Carlos Vela’s retirement from professional football caps a two-decade journey from obscurity to European stardom to icon status in the city where stars are made.
Mexico was not favored to win the U-17 World Cup in 2005. The team’s most notable player was FC Barcelona prospect Gio dos Santos, while defending champions Brazil boasted a wealth of talent, including left back Marcelo, who would achieve legend status at Real Madrid, and midfielder Anderson, who would spend nearly a decade with Man United. The Netherlands’ U-17 side included future Premier League goalie Tim Krul. The Americans had teen phenom Jozy Altidore in their eleven.
Mexico, however, had an unheralded forward from Cancún who was about to emerge from out of nowhere and score three goals in Mexico’s first two games. Sixteen-year-old Carlos Vela went on to score the opening goal in El Tri’s 3-0 win over Brazil in the final to claim the competition’s Golden Boot and seal Mexico’s first major international trophy—a landmark achievement in the country’s history.
The legend of Carlos Vela was born in that tournament, the left-footed prodigy writing the first chapter in a 20-year story that ended with Tuesday’s announcement that he has retired from the game after a career in which he displayed his extraordinary talent on every continent except Antarctica.
Vela’s breakout performance at the U-17 World Cup marked the beginning of his international pro career, taking him directly to Arsenal, one of England’s proudest clubs, and from there to stints with three Spanish clubs, including Real Sociedad, where between 2011 and 2017 Vela became a star, making over 200 career appearances in all competitions for the White and Blue, scoring 72 goals and twice winning Real Sociedad’s Player of the Year award.
Then in 2017 an invitation arrived from a brand-new club in Los Angeles.
Vela arrived at LAFC when the club’s stadium was just a dirt field in the middle of the city—little more than a construction site and a dream. Coming to LA, to Major League Soccer, was more than an adventure for Vela. It was a risk. Given the newness of it all—and the speed with which LAFC had to be built—it would have been easy for the project to fall apart, or for the new club to plod along achieving mediocrity.
Instead, Vela’s arrival in LA would come to represent the perfect marriage between an expansion team and a player that embodied its aspirations, its identity—an identity closely tied to LA’s Mexican community, and to an exciting, attacking style of soccer that suited Vela’s gifts and appealed to his new city, where entertainment is king.
Vela led LAFC to the playoffs in the club’s inaugural season, 2018. At mid-year he joined the Mexican National Team at the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, where he scored the first and still the only goal by an LAFC player in a World Cup, and the second World Cup goal by a non-American MLS player.
Vela and LAFC leveled up in Year Two, producing not just the greatest season an MLS club had ever produced, but the league’s most prolific individual season, as well. The first mark—the 72 points LAFC amassed in 2019—has since been surpassed, but the second has not. Vela’s 34 goals and 49 total goal contributions in 2019 (including 15 assists) remain league records by a healthy margin.
The rest of Vela’s numbers strain believability. He is one of just 13 players in MLS history to record at least 75 goals and 50 assists, and the only player to hit those marks in just six seasons. In 2022—the year he backed up his promise to bring an MLS Cup to Los Angeles—Vela became the third-fastest player in MLS history to reach 100 goal contributions, getting there in just 98 games.
His last full season was one of his best. Vela helped LAFC enjoy a historic 2023 campaign, playing in a career-high 34 regular-season games and 48 of LAFC’s league-record 53 total games in all competitions, recording nine league goals and seven assists as the Black & Gold reached its second straight MLS Cup Final.
A four-time MLS All-Star, three-time MLS Best XI selection, two-time Concacaf Champions Cup Best XI honoree, and 2019 MLS MVP, Vela’s impact on his new league and his new city has been as full as his trophy case. Vela’s presence in the greater Los Angeles area, home to approximately 5 million people of Mexican descent, gave that community a matinee idol, a success story, and a world-class athlete all rolled into one. Major League Soccer benefitted from his arrival as much as LAFC did. Vela stands as one of the most important signings in the league’s thirty-year history, alongside David Beckham (2007) and Lionel Messi (2023), providing the maturing league with an international star who converted millions of Mexican fans into MLS followers, and paving the way for other coveted Europeans, like Giorgio Chiellini, Gareth Bale, and Denis Bouanga, to follow him to the world’s city. Each of those players has cited Vela as the reason they first became aware of LAFC, and among the reasons they joined the Black & Gold.
Vela’s impact on Los Angeles and its soccer club will not end with his retirement as a player. In his new role as a club ambassador, Vela will further the club’s mission to pursue championships and inspire the next generation of players while delivering an unrivaled experience for fans.
The quiet, brown-eyed teen who burst on the world stage more than half his life ago (the same year that YouTube burst onto the world stage), became more than an MLS icon in Los Angeles. He became a family man here, he and his wife Saioa raising their son and daughter in the city they now call home. His family is his top priority now, he says, now that his role in helping raise LAFC is all but complete.
