After admitting he found it difficult moving around the M25 to join Reading from Watford, Jonathan Bond couldn't have made much of a bigger career jump by leaving West Bromwich Albion for Los Angeles Galaxy.
England under-21 international Bond made the move from the midlands to California in January 2021, and has been a first-team regular at the most successful MLS side ever since. The tall goalkeeper, who had five loan spells and seven managers during his five-year stint at Watford, has enjoyed stability at Galaxy, having immediately become first-choice for the California side.
This season he could make his 100th league appearance for the Galaxy, quite some feat for a player forced to watch from the bench as the Baggies secured promotion back to the Premier League. Following in the footsteps of Robbie Keane, Ashley Cole, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and David Beckham, Bond is making a name for himself in the sunshine state, having caught the bug for life stateside after growing up with an American mother.
Speaking to Mirror Football at the Galaxy's Dignity Health Sports Park, Bond explained how he ended up deciding to pack up and move across the pond, while admitting he found it difficult to adjust at first.
"I had just enough experience to know what I wanted to put in place and I was set in my routine. It would be difficult being younger - I found it hard going from Watford to Reading and that’s just around the M25. I genuinely found that really difficult. Different place, different training ground, different people.
"When you’re at Watford, you’re coming through and you're one of them, you’ve come through the academy. Move to Reading and you’re just a player: go out and perform. Those kinds of things, I found them difficult."
Bond wasted no time in making the starting spot his own at Galaxy, having spent too long as a back-up in England. But it wasn't just changes on the pitch that he had to deal with, as he opened up on adjusting to life in America off the pitch.
The 29-year-old said: "I’d come out here on holiday three or four summers while playing in England so I knew I loved it. My Mum is American so it wasn’t completely alien to me, I knew the American mentality and what to expect.
"But it is different to shift your whole life and move over here, it really is. In England it was very easy to have your routine - you live somewhere near the training ground, come into the training ground every day, on your day off you might go out, go to the cinema or whatever. Here, everything’s big and spaced out. You have to set that routine you had back home that was successful.
"You’re doing it in a completely different place and have to find people to help you do it. You've got to form relationships off the pitch and in the locker room and it’s important you get it right because that can really unsettle you on the pitch."
Bond explained how playing in America brings about difficulties he hadn't encountered when playing in England, namely playing in the 43 degree heat away at Austin - a far cry from the stereotypical cold wet trip to Stoke. He continued: "We speak the same language but we don’t really, it’s a completely different culture, the way people are socially, the way people act from a coaching perspective.
"It’s very much sometimes in America everyone’s really positive - a lot of positive reinforcement, ‘what can we do to get better here?'. In England it can be quite cut-throat, ‘that’s not good and you’re out of the team' and it can be very, very harsh but then you might learn more one way or the other depending on the personality you are.
"Culturally off the field it’s completely different. Sun, beaches, summer eight or nine months of the year. You go away to Dallas or Austin and it can be 42, 43 degrees and you’re playing at walking pace.
"You have to think about how to win a game at 40 per-cent, walking football almost. That's something we never have to think about in England, where it’s cold but once you’re running you’re fine. Some of the atmospheres in England are difficult to compete with."
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