Friday, December 01, 2006

Top Ten MLS Coaches

There have been a total of 49 head coaches in MLS, including interim. Including all competitions (not just the regular season) through 2006, which ones have done the best?

Top Ten MLS Coaches Ranked by PPG

(minimum 50 games, shootouts counted as draws)

1 Arena, Bruce 1.80
2 Yallop, Frank 1.70
3 Zambrano, Octavio 1.67
4 Schmid, Sigi 1.62
5 Nowak, Peter 1.60
6 Sarachan, Dave 1.59
7 Bradley, Bob 1.58
8 Kinnear, Dominic 1.56
9 Hudson, Ray 1.49
10 Nicol, Steve 1.48

29/49 meet the 50 game requirement, while everyone else has 36 or fewer. The bottom three are Ivo Wortman (1.11), Alfonso Mondelo (1.06), and John Ellinger (0.93).

Also, there's a really interesting stat about MLS coaches that I read a while ago. I believe it was on Bigsoccer, from Numerista (EDIT: It was actually by ChrisE, and here's the thread)? Using regular season records only, they determined that no MLS coach has done better with their second team than with the first. That was from at least a year ago, so I double checked it myself, and it turns out that Fernando Clavijo is the only guy for whom that's not the case (1.20 vs 1.34). He still has a losing record for both teams though.

Comments on "Top Ten MLS Coaches"

 

Anonymous Anonymous said ... (9:21 AM, December 02, 2006) : 

Fwiw, I think this is the original BigSoccer thread.
http://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=158085

 

Blogger scaryice said ... (9:52 PM, December 02, 2006) : 

Yes, thanks a lot.

 

Blogger Eric PZ said ... (7:40 PM, December 05, 2006) : 

Interesting that 3 of the top 4 are/were LA coaches. However, one has a much better record coaching elsewhere and the other two have had their record go down after leaving LA. That would prove ChrisE's point I guess. :)

 

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