Final weekend, the San Diego Wave misplaced 2-1 to Angel Metropolis FC in an NWSL league match.
It was the primary league match for San Diego for the reason that appointment of U.S. males’s nationwide group talisman Landon Donovan to the job. It’s the second teaching job he has had, following a three-year stint with the San Diego Loyal of the second-division United Soccer League.
However earlier than his rent, the Wave have been being coached by Casey Stoney, who had been constructing a distinguished teaching profession in England, culminating in a profitable stint with Manchester United’s girls’s group. With San Diego, Stoney was the NWSL Coach of the Yr in 2022, received the NWSL Defend for the very best regular-season document in 2023, then received the NWSL Problem Cup to begin the 2024 season.
After that, nevertheless, San Diego suffered an utter collapse in type, dropping seven matches in a row, which resulted in her being fired from the job.
The appointment of Donovan was seen as an unconventional choice, given the circumstances inside not solely the league, however the San Diego franchise. The NWSL’s decade-long historical past has been rife with teaching hires which wound up being the unsuitable picks due to the eventual misbehavior of not solely the coaches, however generally, the overall managers and front-office personnel concerned with the selections.
San Diego’s common supervisor is Jill Ellis, who has been lauded for profitable two World Cups, however has taken some flack from a former worker, Brittany Alvarado, a former video and artistic supervisor for the group. Alvarado has accused Ellis of abusive habits. a cost each she and the group deny.
Donovan’s teaching historical past, which has not concerned teaching a girls’s group, has caught the eye of former U.S. captain Becky Sauerbrunn.
“Is it a prerequisite to have coached girls to then be within the NWSL? I don’t suppose that’s essentially true, however I feel it makes it exceedingly harder to achieve success for those who haven’t coached girls at a excessive degree,” she stated in a current podcast. “It helps to know the gamers, to know the league, to know the world. And he’s going to be thrown into one thing the place, in comparison with MLS, the sources are completely different, the season is completely different, clearly the gamers are completely different.”
With the group in eleventh place with 9 video games remaining within the season, the teaching rent is has gotten lots of consideration. An enormous a part of it’s as a result of the group is talent-laden, with Alex Morgan, Naomi Girma, and Jaedyn Shaw at Donovan’s disposal.
One can hope that San Diego can pull themselves right into a playoff spot within the league and within the CONCACAF W Champions’ Cup, but when they don’t, I’ve a sense Donovan isn’t going to be the one particular person accountable.
