Heading into the pivotal final few weeks of the Major League Soccer season, the playoff chasing LA Galaxy are without a head coach.
Veteran head coach Sigi Schmid, 65, has resigned as LA’s leader and his assistant Dominic Kinnear has stepped in for the remaining six games of the season.
Schmid has more wins than any other coach in MLS history with 240 in the regular season.
The Galaxy -- currently in the middle of a six-game winless runs which included a 5-0 hammering at Seattle and a 6-2 defeat at Real Salt Lake -- have scheduled a conference call for 5 p.m. ET Monday.
ESPN’s Taylor Twellman first broke the news, stating that Schmid was out immediately with former Houston Dynamo and San Jose Earthquakes head coach Kinnear stepping in.
Effective immediately Sigi Schmid is stepping down from @LAGalaxy as head coach with Dominic Kinnear taking over as interim. #MLS
— Taylor Twellman (@TaylorTwellman) September 10, 2018
Despite their poor form this season, Zlatan Ibrahimovic has scored 16 goals and the Galaxy sit just three points out of the playoff places in the Western Conference. However, the balance of this team just hasn’t seemed right for some time with big name players not gelling and the teams around them in the playoff hunt do have games in hand of LA.
Schmid took charge of the Galaxy for a second stint in the final months of the 2017 season, after previously winning an MLS Cup in 2002 with LA during five years at the helm from 1999-2004. He then went on to turn Columbus into perennial MLS Cup contenders (winning it all in 2008) before being the coach of the Seattle Sounders from 2009-16 as he set the foundations for one of the most successful expansion franchises in MLS history.
During his illustrious coaching career Schmid won the U.S. Open Cup five times and the MLS Supporters’ Shield three times, as well as MLS Cups with LA and the Columbus Crew plus the CONCACAF Champions Cup with LA in 2000.
Whether or not this is the end of his coaching career remains to be seen, but he is one of the greatest managers in U.S. history.
Many believe cleaning out the front office at the StubHub Center would be a much better idea as two years of struggle followed Bruce Arena’s departure for the USMNT head coaching job in 2016.
