LATIMES.COM/SPORTS D7
SOCCER
Some journeys are about
the destination, others
about the quest. For Landon
Donovan, the sojourn over
the last year has been a little
of both with the best soccer
player the U.S. has produced
traveling to the farthest cor-
ner of the country to get a
chance to coach.
That is where he found
himself standing, whistle in
hand, on a bluff overlooking
the Mexican border on a cool
and windy winter morning.
“I’ve been searching for
the next passion in my life,”
he said. “And I love this. Ab-
solutely love it.”
Love can be fickle,
though, especially when it
concerns Donovan. He loved
playing soccer, yet that
didn’t stop him from retiring
on four occasions — and un-
retiring on three others — in
addition to taking a four-
month sabbatical a year be-
fore a World Cup.
He’s on more solid foot-
ing as he approaches the
next step in his career.
“I’ve known soccer since I
was 15 as a professional. So
it’s OK for me to have time to
learn something new and
find out where my passion
is,” he said of coaching. “If it
stops being enjoyable or I’m
really bad at it, then I’ll step
out of the way. I have no
problem with that.”
Donovan, 38, will get his
first chance to see if his new
passion will be requited Sat-
urday when he coaches the
expansion San Diego Loyal
of the second-tier USL
Championship against Eric
Wynalda and the Las Vegas
Lights at the University of
San Diego.
Wynalda was U.S. Soc-
cer’s all-time leading scorer
until Donovan passed him.
And Wynalda was the high-
est-profile USL coach until
Donovan eclipsed him. To
say the two are rivals would
be like saying Taylor Swift
and Kanye West simply had
aesthetic differences.
As a result, the game will
be the first season opener in
USL history to be televised
nationally.
That’s the kind of spot-
light Donovan knows well.
He played in three World
Cup tournaments in 15 years
with the national team, set-
ting U.S. records with 57
goals and 57 assists. In MLS,
his 170 goals and 151 assists,
including playoffs, and his
six championship rings per-
suaded the league to rename
its MVP trophy the Landon
Donovan Award.
Coaches, on the other
hand, do most of their work
in anonymity, drawing at-
tention mostly when things
go wrong. That might be why
so many legends, from Mag-
ic Johnson and Wayne Gret-
zky to Bart Starr and Ted
Williams, found it difficult to
translate their playing suc-
cess into a successful coach-
ing career.
The game came easy to
them, but teaching it to oth-
ers? Not so much.
Andrew Vassiliadis — the
Loyal’s chairman and, at 37,
the youngest owner in the
league — feared Donovan
might be the next name on
that list.
One conversation
changed that.
“The minute he started
talking Xs and O’s and he
had plans and it was serious,
I understood,” he said. “He
said, ‘Andrew I found a pas-
sion in this that I didn’t
think I had.’ Once I heard
that I was like, OK.”
Donovan, who is also the
Loyal’s vice president of soc-
cer operations and has an
ownership stake in the team,
is far different as a coach
than he was as a player.
As a player he was in the
middle of everything, both a
playmaker and a scorer. As a
coach he prefers to stand to
the side and observe quietly,
only occasionally stepping
forward to correct a player
or offer advice.
“When he says something
guys will listen because of
who he is,” said defender Sal
Zizzo, a San Diego native
who played 11 years in Ger-
many and in MLS, then
came out of retirement to
become the first player to
sign with Donovan.
“He has that quality and
that presence about him al-
ready. I don’t know anyone
that isn’t at awe a little bit ev-
ery day.”
Said midfielder Carlos
Alvarez: “I’m getting
coached by one of my idols.”
Donovan’s path to coach-
ing and the USL Champi-
onship was a short one,
borne of defeat and opportu-nity.
Donovan had been a ma-
jor player in a two-year cam-
paign to bring an MLS team
to his adopted hometown of
San Diego, an effort that
ended in failure in November
2018 when voters turned
down a proposal to build a
stadium in Mission Valley.
In the wake of that rejec-
tion Donovan met with War-
ren Smith, a former minor
league baseball executive
who became instrumental in
founding the Sacramento
Republic and taking it to a
USL title in its first season.
He saw similar possibilities
in San Diego.“He started asking a lot of
questions about the USL. I
could see there was a spark
of interest,” Smith, the third
member of the Loyal’s own-
ership group, said of Dono-
van. “It wasn’t something we
were actively trying to make
happen. There was a meet-
ing where he got really ex-
cited and said, ‘You know, I
thought about it and I want
to be involved.’ So we worked
through it.”
Last June 19 — a symbolic
date given that 619 is San Di-
ego’s area code — Smith and
Donovan went public with
an announcement they
would bring a USL team to
the city by 2021, playing inthe University of San Diego’s
6,000-seat stadium. All they
needed was a coach, some
players, a name, uniforms
and a deep-pocketed in-
vestor since neither Dono-
van nor Smith could afford
the $10-million USL expan-
sion fee.
That’s when Vassiliadis, a
local businessman and phi-
lanthropist — and former
youth soccer coach —
stepped up. San Diego had
long been a graveyard for
professional soccer and Vas-
siliadis was determined to
change that.
“I watched it fail so many
times,” he said. “I studied itand studied it and I figured if
we could get the right group
together we could do it.”
The timing couldn’t have
been better, which is why
Vassiliadis accelerated the
timeline by a year. The USL
Championship has tripled in
size — to 35 teams in 24
states since 2011 — and total
attendance is expected to
top 3 million for the first time
this season.
The league has a three-
year TV deal with ESPN that
will triple the number of tele-
vised games and will stream
the rest; expansion fees have
risen 500% in the last six
years, and USL president
Jake Edwards says morethan $1 billion in stadium
construction has either been
pledged or is already under
way.
“It’s a gold rush right
now,” said Vassiliadis, who
hopes to build a new soccer-
specific stadium in San Di-
ego by 2023. “Everybody’s
trying to get in, every city is
trying to open up a team.”
But if Vassiliadis is the
money guy and Smith the
idea guy, the team was still
without a coach and general
manager as recently as No-
vember. That’s where Dono-
van fit in. Although he had
done neither job at any level
— let alone the second-high-
est level on the U.S. Soccer
pyramid — Donovan was un-
deterred, quietly obtaining
his coaching licenses last
year, then surrounding him-
self with a group of advisors
that included former Sacra-
mento Republic coach Paul
Buckle, retired U.S. women’s
national team player Shan-
non MacMillan and a coach-
ing staff that included as-
sistants Nate Miller and
Carrie Taylor.
Taylor, the league’s high-
est-ranking female assist-
ant, said Donovan is a quick
study.
“He takes input from
people, he’ll sit on it, he’ll
process it and then he’ll
come to his decision,” she
said. “It goes back to the cul-
ture that you set. If he were
to come in like ‘this is my
way’ with a big ego, some of
the guys would be like
‘whoa.’
“But he’s very collabora-
tive. We had individual
meetings with the players
and he tries to get to know
each person.”Even though Donovan
appears to be uninvolved in
practices, Taylor said that’s
by design.
“We usually meet after
training and we go through
what’s going to happen the
next day,” she said. “He
wants to be able to see all of it
and sometimes it’s hard
when you’re actually in the
session to observe what the
player way over there is do-
ing.”
Bruce Arena, who
coached Donovan with both
the Galaxy and the national
team, said he was surprised
his former captain wanted to
coach but says he has the
tools to be successful.
“Landon’s a bright guy,
had a really good feel for the
game, understood what was
going on. So I think he has all
the qualities to be a very
good coach,” Arena said.
“Patience is important. You
have to bite your tongue.
Dealing with professional
athletes is ... not easy.
“Landon is uniquely
qualified to do that job if he
wants to do it.”
If he wants to do it.
Arena, more than most,
knows how quickly Dono-
van’s attention can shift.
Donovan missed the start of
the 2013 MLS season during
a self-imposed sabbatical,
retired a year later, and
came out of retirement at
the end of the 2016 season to
help Arena and the Galaxy
qualify for the playoffs.
When the team didn’t of-
fer him a new contract he re-
tired again, only to resurface
a year later in Mexico, where
he played for León. Six
months later there was an-
other retirement, which
ended when he signed with
the San Diego Sockers of the
Major Arena Soccer League.
“It takes a lot of hard
work,” Arena said of coach-
ing. “I think that would have
been the question: Could
Landon dedicate himself to
that on a daily basis?”
It’s a fair question, says
Donovan, adding that his
wife asked the same thing.
But the father of two boys
said he’s more mature and
less selfish than he was dur-
ing his playing days.
“I’ve grown,” he said.
“Having kids changed a lot
to where I’m doing this for
the right reasons.”
But just to be sure, the
Loyal sent out a news release
clarifying that Donovan
won’t be playing for the team
he owns, unlike former
teammate Tim Howard,
who this week came out of
retirement to play for USL
Championship side Mem-
phis 901 FC, for which he is
an owner and sporting direc-
tor.
“I tried to never say never,
but I’m not playing,” Dono-
van said. “I’m not even close
anymore to this level.”
For the best soccer player
the U.S. has produced, that’s
quite an admission — one he
had to travel to the farthest
corner of the country to dis-
cover.It’s no time to rest for Donovan
The former Galaxy and U.S. national team star is passionate about coaching at the second-tier USL level
By Kevin Baxter
LANDON DONOVAN SAYShe has found a passion in coaching the San Diego Loyal of the second-tier USL
Championship. “When he says something guys will listen because of who he is,” Loyal defender Sal Zizzo says.K.C. AlfredSan Diego Union-Tribune‘If it stops being enjoyable or I’m really
bad at it, then I’ll step out of the way. I
have no problem with that.’
— Landon Donovan,
on his new endeavor, coaching soccertheir star power over the
years — from David
Beckham and Landon
Donovan to Steven Gerrard
and Zlatan Ibrahimovic —
the team that plays in the
world’s second-largest Mexi-
can market has never had a
major Mexican box-office
star.
Goalkeeper Jorge Cam-
pos was a favorite on the first
two Galaxy teams and for-
ward Gio dos Santos moved
the needle for a while, draw-
ing sellouts for his first five
home games in 2015. But nei-
ther had a lasting influence,
with fans eventually decid-
ing to stay home to watch
the Liga MX on television
rather than view the Galaxy
in person.
Hernández, the Mexican
national team’s all-time
leading scorer and arguably
the most popular Mexican
player of his generation, was
signed in part to change
that. And Gustavo Domin-
guez, a partner at Prime-
time Sports — a leading Lat-
ino marketing agency based
in Los Angeles — is cau-
tiously optimistic
Hernández will deliver.
“The X factor of most of
these big signings — adding
that fan engagement, add-
ing that marketing side and
muscle and adding it on the
field — a lot of things have to
align,” he said. “Is the poten-
tial there for him to be one of
the top signings in MLS his-
tory? I think the potential is
there.
“But it’s a matter of wait-
ing and seeing if that can allcome to life.”
The early results are
trending in the right direc-
tion. Although attendance
dipped 5% in Ibrahimovic’s
second season, when he led
the Galaxy to the second
round of the playoffs, theteam has sold more than
1,000 season-ticket packages
since Hernández joined in
mid-January. And in last
week’s opener in Houston,
Hernández helped the
Dynamo draw their biggest
crowd in nearly two years.Much of Hernández’s at-
traction comes from what he
does on the field. He’s added
to that, however, by being
bilingual, personable and
good-looking — a triple
crown of assets for market-
ing a soccer player in the U.S.
“He has a broader ap-
peal. And he just carries
himself very well,” Domin-
guez said. “That helps
across the board.”
He’s also ubiquitous. In
the lead-up to the home
opener, Hernández shot a
skit for “Jimmy Kimmel
Live!” ... followed Usher and
actress Alison Pill to the
couch on “The Late, Late
Show With James Corden” ...
appeared on “Sports-
Center” in English, and then
was interviewed by legend-
ary journalist Jorge Ramos
in Spanish on Univision.
“It’s Chicharito. Every-
one wants him on their TV
shows,” Jonathan dos San-
tos, Hernández’s teammate
with the Galaxy and Mexi-
can national team, said in
Spanish. “This is Hollywood.
The marketing in the United
States, in soccer, is what
sells. He does it well.”
He’s also does it with hu-
mility. Hernández is well
aware that, as the team’s
captain and striker, he’s re-
placing the acerbic Ibrahi-
movic, who repeatedly criti-cized the league and many
teammates during a two-
season MLS visit in which he
set scoring records but
didn’t win a trophy.
Without mentioning
Ibrahimovic, now with AC
Milan, Hernández made it
clear he has a different
agenda.
“Let’s put aside the
comparisons,” he said. “We
need to be very respectful to
value this league, value this
tournament, value this
country.
“Win the league, that’s
what is on my mind. If I score
only one goal but the team
wins, we are all going to win.
And if I score, I don’t know,
50 goals and we don’t qualify
for playoffs, it won’t do any
good.”
Dominguez agrees. Many
fans in Saturday’s sellout
crowd, he said, will be there
to see Hernández. If they
have a good time and the
team plays well, they’ll be
back. If not? Well, there’s al-
ways the Mexican league on
TV.
“He will definitely bring a
lot to the table,” he said.
“The potential of it being ex-
tremely beneficial for the
city, for MLS and then for
soccer in the United States is
definitely there.
“But ultimately we have
to see the movie play out.”Galaxy’s newest star is eager to finally hit his pitch
[Galaxy, from D1]
MEXICANnational team star Javier “Chicharito” Hernández, right, fits right
into the L.A. scene, having appeared on talk shows and attending Lakers games.Bob LeveyGetty Images