John Thorrington must be the luckiest general manager in MLS.
Just consider the evidence: In his 10 years with LAFC, Thorrington has hired three coaches and each one has been better than the last. How many other executives have a track record like that?
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Then again, maybe it’s not luck. Maybe Thorrington simply has been the best general manager in the league over the past decade.
“Either one. Doesn’t really matter,” Thorrington said when asked for the secret to his success. “The results are what matter.”
And the results have been phenomenal. Since entering MLS in 2018, LAFC has won more games, scored more goals and earned more points than any other club. Over the last eight seasons, no team has won more trophies or played in more CONCACAF finals than LAFC.
None of that was lucky. It was the result of hard work.
Read more: Hugo Lloris posts fifth straight shutout in LAFC’s draw with Austin FC
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“To categorize this almost like a self-driving car is inaccurate,” Thorrington said. “The coaches have a great deal to do with the success we’ve had, and hopefully will continue to have.”
Thorrington was 4 years old the first time he kicked a soccer ball with purpose, in an AYSO game in the South Bay. He got better after that, winning two Southern Section player of the year honors at the Chadwick School in Palos Verdes Peninsula. His professional career took him to six teams in four countries before he retired at 33, enrolled in graduate business school at Northwestern and started a second career with the MLS players’ union.
But he had absolutely no experience managing a soccer team when LAFC, which has a well-earned reputation for thinking outside the box, named him its first general manager less than three weeks before Christmas in 2015. Twenty months later, Thorrington picked Bob Bradley — who coached him with the national team — as the club’s first manager.
It would prove to be the first in a series of smart choices.
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“For us the definition of success is to compete in a sustainable way,” said Thorrington, who is also LAFC’s co-president. “I was told early in my career — and I agree with it still to this day — the most important executive skill is hiring well. I think we have done that well here at LAFC.”
The decision to pick Bradley was a conventional one. He was a no-nonsense taskmaster who had won an MLS Cup and two U.S. Open Cups with the Chicago Fire, had taken the U.S. to the round of 16 in a World Cup and was the first American to coach in the English Premier League. He was chosen in part to establish the club’s culture and its unwavering commitment to success, and he rewarded Thorrington with the best season in MLS history in his second year and with a trip to the CONCACAF Champions League final in his third.
Thorrington’s next two coaching picks weren’t nearly as conventional, yet they’ve proven even more successful. When Bradley left after the 2021 season, LAFC replaced him with Steve Cherundolo, the man whose spot Thorrington took in his national team debut. Cherundolo had spent his entire club playing career and most of his coaching career in Germany and in his only previous try at managing a club in the U.S., his Las Vegas Lights went 6-23-3 in the USL Championship.
But the laid-back San Diegan was the opposite of the intense Bradley and that’s exactly what LAFC needed. Cherundolo won a Supporters’ Shield and MLS Cup in his rookie season, made the MLS Cup and Champions League finals in his second year and won the U.S. Open Cup in his third. He averaged nearly 18 wins in his four seasons in MLS.
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Thorrington’s current coach is Marc Dos Santos, a Canadian-born Portuguese citizen who served as an LAFC assistant under both Bradley and Cherundolo but who lost nearly twice as often as he won in Vancouver in his only previous stint as an MLS manager. He had won everywhere else he coached, however.
Each time LAFC had an opening, Thorrington said he was inundated with emails and phone calls from established coaches around the world. The safe, defendable choice wasn’t necessarily the right one though.
“At LAFC we have certain qualities and principles that we are very upfront about,” said Thorrington, 46, who was named the MLS executive of the year in 2024 and probably should have won the award at least one other time. “The advantage in all three cases was I knew each of the coaches really well.
“There is risk with anybody. For me, the risk I would rather take is not hiring a resume but hiring a person that we feel like meets those qualities.”
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Dos Santos, who speaks four languages, is a bit of a mix of LAFC’s first two managers — not nearly as strict as Bradley, the drill sergeant, yet not quite as relaxed as Cherundolo. So far he’s proven more successful than either.
Granted it’s a small sample size, but Dos Santos has been this close to perfect in his LAFC start, going 4-0-1 in his first five MLS games, all five of which have been clean sheets. It’s the first time in league history a team has opened a season with five consecutive shutouts. Dos Santos is also unbeaten in CONCACAF play too, taking LAFC to the next month’s quarterfinals of the Champions Cup.
If you include the preseason, LAFC is 9-0-4 under Dos Santos. But that start is just that — a start.
“I’m really pleased with not just Marc but the technical staff and all of the staff here,” Thorrington said. “But the focus here is that it’s early. We haven’t done anything yet and I know that there is hunger to improve, push our boundaries and make sure that we are becoming the best version of ourselves.
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“It doesn’t happen without that strong culture. Our standards, our accountability and the way the group pushes each other every day, that is what has sustained our performance independent of who the head coach is. And we’ve had three great ones.”
None of that happened because Thorrington was lucky. It happened because he’s good.
⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
