Should also note Vanney’s win percentage at Toronto was 42%, so 40% at LA isn’t some shocking drop in form.
Only watched the highlights but a USL team could do better. Whether it's tactics or managing the locker room or both, Vanney has failed and he needs to go.
This! We have plenty of examples of teams that don't take the steps to be competitive, fire the coach, look to rebuild the roster with players that better fit the coaches style and then rinse and repeat. Look at the Spurs and the number of coaches they have had, since Pochettino was fired.
Yes, firing Vanney is no guarantee that the next coach is better. But it’s also hard to see the team embarrass itself like this and not need to make a change. This is waaaaaay worse than 2023 or 2017.
Honest question—is Jim Curtin an upgrade over Vanney? He’s probably the best coach available right now. Anyone else is taking a risk on the unknown.
First of all, how dare you. But Spurs have almost the opposite problem to LA. Where Beckerman is largely an absentee proxy for an absentee owner, Levy is a tinkerer. There’s a healthy balance between those two. At the risk of beating a dead horse, I don’t think sacking Greg is a knee jerk reaction. Vanney has had enough time to prove he can be a consistent manager in LA, but he’s failed 4 of his 5 seasons in charge. Admittedly his one success was spectacular and I suspect if you offered yesterday’s opponent the same Faustian bargain they’d jump at the chance.
What about Tata Martino? He left Miami due to “personal reason.” I wonder if he’s available. He’d be #1 for me followed by Curtin.
Small point of order. He's failed 3 of 5 seasons. 2022 we finished 4th in the West and made it to the conference semi-finals where we lost late to the eventual league champions.
Is he though? One championship with a hot Atlanta team that had the best 2 players in the league at the time and inability to win with the best player ever, plus other failures between those, makes me question if he's really an improvement.
I personally wouldn't mind seeing what Curtin can do with our up and coming younger players combined with our willingness to spend on the right max TAM/DP players. Philly was all in on their academy (for good reason as they had many quality players emerge) but they aren't exact known as an ambitious club... Thoughts?
Keane as an assistant for the offensive side I wouldn't be against either... That is if he's willing to take an assistant role, or we can label it as associate head coach...
One possibility- find a coach with an upward trajectory in a secondary league, like the Scandinavian leagues. They may be talented as the top league coaches but they won’t be as expensive. It worked for Vancouver.
Hear me out: 1) Big team pedigree. Has coached Barcelona, Argentina, and Mexico. Very high profile, high pressure jobs. 2) Has a Barcelona connection, so might be good for a guy like Puig. 3) Might be a negative as we saw with Mexico, but he’s known for a pragmatic coaching style. He’ll adapt when he needs to, but has a structured, organized possession style of play. Don’t think it worked well with Mexico, but our team needs a lot more of that. I do like Curtin’s willingness to work with the academy, and how he gets a lot from very little.
To me the person in charge of the Hotspurs is kind of like many of the fans on this board, lets just fire the coach/manager and see if the next guy works. My problem isn't that Beckerman and Anschutz are absentee owners, its that they didn't let the money spent sit and work until the U22's and DPs developed and were sold. As I recall Kuntz's strategy (which I have never heard contradicted) was to only ask for the money once and then use sale proceeds to fund future acquisitions. Instead, they gutted that plan when they clawed their investment back the first chance they could. Is anyone seriously going to tell me that the Galaxy couldn't have fixed some of their mid-field problems by investing $3mm of the $4mm SKC paid for Dejan, in 2 almost max TAM players.
My poor Manchester United has gone through tons of coaches each touted as better quality than the last guy. Some of them didn't even make it 6 games before people were chucking them directly under the bus. Sigh,...I just don't want LA to end up like Man U. Getting good coaches but never giving them time to build anything and worse when they do build something that is good, sacking them because of a massive amount of outside circumstances no longer being a good enough reason to have patience. I said it before and I will say it again, it will be a miracle if Vanney makes it to the summer window at this point. I honestly wouldn't mind that as a move at all. I haven't watched his other teams to see how he ran his attack, but I know that the man knows how to attack. Make him the assistant and put him on attack training and then if and when they pull the trigger make him the interim coach until a true replacement is found. I have been looking around and currently here are a list of some and the last teams they were in charge of that are available if Vanney is indeed out. A couple of names might be controversial but I added them anyway. And I even threw in some guys that have run teams in other coutries,... Peter Vermes : Sporting FC Erik Ten Hag : Manchester United Xavi : Barcalona FC Tab Ramos : New England Revs Jurgen Klinsmann : South Korea National Team Hugo Ibarra : Boca Junior Dunga : Brazil National Team Joachim Low : German National Team
Well Vancouver hasn’t won anything yet. So we need to wait and see what happens over the next couple of years.
True. And except for LAFC and MIN, VAN has played teams in the bottom half of the table. But they’ve gone from allowing 1.4 (2024) to 0.8 g/gm (14 games, 2025) and their offense has improved from 1.5 to 2.0 g/gm. That is a goal differential change from +0.1 to +1.2 per game. I expect the dominance to drop off as their schedule gets tougher but still this improvement is likely not just a lucky streak. Especially since Sorensen’s team had a great D in his previous stop (2nd best in league). But, as you say, only time will tell.
Your first paragraph sells many of Vanneys critics short, IMO. They aren’t all knee-jerk, naive posters as you suggest. But your 2nd paragraph is 100% truth. I feel either Kuntz or his boss Beckerman or both (whoever made the decisions) penny-pinched and betrayed the club when they refused to put those millions back into our payroll. I don’t know if it was greedy but I do know it was a massive mistake that critically damaged the club and it’s rep. There is NO reason to have lost all those player assets at once, even factoring in the way the MLS salary cap works. Creative contract shuffling was supposed to be Kuntz’s specialty, for christ’s sake!
I believe that this move caused damage that will last beyond this year. Players want to be part of a winning team, to have a legitimate sense that they could lift a trophy. I recall past discussions about a Galaxy discount because of their winning tradition.
I’m ready to move on from Vanney. I’ve gone from defending him and urging patience in his earlier seasons to thinking he’s WAY past his sell by date at this point. It’s almost impossible to get any worse than our current form. It’s time to move on. I want Kuntz to remain in his post at this point.