WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
GRADING 2022'S YEAR ONE COACHES
We never circled back around to check in on our…[counting]...13 (!!) coaches in their first full seasons or first half seasons in charge of MLS teams. Let's pass out some grades on a scale of 0.0 to 10.0 and consider how year two might be different.
Gonzalo Pineda - Atlanta United | 5.0
Pineda goes right in the middle. Because you can look at his first full season two ways.
- There were injuries. The roster in general lacked a cohesive set up in the first place and that only got compounded by the injuries. Yet, he still found a way to establish a game model and steady locker room culture that provides a clear path for the team to build on with a new club president in charge.
- The team made far too many individual mistakes, and actions that could have mitigated those issues were either never found or delayed for too long. A more experienced manager may have been able to sort through those things and get this roster to the playoffs.
And both ways are totally fair! He won't quite enter 2022 on the hot seat, but everyone will be keeping a close eye on how the team responds to his second full season in charge. Despite the new club president's familiarity with Pineda, it's still a new club president. If Garth Lagerwey takes stock of everything midway through the season and things still aren't clicking in Atlanta, he might want to get his person in charge. For now though, Pineda showed enough to deserve time to work with an improved and healthier roster.
Vanni Sartini - Vancouver Whitecaps | 5.3
Once again, Vancouver surged in the second half of the season under Vanni Sartini. The problem is, the first half went poorly. And this time Sartini was in charge of that too.
Vancouver's end of 2021 magic didn't quite carry over to 2022, and there will be considerable pressure for the Whitecaps and Sartini to come out of the gate with a little more steam in 2023.
Pablo Mastroeni - Real Salt Lake | 8.8
Real Salt Lake lost Albert Rusnak to free agency and lost Damir Kreilach for the season due to injury and still found a way to make the playoffs and scare the hell out of second-seeded Austin for 120 minutes in the playoffs.
I think everyone wondered whether or not Sartini could convince his players to continue giving extreme effort over the course of a full season. I think we got our answer this year. A solid offseason coupled with that continued effort could make RSL a contender for a home playoff spot this season. As a small-market team, that's all you can really ask for. Mastroeni understood the assignment and got it done.
Bob Bradley - Toronto FC | 4.5
That…that did not go well. Like at all.
I'm a pretty firm believer that a large majority of your success as a team is predicated on the roster at hand more than your manager. And, to be fair, the roster at hand in Toronto felt young defensively, lacking in midfield and in need of resources that came just a little too late. At the same time…man, that did not go well at all, did it?
The Reds finished the year as the worst defense in the league by most metrics and finished with the second fewest points of any team because of it. It felt like other teams were facing larger obstacles and were able to overcome them on their way to putting in competitive seasons. That didn't happen in Toronto.
All that said, it's Bob Bradley. He didn't forget how to do this overnight. And Toronto certainly didn't run out of resources overnight. No one will be surprised to see them back among the league's best sooner rather than later.
Ezra Hendrickson - Chicago Fire FC | 5.2
It could have been worse? At least the start was pretty ok. But once Chicago stopped being the best defensive team in the league for no real explainable reason, the wheels fell off.
Can you really be mad about that though? I'm not going to roast Hendrickson for having about as standard a Chicago season as they come. Maybe Jhon Duran can continue building on a stellar end to the season and help take Hendrickson and company beyond standard in 2023.
Nico Estevez - FC Dallas | 9.0
Estevez got handed a solid roster, built on it with solid tactics and put together a solid season. For a first year manager, you take that every time.
The task for 2023 is to take FC Dallas beyond just "solid." They were able to grab points here and there in 2022 but never seemed to find the higher gear that the best teams in the league possessed. Even when they advanced past the first round of the playoffs, they never felt like a threat to make it past Austin. LAFC and whoever else might be waiting in the East.
So it's a 9.0 instead of a 10.0. Still excellent. But it felt like they never scraped their head against the ceiling.
Pat Noonan - FC Cincinnati | 10.0
Do I even really need to explain this? You take a team from one of the worst three year stretches in league history and immediately take them to the playoffs, and you get a perfect score. Done, over, onto the next one.
Steve Cherundolo - LAFC | 10.0
It's not quite turning FC Cincinnati around, but you still get a perfect score for winning a double. Just seems fair.
When a team has a general talent advantage compared to the rest of the league, their biggest task is to avoid messing things up so bad that the advantage is taken away. Cherundolo largely avoided that pitfall and by the end of the season had found a style and lineup that best fit his group. Pair that with one of the best rosters in MLS history and you're gonna get decent results. Now we'll see if he can continue that and turn it into a CCL title.
Paulo Nagamura - Houston Dynamo FC | 1.1
It wasn't going well, but I don't think most folks outside Houston realized it was going bad enough to get fired. And, well, then he got fired. Not ideal.
Christian Lattanzio - Charlotte FC | 8.1
Lattanzio picked up right where Miguel Angel Ramirez left off in the middle of the season. Charlotte continued to improve under Lattanzio in their inaugural year and hung around the playoff race far, far later than anyone could have expected.
He did well enough to get his interim tag removed, and heading into the critical second year of an expansion franchise and a coaching tenure, expectations will be high for him and Charlotte to take the kind of leap forward we've seen from other expansion teams and coaches in year two.
Nick Cushing - NYCFC | 7.0
Well that got weird for a second.
NYCFC immediately trended downward after Cushing's appointment. Of course, that probably had a lot to do with Taty Castellanos leaving at the same time, but still, the nosedive became steeper than it probably should have.
Eventually though, NYCFC pulled up and leveled out and turned into the kind of quality team we saw at the beginning of the season. After reaching the Eastern Conference final, Cushing had the interim tag removed, and he'll be expected to continue the current run of high standards at the East's most consistent club. If things nosedive again though…well, some folks won't be able to get his slow start out of the back of their minds.
Wayne Rooney - D.C. United | ??
It feels like we didn't get enough time with Rooney to truly assess his first half season. On top of that, does anyone know what exactly is going on at D.C. United at this point? It all feels very messy. But maybe this turns into one of those pictures where you watch the person draw it and it looks like nothing until they spin it right side up to reveal a perfect portrait of Marco Etcheverry or something? Hopefully, their recent moves come good.
AND OTHER THINGS
- DC United in advanced talks for Leeds United midfielder Klich: D.C. United are in advanced talks to sign Poland international central midfielder Mateusz Klich from Leeds United, sources tell MLSsoccer.com. The deal isn't 100% done, but has reached advanced stages. Klich wouldn't be a Designated Player if the deal gets over the line. Klich, 32, has 41 caps with Poland and has been with Leeds since 2017, joining when they were in the Championship (England's second division). The hard-working midfielder was an integral part of Leeds' promotion to the Premier League in 2019-20, appearing in 45 of the club's 46 league games.
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