t think we thought this timeline was going to be how it showed up. He is so competitive. I think that’s the biggest thing I didn’t realize. How competitive he is.”

Whether the Galaxy will have to pay Pec through the end of that contract seems unlikely. Given his age and immense ceiling, if Pec continues to produce as he has this year, he’ll likely be playing in Europe by 2028. The fact that he stopped in MLS first, he believes, will only make that move more successful once it does happen.

Not that any of this was his choice. Pec’s faith is as deep as his talent, which is why he credits his success to a higher power. God, he believes, is guiding his career.

“If perhaps I had gone to the Premier League, that wouldn’t have been the best-case scenario,” Pec said through translator Camila Kawashita. “Coming to MLS, it was the plan that God had for me. Money, fame, nothing is more important than God.

“Having said that,” he adds, “I’m not even thinking about that. All I care about at the moment is focusing on the Galaxy.”

Which is great for the Galaxy, because for them he’s truly been a godsend.

⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.