San Diego —
Since first retiring from soccer nearly a decade ago, Landon Donovan has come out of retirement to play nine games for the Galaxy, spent six months in the Mexican league with Leon, played eight games in the Major Arena Soccer League, helped found a team in the USL Championship second division with two playoff appearances, been part-owner of a Welsh team, been a strategic advisor to a team in the English third division and worked as a soccer commentator for Fox and ESPN.
For many athletes, retirement marks the end of a career. But for the itinerant Donovan, it's an opportunity to experiment with new career avenues. But his latest choice may be the most surprising: Nine days ago, Donovan, widely considered the greatest men's player in U.S. soccer history, was named interim coach of the women's team, the San Diego Wave.
“I'm pretty surprised myself,” Donovan said.
But the most interesting part of this story isn't that Donovan was named head coach, but how he got there: When Wave president Jill Ellis reached out to Donovan earlier this month seeking a recommendation for an interim head coach to replace the fired Casey Stoney, Donovan recommended himself.
“He and I were having a conversation and he said, 'I miss coaching and I'd like to apply for this job,'” Ellis said. “And I said, 'Wow, sounds great.'”
“So we took action, and I think it was a great thing we did.”
The results have been mixed so far — a 2-1 loss at home to Angel City on Saturday following a 2-0 win at the CONCACAF World Cup in Panama — but Ellis' confidence remains unshaken. Donovan, of course, has had nothing to do with the women's game in his long career. But he wasn't hired to coach women; he was hired to coach soccer players.
“It's not about coaching men or women, it's about coaching people,” said Ellis, who led the women's national team to consecutive World Cup titles. “Landon Donovan has the sharpest emotional intelligence I know. He will connect with people and players.”
It's a quality the 42-year-old Donovan has earned hard. Despite his unparalleled success, the six-time MLS Cup winner battled depression so severe that he took a five-month break from football at the height of his career and has since become a vocal advocate for mental health.
“I've been through the same thing. I wanted them to have compassion and tolerance, so I'm going to give it to them,” Donovan said of his players. “That doesn't mean I'm not hard on them. I hold them accountable.”
“[But]if I can just take five minutes and empathize with what they're going through, it will help make them better. I genuinely care about them as people.”
It's clear in his demeanor. Whereas many coaches speak loudly to make their point, Donovan speaks so quietly that listeners have to strain their ears to hear what he's saying. With Donovan, it's not just the message that matters, it's how he delivers it.
This approach is already working for Wave.
“He's very diligent about checking in on the guys,” defenseman Kennedy Wesley said. “He's done a great job managing them individually.”
San Diego Wave interim coach Landon Donovan watches from the bench during Saturday's game against Angel City FC.
(Orlando Ramirez/Getty Images)
Wesley, like most players in the NWSL, has played under several male coaches throughout her career: Only three of the league's 14 teams have a female coach, and at the collegiate level, more than two-thirds of women's soccer teams are coached by male coaches.
For Donovan, coaching women is a new experience, but the transition has been smooth.
“At the end of the day, they're human beings, they're footballers,” he said. “There are subtle differences — I could name 10 — but they're not huge, ridiculous differences. For me, the biggest difference so far is how quickly they understand information, process it and act on it.”
During Friday's practice at the Wave's sprawling training facility, tucked at the end of a gravel road about three miles off Interstate 5 in Del Mar, the new coach mostly just watched, leaving assistants to direct traffic and organize the practice. But the ideas were all his.
Donovan was intelligent as a player, but he's just as intelligent as a coach. Even if the X's and O's aren't his greatest strength, he's not going to ignore them. After all, he retired as the all-time leading scorer in both MLS and the national team, and he didn't set those records by being passive. So it's likely the Wave won't either.
“Our style of play has changed a lot,” Wesley said. “We want to drive the ball forward and keep it in the opponent's half as much as possible.”
“Everything he says, we believe and accept, because he obviously knows what he's doing.”
Wesley, an NWSL rookie, grew up a Galaxy fan and remembers going to games with his family with a cutout of Donovan's face stapled to a stick, so he didn't know how to react when Ellis told the team that his favorite player would be their new coach.
“I thought that was really funny,” she said. “I was honestly super shocked. It was a really surreal moment.”
The next two months will tell how long this moment lasts. Saturday's loss pushed the Wave's winless streak in the NWSL to 10 games and left San Diego (3-8-6) in 11th place in the league standings, three points out of the eighth and final playoff spot with nine games remaining. As interim coach, Donovan is tasked with leading the Wave to the NWSL postseason and out of group play for the CONCACAF World Champions Cup.
And he'll have to do it with an injury-riddled squad that will be missing seven players, including Olympic gold medalists Jaidyn Shaw and Naomi Girma, on Saturday, forcing Donovan to hand 16-year-old midfielder Melanie Barcenas her first NWSL start.
Ellis said whether Donovan succeeds or fails, new athletic director Camille Ashton and new owners Lauren Leichtman and Arthur Levine will wait until the offseason to discuss candidates for the full-time coaching position, and if Donovan is asked again for a recommendation, he will likely give the same answer he did when Ellis first asked.
“Of all the things I've done since retiring, this seems by far the most natural thing,” he said. “I can't explain exactly why. I wish I could.”
“I feel like I should be here.”
