Mental health at center of Landon Donovan's Wave coaching approach

San Diego Wave interim coach Landon Donovan talks to players during their game against Angel City FC on Saturday.

Staff Writer

Aug. 24, 2024 4:01 PM PT

SAN DIEGO — Since he first retired from soccer nearly a decade ago, Landon Donovan unretired to play nine games with the Galaxy, spent six months in the Mexican league with León, played eight games in the Major Arena Soccer League, helped found a team in the second-division USL Championship and coached it to two playoff appearances, became part owner of a team in Wales and a strategic advisor to a third-tier team in England, and did soccer commentary for Fox and ESPN.

For many athletes retirement means the end of a career; for the peripatetic Donovan, it’s become an opportunity to try out a whole bunch of new ones. His most recent choice may be the most surprising however, because nine days ago Donovan, widely considered the best male player in U.S. soccer history, was named interim coach of a women’s team, the San Diego Wave.

“I’m pretty surprised myself,” Donovan said.

Yet the most interesting part of the story isn’t so much that Donovan got the job. It’s how he got it. When Wave president Jill Ellis reached out to him earlier this month looking for recommendations for an interim coach to replace the fired Casey Stoney, Donovan recommended himself.

“He and I were having a conversation, and he sort of said, ‘you know, I miss coaching. I would like to be considered for this’,” Ellis said. “And I was like, ‘wow. OK.’

“So we moved on it. And I think it’s been a terrific move.”

So far the results have been mixed, with Saturday’s 2-1 home loss to Angel City following a 2-0 CONCACAF W Champions Cup win in Panama. That hasn’t shaken Ellis’ confidence though. Sure, Donovan has had no connection with the women’s games in his long career. But he wasn’t hired to coach women. He was hired him to coach soccer players.

“It’s not about coaching men or women. It’s about coaching a person,” said Ellis, who coached the women’s national team to consecutive World Cups titles. “Landon Donovan has the most astute emotional intelligence I’ve even see. He’s going to connect with people and players.”

It’s a trait Donovan, 42, earned the hard way. Despite his unparalleled success, the six-time MLS Cup champion battled depression so severe he had to take a five-month break from soccer at the prime of his career. Since returning, he’s become an outspoken advocate on the importance of mental health.

“I’ve been there. I wanted compassion and grace so I’m going to give that to them,” Donovan said of his players. “Doesn’t mean I’m not hard on them. I hold them accountable.

”[But] if you can take five minutes and empathize with something they’re going through, it’s going to help make them better. I genuinely care about them as people.”

San Diego Wave interim coach Landon Donovan looks on from the bench during Saturday's match against Angel City FC.

That’s obvious in his manner. While many coaches scream to get their point across, Donovan speaks so softly listeners often have to strain to hear him. With Donovan it’s not just the message, but the way it’s delivered, that’s important.

That approach is already making a difference with the Wave.

“He’s very adamant on checking in on people,” defender Kennedy Wesley said. “He’s done a very good job managing us individually.”

Wesley, like most NWSL players, has played for several male coaches during her career. Only three of the 14 teams in the league have female managers and at the college level, more than two-thirds of women’s soccer teams are coached by men.

For Donovan, on the other hand, coaching women is novel. But the transition has been a smooth one.

“In the end they’re human beings and they’re soccer players,” he said. “There are subtle differences. I could go through 10 of them. But they’re not like major, crazy differences. The biggest so far for me has been how much faster they have picked up information, processed information, implemented information.”

During Friday’s practice at the Wave’s sprawling training facility, hidden at the end of a gravel road about three miles from interstate 5 in Del Mar, the new coach mostly watched, allowing his assistants to direct traffic and organize the drills. But the ideas were all his.

Donovan was cerebral as a player and he’s no less so as a coach. If the X’s and Os aren’t his biggest strength, he doesn’t ignore them either. After all, he retired as the all-time leading scorer both in MLS and with the national team and he didn’t set those records by being passive. So the Wave won’t be either.

“It’s changed a lot,” Wesley said of the team’s playing style. “We want to get the ball forward, keep the ball in their half as much as we can.

“Everything he says we kind of trust and buy into it because clearly he knows what he’s doing.”

Wesley, an NWSL rookie, grew up a Galaxy fan and remembers going to games with her family carrying cutouts of Donovan’s face stapled to a stick. So she wasn’t sure how to react when Ellis told the team her favorite player was going to be her new coach.

“I thought that was pretty funny,” she said. “It was honestly a super-big shock; like a really surreal moment.”

How long that moment lasts could be determined in the next two months. With Saturday’s loss running the Wave’s winless streak to 10 games in NWSL play, San Diego (3-8-6) is 11th in the league table, three points out of the eighth and final playoff berth with nine games remaining. As the interim coach, Donovan has been tasked with both getting the Waves into the NWSL postseason and out of group play in the CONCACAF W Champions Cup.

And he’ll have to do that with an injury-riddled roster that was missing seven players Saturday, including Olympic gold medalists Jaedyn Shaw and Naomi Girma. That forced Donovan to give 16-year-old midfielder Melanie Barcenas her first NWSL start.

Whether he succeeds or fails, Ellis said newly appointed sporting director Camille Ashton and new owners Lauren Leichtman and Arthur Levine will wait until the offseason to discuss candidates for the full-time coaching position. And if Donovan is asked again for a recommendation, his answer will be the same as it was the first time Ellis asked.

“It feels like the most natural thing, by a long ways, of all the things I’ve done since I retired,” he said. “I can’t pinpoint why. I wish I could.

“I just feel like I’m meant to be here.”