Adolph Joseph DeLaGarza has already built a champion legacy on the pitch, but now, he’s building his legacy off of it.

Born on November 4, 1987, A.J. DeLaGarza quickly made his presence known as one of the best young talents in Maryland, winning two USYSA National Championships with Baltimore Casa Mia’s Bays before making the move to the University of Maryland, College Park. He transitioned from an attacker to a defender during his time at UMD, leading the Terps to the 2005 and 2008 National Championship, before eventually being drafted by the LA Galaxy with the 19th overall of the 2009 MLS SuperDraft. It didn’t take long for him to reward their trust, emerging as a starter in defense and leading them to the verge of glory, only to lose on penalties to Real Salt Lake in the 2009 MLS Cup Final. DeLaGarza would have the last laugh, however, leading the Galaxy to MLS Cup success in 2011, 2012, and 2014 and becoming one of just a handful of players to make 200+ regular season appearances for the Galaxy.

DeLaGarza also made an impact at the international level, playing two friendlies for the USMNT in January 2012 before switching to Guam and playing 11 times, spurring them to their first-ever two World Cup qualifying wins. After being traded to Houston Dynamo in 2017, DeLaGarza spearheaded them to their first postseason berth in three years, but he was unable to take part after tearing his ACL in the final match of the regular season. Having racked up 5 assists in 61 appearances, DeLaGarza then spent a brief sojourn with Inter Miami until closing out his career with New England Revolution (he did sign a ceremonial one-day contract with LA Galaxy before retiring from playing professional soccer).

He’s spent the past 2.5 years raising his three kids in the Carolinas, working at various startup companies, serving as a Match Director for MLS, and building Charlotte’s premium indoor soccer facility: The GoalDen. The Blazing Musket spoke to DeLaGarza about a number of topics which you will find in the Q&A below. TBM: I’ve spoken to a lot of players like Brian Dunseth, who, when they were in high school, they were scoring all the goals and dribbling all the defenders, but somewhere along the way, they had to transition into a defensive position. I'm sure that must have required a lot of ego-sacrifice: when did that change take place, and what was that experience like for you? AJD: When I think about club and high school, those were two very different experiences, and two very different teams. For my club team, I was strictly a center back, and then for my high school team, I was a center back, I was a central midfielder, and a forward. I was trying to fill the gaps, and maybe it adjusted every week and every game, or even in games, right? I might go from a defender to being thrown into the attack to try and score. I feel like those were the fun times, where I was a little bit more free, where I kind of got to do what you want in high school. But my club was obviously way more structured, and, I was a center back, by all means necessary there. TBM: In 2014, you didn't just win the MLS Cup, you didn't just win LA's Defensive Player of the Year, you also won the MLS Humanitarian of the Year Award. You were able to take a tragedy – losing your son Luca to a congenital heart defect – and turn it into a positive by raising over $30,000 for heart research. Would you consider that one of your proudest achievements in your career? AJD: I think I always harp on a community, and how can I leave the world and soccer community a better place than when I found it? That's what I tried to do when I was playing, and obviously, that year, it was heightened because I was doing a lot of work with Children's Hospital and the American Heart Association. I was trying to help other children with heart conditions and now, what I'm doing in my work is, you know, how can I create a community for young soccer players to come play for free? That's something that's on a lot of people's minds, and it's like, ‘How can we do that? I'm trying to work on that now at the moment. TBM: Just to clarify, your work with the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, was before or after you lost your son? AJD: It was during and after, while he was in utero, all the way up until his death. We still try and do stuff for them: every time we go back to LA, we try and do donation drives and all with the Galaxy, and we'll personally go there and drop off the donations as well. TBM: What was it like making the move to New England? Did you feel good about how you fared during your time in Gillette Stadium? AJD: Yeah, I knew that going in, I was a veteran player who maybe needed to help produce the next young player, and I tried taking on that role a little bit and helping our younger players understand the game a little bit more. Whereas a lot of them are so physically gifted, and there’s so much talent there, but I think what I brought was reading the game. It’s not to say that I wasn't physically gifted: I thought I was pretty quick before I tore my ACL, but I was really good at reading the game. It's like, ‘How can we teach them how to just read the game a little bit better and understand how they can use their physical attributes. Unfortunately – I won't even say unfortunate – I just got old, and my body was hurting, and I was like, ‘It's time to call it.’ I didn’t want to continue playing soccer just to train every day, and not really play games, right? That's when I was like, ‘Alright, I'm ready for that next phase of life, and let's see what that brings. But I enjoyed my time in New England: we had a really good season my first year, winning the Supporter Shield, and then unfortunately got bounced in the first game in the playoffs. But I enjoyed my time there, so I can't complain.

TBM: Lastly, who is the toughest player that you've played against in a match?

AJD: It’s a hard question, because I played against Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Ronaldinho, but I recently told somebody else: someone who I used to have trouble with early on in my career was Steve Zakuani from Seattle Sounders. I didn't care if I was up against a player who was fast or who was technical, but when you add both of them, then I was like, ‘Oh, snap, this guy can dribble the ball, and at speed, right? Like, you were either one or the other, you know, during my early days, and he had both of them. He was a dangerous player, and unfortunately, he had a horrific leg injury early in his career, which derailed his entire career, but he was a heck of a player.