‘I know the club’ - Why LAFC promoted Marc Dos Santos to head coach and how he plans to utilize Son Heung-Min and Denis Bouanga differently in 2026

Cherundolo, in some ways, did LAFC a massive favor when announcing his departure early. There were questions being asked about the coach’s future after a poor start last season. But the former U.S. international made it clear that he, after winning an MLS Cup in 2022, and handling an immensely talented group, would move back to his beloved Germany at the end of the year. To be sure, it left LAFC open to the kind of rumor and hearsay that big clubs despise. But it also gave them plenty of time to find the right guy for the job. 

And the names tossed around were impressive. Word was, for a while, that LAFC were going to get some of the best managers in the international market. Ange Postecoglou - let go by Spurs after winning the Europa League final - was mentioned. Plenty of others with fine European pedigrees were reportedly in the mix.

"Look, it's LAFC. So for sure, the interest in coaches to coach here was very big. I'm not naive. I know that probably the number of names that came into John Thorrington's table was a lot - different profiles, that kind of thing. Some may have been real, others probably were only rumors. You know how football works," Dos Santos said.

And LAFC considered everyone - domestic and foreign. Thorrington called up Dos Santos in August and offered him the chance to interview. 

"He said we want to have some local candidates and some international candidates. Would you be interested in interviewing for the job? I said, '100 percent'," Dos Santos said.

Dos Santos had, by his own admission, been thinking about a head coaching job for some time. 

"Other opportunities came in, you know, other teams, another country," he said. 

That would make sense. Dos Santos had held two MLS head coaching jobs before moving to Los Angeles in 2022. There was interest from both American and foreign clubs in securing his services ahead of 2026. The chance to stick around, though, proved immensely tempting.

The job was by no means handed to him. Thorrington made it abundantly clear that this was an interview process, and Dos Santos was one of multiple being considered. It was a strange few months, he admitted. 

"I want to be the best assistant coach I can to help Steve in the best way I can, to try to win with this team. And at the same time, I was in the interview process with LAFC. That was a new experience for me, and a very weird one," Dos Santos said.

During midseason, LAFC had picked up steam by signing former Spurs star - and captain of the Korean National Team - Son Heung-Min (an acquisition that no doubt added noise to the Postecoglou chatter). 

Dos Santos had a hands-on role in setting up the side. And LAFC were good. Son had galvanized the team, as had a trio of other big signings, to flesh out a unit that was a serious MLS Cup contender. Worrying about the minutiae of that while also interviewing for one of the biggest jobs in MLS was no easy feat. 

"It was the first time in my life that I was coaching a team while I was being interviewed by that team. Doing that part, I have to tell you, was different and special," Dos Santos said. 

Yet Dos Santos proved to be the clear domestic candidate. The main reason, Thorrington revealed, was that he had been there. His resume reads well, with experience in Montreal and Vancouver. But most importantly, he had spent time on the grass with a group that was only improving. If at all possible, there was no need to change things up too much - no matter who else was in the mix.

"He has earned the trust in his time at LAFC of our locker room, from our young emerging players to our most experienced veterans," Thorrington said at Dos Santos' unveiling.

That is not to say that Dos Santos is Cherundolo Part 2. If the former manager’s approach was a little cautious at times, Dos Santos was far more aggressive. Cherundolo’s exact influence was hard to pin down. Dos Santos likes PSG. 

Les Parisians, under Luis Enrique, play possession-based football, but are deadly for the switchability of their athletic attacking players. You’d have to get pretty creative to compare Denis Bouanga to Desire Doue, but Dos Santos has a similar vision. 

"PSG, none of their attackers is fixed by their profile, right? So if I had this No. 9 whose best quality is to be fixed, I won't try to change his quality into something that is not right. But with players like Denis Bouanga or Sonny, you have the ability to be mobile," Dos Santos said.

Of course, these things are subject to change, too. Dos Santos knows, for example, that Pep Guardiola changed football by popularizing Tiki-Taka in the late 2000s. These days, Man City keep the ball far less. 

"Look at Guardiola, when he had this big Barcelona year, he used things from the 1974 Dutch team. Some things in football are gonna come and go, like fashion. Years ago, sideburns were fashionable, and I think they're going to come back one day in 20 years. Sideburns will be fashionable again," Dos Santos joked. 

Facial hair notwithstanding, LAFC have to be more comfortable with the ball. LAFC were direct, sometimes to a fault, towards the end of Cherundolo’s reign. With Tillman, former Porto man Stephen Eustaquio, and Delgado in midfield, they have the personnel to control games in full. That’s Tillman’s dream style of football.

"We just want to have the ball a little more. We want to have more control of the game with the ball. With Steve, I feel like we also had a lot of control over games, but sometimes we were a little passive. Now we just want to be more active," Tillman said. 

And in all of this he does obviously have one clear weapon. If Lionel Messi didn’t also play in MLS, Son would be, by some distance, the league’s most effective attacking player. At 33, he has lost a bit of the pace that made him one of the best wingers in European football. But he can still score and assist in spades as he had nine goals and three assists in 10 league matches last season. 

LAFC will, no doubt, lean on him for goals and assists this year. Dos Santos insists that the Korean is at his best in the left channel, where he can finish with his right foot. But such is his versatility that Dos Santos refuses to hold him down to one singular position. 

“He's a team guy. I want him to be in a mobile position, not in a fixed position, because when he's mobile, and he could kind of go from one side to the other, that's when he participates more with the team. That's how I see him in our way of playing,” Dos Santos said. 

The new manager could not be happier with the response from the team, he said. There have been some changes - LAFC have made a few signings, and there are new faces in the backroom staff. 

"When you become a coach, you have to naturally take two, three steps back. You have to make sure that the new voices that are coming in are good assistant coaches. And that was a focus for me. You know, people say, 'Oh, it's important to delegate. You only delegate to competence,'" he said.

The team likes it, though.

"The new manager's came in and tried to change a couple of things, which, you know, I'm really enjoying just now. And then we'll obviously try and translate that," Ryan Porteous said.

But otherwise, a similar group has adjusted well to what might be a more suffocating style of football. Dos Santos’ approach is heavy on ball work, with an emphasis on small-sided games. Every coach will say they want to be on the front foot and dictate games. Dos Santos has the quality and system for those words to have a real backing.

And perhaps most importantly, the vibes are good. LAFC are expected to compete for the Western Conference title and have very few obvious holes in their team. The standard cliches about needing every man on the roster are here, but they also ring true - if only because LAFC will compete in three competitions and will see some of their top players go to the World Cup this summer. 

"We're in three competitions, and we will try to get as far as possible in them. Man for man, I think we're as good as anyone in the league. It's all about picking up the manager's messages and seeing how far we can get in these competitions," Porteous said. 

In one of his video sessions to close out the preseason, Dos Santos had his team review the highlights of their semifinal loss. There was hurt in the locker room after that game. Dos Santos remembers how deflating it was, how there was a sense that they really should have won it. 

Most of the same group was there, though, breaking down a heartbreaking defeat. And so was the manager, the new face preventing an offseason of change that might take this group one step further.