If you follow MLS even a tiny bit you know just how good Carlos Vela has been this season. You’ve seen clips like this:

you’ve heard about his rivalry with Zlatan and seen his impressive numbers. I’m generally a PL/Bundesliga/Europe as a whole fan, and I’ve seen a ton about him.

All my progression grades pretty much clearly call Vela the best attacking player in the league. He has the highest average attacking grade of any players in MLS and the highest proportion of games graded as an A

MLS-time. here are the 10 highest players by average attacking grade

1. C Vela

2. S Blanco

3. M Moralez

4. C Espinoza

5. Zlatan

6. G Martinez

7. A Pozuelo

8. J Russell

9. D Valeri

10. V Qazaishvili — Saturdays on Couch (@SaturdayOnCouch) August 22, 2019

highest % of games earning an "A" grade, top 10% in my grading

1. Vela-75%

2. Qazaishvili-71%

3. Blanco-70%

4. Zlatan-68%

5. Moralez-67%

6. Pozuelo-63%

7. Quintero-61%

8. G Martinez-60%

9. Lodeiro-57%

10. Barco-56% — Saturdays on Couch (@SaturdayOnCouch) August 22, 2019

-He has the second most Field % Gained, behind Sebastian Blanco.

-He has the most DZ actions with 256, almost 50 more than Diego Valeri in 2nd.

-He trails only Valeri and Gil in Shot Buildup Involvements as well.

-And he’s second in the league in shots.

But this article isn’t about Carlos Vela. I was looking into some MLS numbers and wondering as a fan coming from the outside who hasn’t been closely following the league just how LAFC are so good. I did what I always do and dive into the numbers, I never can see much from a game or two really as soccer is such a complicated game to judge with your eyes so into the spreadsheets we go.

I ran a league-wide chart of average defensive score vs average offensive score and of course Vela was way out the right, leading the way as expected:

but what caught my eye was the sparsely populated top right and the 3 players clustered together there:

Latif Blessing, Eduard Atesta, and Mark-Anthony Kaye. All LAFC players. All play in and around the midfield (pass from around 50 yards from goal), and all battle both ways, with and without the ball. That core has led to the middle of the field being basically a no-go zone for LAFC opponents…their progression slows to a crawl in the midfield

All those defensive action numbers are in the top 20% of all players. But these three players putting up destroyer defensive numbers and stopping progression and shot buildup at elite levels aren’t just a wall.

Atuesta is in the top 2% in field % gained (a 20 yard move toward goal when move starts 40 yards out is worth 0.5 fields, a 10 yard move would be 0.25 fields) and top 3% of Shot Buildup Involvements. Kaye is top 5% in both of those metrics as well. Blessing is in the top 10% of those two and Danger Zone actions.

Some of these are just raw volume totals but you can see in the original chart, which is based on game-by-game averages, that these 3 are very high up the attacking charts.

Vela gets the headlines but LAFC would not be nearly the dominant force they are with and without the ball without this trio who does it all on both sides of the ball.

For European sides looking for players to pick away from MLS, you could do worse than looking at these three. Blessing is 22 (transfermakt value of $1.43 million), Atuesta is 20 ($1.43 million) and Kaye is 24 ($1.7 million). The financials of MLS have always been confusing to me, and I have no idea what the price would be to pry these three away, but if you can get a $5 million or so price on all three, it feels like a fantastic gamble for a Championship club or lower-end Bundesliga or La Liga side.