In 2020 MLS Cup Playoffs, Clubs Give Thanks For Managers With Trophies

After 10 matches of the 2020 MLS Cup Playoffs, there is one emerging commonality among the eight survivors. It’s their managers. More specifically, it’s the trophies those those managers have won.

The eight men guiding their respective clubs in pursuit of the 2020 MLS Cup have won the honor a combined 10 times in the past. Yes, that figure is inflated by the New England Revolution and Bruce Arena, the league’s winningest coach, who is at his third stop after helping the LA Galaxy and D.C. United to a combined five league titles. Even so, take out his two early league titles with D.C., and those five managers have helped their clubs lift eight of the last 10 MLS Cups, beginning when Nashville’s Gary Smith guided the Colorado Rapids to the honor in 2010.

Expand this to all major trophies and six of those eight men have combined for 17 honors over 52 combined previous seasons. Only Minnesota’s Adrian Heath and Dallas’ Luchi Gonzalez are lacking, and they have reasonable excuses: Heath won multiple titles at lower-division Orlando early last decade, and has spent most of his MLS career building expansion clubs. Gonzalez is only in his second season in the job.

Trophies Won: Remaining 2020 MLS Playoff Mananagers

1. Bruce Arena (NE) – 9 major honors (5 MLS Cups), 13 seasons
2. Peter Vermes (SKC) – 4 major honors (1 MLS Cup), 11 seasons
3. Brian Schmetzer (SEA) – 2 major honors (2 MLS Cups), 4 seasons
4. Oscar Pareja (ORL) – 2 major honors (0 MLS Cups), 7 seasons
5. Gary Smith (NSH) – 1 major honor (1 MLS Cup), 4 seasons
6. Caleb Porter – 1 major honor (1 MLS Cup), 6 seasons
7. Luchi Gonzalez – 0 major honors (0 MLS Cups), 1 season
8. Adrian Heath – 0 major honors (0 MLS Cups), 5 seasons

NOTE: “Seasons” in chart above do not include not-yet-complete 2020 campaign.

As for the 10 MLS managers whose playoff teams have already been eliminated? Only two — LAFC’s Bob Bradley and Toronto FC’s Greg Vanney — have previously lifted an MLS Cup as a coach, and both were beaten by managers who have done the same.

Of the other eight losing coaches, only the Philadelphia Union’s Jim Curtin and Portland Timbers’ Giovanni Savarese have any sort of major MLS trophy to their name, both coming this year and with an asterisk. Savarese’s Timbers won the 2020 MLS is Back Tournament this summer, a one-off event which for practical purposes replaced the U.S. Open Cup this season. Curtin’s Union won the 2020 Supporters’ Shield, an honor that was nearly canceled because of the irregularity of an MLS season interrupted and shortened by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Playoffs have been expanded across North American sports leagues this year in an effort to compensate for shortened seasons. Yet the results have largely — and maybe surprisingly — held to regular season form. In baseball’s World Series, the victorious Los Angeles Dodgers and defeated Tampa Bay Rays were both the top finishers in their respective leagues. Basketball’s Los Angeles Lakers won the NBA Championship after finishing atop the Western Conference. Even hockey’s Stanley Cup Playoffs, usually the laden with upsets, was relatively predictable with the East’s second-seeded Tampa Bay Lightning defeating the West’s third-seeded Dallas stars.

Maybe amid all the uncertainty of 2020, track record means even more than usual. And while that hasn’t protected all of the MLS’s higher seeds these playoffs, the managers who have been here before have generally prevailed. Two weeks from now, it’s a good bet one of them will add another trophy to their collection.