When LAFC promoted Marc Dos Santos from assistant coach to manager two months ago, there were some perks that came with the new job. A raise, certainly. A better seat on the team charter.
But not as many as you might think.
“The office is a little bit bigger,” he said. “My parking space is exactly the same.”
The biggest perk, however, could also prove the more difficult. After five seasons working under Bob Bradley and Steve Cherundolo, Dos Santos is now the guy calling the shots. And if he misfires, it will be clear who deserves the blame.
Dos Santos welcomes the scrutiny.
“I never coach with the intention of what people think or what people are going to say,” he said. “I’m focused on the group and my job; the validation that is the most important for me is from my owners, from the people in the club that believe in me.
“I’m blessed with the pressure of coaching LAFC, It’s a privilege to be under pressure. But at the same time, I want to start well.”
He’ll get that chance Tuesday, when LAFC faces Honduran club Real España in the first round of the CONCACAF Champions Cup in San Pedro Sula. The MLS season will start four days later against Lionel Messi and Inter Miami, the reigning league champion, at the Coliseum.
Dos Santos, who speaks four languages, has already started putting his stamp on the team by tweaking LAFC’s playing style. Under Cherundolo, who spent his whole playing career in Germany, the team ran a German-influenced, high-press system that combined fast-paced attacking with defensive discipline, emphasizing quick transitions and a compact defensive organization.
But Cherundolo’s teams were also content to concede the ball as much as they controlled it. Dos Santos, conversely, spent the preseason implementing an aggressive possession-based attacking game.
“Marc had a lot to do with what we thought was really good about LAFC. But he had some ideas on how to tweak things,” said general manager John Thorrington, whose team is unbeaten in four preseason games, outscoring opponents 7-3. “What is really impressive is Marc and the staff have begun implementing these tweaks. Everybody is really buying in.”
Which is good since Dos Santos won’t have much of a chance to do any teaching once the season begins. LAFC will start the year with four games in 12 days; if it advances to the second round of the Champions Cup, the team will play nine times in 33 days.
Then in late May, after 16 MLS match days, the season will pause for more than seven weeks for the World Cup.
The vagaries of that schedule will require flexibility and depth and will likely force Dos Santos to rotate players in and out of the lineup. And though LAFC’s roster, led by South Korean captain Son Heung-min and former MLS Golden Boot winner Denis Bouanga, appears top heavy, the coach lauds the depth, with offseason additions including wingers Jacob Shaffelburg and Tyler Boyd and midfielder Amin Boudri.
“People could look very superficially,” he said. “But it’s also a league with a salary cap and there’s so many players that support what are called the more known or star players. That’s important.
“The focus is to surround these players with a system and a way of playing that is going to maximize everybody.”
Dos Santos, 48, has won everywhere he’s managed with one exception: his only other MLS head coaching stint in Vancouver, where he spent parts of three seasons, two of which were impacted heavily by the coronavirus pandemic.
He got his coaching start in his native Canada, then moved to Brazil, where he coached in the youth programs of two clubs and worked as a technical director for another. He returned to North America to manage three lower-division clubs and worked as an assistant with Sporting Kansas City of MLS before Bradley named him to the first LAFC staff in 2018.
After Bradley moved on, Dos Santos returned to LAFC as part of Cherundolo’s first staff. And now, as manager, he’s brought in his own lieutenants, replacing original LAFC assistant Ante Razov with former Seattle assistant Andy Rose — who played for Dos Santos in Vancouver — and adding Spanish coach Xavi Tamarit.
“When you go from assistant coach to head coach, you have to take a few steps back. But you need to make sure you delegate to competent people,” he said. “The people that have joined are really competent and do a really good job.”
The proof of that will come on the field and Dos Santos knows he has big shoes to fill. Under Bradley and Cherundolo, LAFC was the best club team in U.S. soccer over the past eight years, winning more games, earning more points and scoring more goals than any team in MLS. It made the playoffs seven times, played in two MLS Cup finals and two CONCACAF Champions League finals, won two Supporters’ Shields and a U.S. Open Cup.
Thorrington expects the winning to continue under Dos Santos.
“I am confident that we made this decision for the right reasons,” he said. “And those who are not convinced yet will be convinced very soon.”
If they aren’t, LAFC’s famously demanding fans will be calling for the coach’s head. So even though MLS is heavily promoting the regular-season opener with Messi and Inter Miami, Dos Santos isn’t looking past his real first game in charge, which is the Champions Cup game with Real España.
“For me, the only game that counts in my head right now is the game of Feb. 17 in Honduras,” he said. “That’s where I put my energy. And then we’ll deal with the Miami game.”
