Last weekend, the San Diego Wave lost 2-1 to Angel City FC in an NWSL league match.
It was the first league match for San Diego since the appointment of U.S. men’s national team talisman Landon Donovan to the job. It’s the second coaching job he has had, following a three-year stint with the San Diego Loyal of the second-division United Soccer League.
But before his hire, the Wave were being coached by Casey Stoney, who had been building a distinguished coaching career in England, culminating in a successful stint with Manchester United’s women’s team. With San Diego, Stoney was the NWSL Coach of the Year in 2022, won the NWSL Shield for the best regular-season record in 2023, then won the NWSL Challenge Cup to start the 2024 season.
After that, however, San Diego suffered an utter collapse in form, losing seven matches in a row, which resulted in her being fired from the job.
The appointment of Donovan was seen as an unconventional decision, given the circumstances within not only the league, but the San Diego franchise. The NWSL’s decade-long history has been rife with coaching hires which wound up being the wrong picks because of the eventual misbehavior of not only the coaches, but sometimes, the general managers and front-office personnel involved with the decisions.
San Diego’s general manager is Jill Ellis, who has been lauded for winning two World Cups, but has taken some flack from a former employee, Brittany Alvarado, a former video and creative manager for the team. Alvarado has accused Ellis of abusive behavior. a charge both she and the team deny.
Donovan’s coaching history, which has not involved coaching a women’s team, has caught the attention of former U.S. captain Becky Sauerbrunn.
“Is it a prerequisite to have coached women to then be in the NWSL? I don’t think that’s necessarily true, but I think it makes it exceedingly more difficult to be successful if you haven’t coached women at a high level,” she said in a recent podcast. “It helps to know the players, to know the league, to know the world. And he’s going to be thrown into something where, compared to MLS, the resources are different, the season is different, obviously the players are different.”
With the team in 11th place with nine games remaining in the season, the coaching hire is has gotten a lot of attention. A big part of it is because the team is talent-laden, with Alex Morgan, Naomi Girma, and Jaedyn Shaw at Donovan’s disposal.
One can hope that San Diego can pull themselves into a playoff spot in the league and in the CONCACAF W Champions’ Cup, but if they don’t, I have a feeling Donovan isn’t going to be the only person to blame.
