LAFC Sack Marc Dos Santos: The Most Expensive Squad in MLS With the 15th-Ranked Attack

On Sunday night, September 13, 2026, LAFC issued a statement confirming the departure of head coach Marc Dos Santos. In Incheon it was noon on Monday, and I was rewinding tape of their most recent match. At 65, I still stay up until 3 a.m. to break down an MLS game nobody around me would bother switching on. What stopped me mid-frame sat in the ranking line printed under Dos Santos's name: LAFC stand 15th in MLS in goals per game, 19th in big chances created, 16th in expected goals. In that squad were Son Heung-Min and Denis Bouanga. A club that bought stars and forgot to buy a system, and the final bill was paid by the man in the dugout.

To understand why that seat was burning, you have to understand who LAFC are in MLS. They are one of the league's biggest spenders, carrying a group of players among the most expensive a Major League Soccer club can field. Before the 2026 campaign, American analysts placed them among the MLS Cup favourites. Not playoff favourites. Cup favourites.

Then Steve Cherundolo left the dugout to join the United States youth national team setup. LAFC chose to promote from within, handing the job to Dos Santos, a decision that surprised even long-time watchers of the club. The board called it continuity. In football, continuity only has value when the working core already exists. LAFC had a core of big names and were missing exactly the other part.

Dos Santos's record across 39 matches: 19 wins, 10 draws, 10 defeats. A win rate just under 49 percent, a figure plenty of clubs elsewhere would accept. At LAFC the benchmark is not the league average. The benchmark is the money poured into the squad.

The 2026 season unfolded along the worst imaginable script. After the 2026 World Cup break, LAFC won three on the bounce and people assumed they had found their rhythm. Since August 1, 2026, they have won exactly one MLS match. They now sit sixth in the Western Conference, with six regular-season games left, and a run-in featuring Vancouver, NYCFC and an El Tráfico derby against a resurgent LA Galaxy.

The problem lives in creation, not finishing. Read the ranking order again: LAFC are 15th in goals per game, but only 19th in big chances created. The big-chances metric counts passes leading to a shot from which the shooter is expected to score. A team near the bottom of the league on that measure has a creative system failing before the ball reaches the finisher. Their 16th place in expected goals almost matches their 15th place in actual goals. This team scores exactly as much as the quality of its chances allows. No luck, no bad luck. Just hunger.

An attack featuring Son Heung-Min and Denis Bouanga, ranked 19th in the league for big chances created, is not a personnel problem. It is a structural problem.

Those ranking figures were reported by Goal.com at the time the LAFC article was published.

Son arrived at LAFC in late 2026 and scored 12 goals in his first 13 games. This year he has six. Alongside them sit 13 assists, and that number is the one worth talking about. At 34, Son does not drop deep to distribute out of choice. Attacking players only drop when nobody ahead of them is stretching the opposing shape, when nobody in midfield can play the pass into the space behind the back line.

A properly functioning side would put Son in danger a different way: pull the opposing full-back out of position, occupy the half-space, then return the ball to the second line on the right beat. Based on my experience watching these matches, LAFC did close to the opposite. The ball reached Son 30 metres from goal, facing two banks of defenders already set. He received in positions where he had to manufacture his own square metre, rather than positions where he only had to side-foot it home. Denis Bouanga remains a frightening runner, but one man cannot stretch the line and finish the move at the same time.

The MLS mechanism needs spelling out. The league operates under a salary cap plus the Designated Player rule, allowing clubs to register a limited number of players above the cap whose wages count only partially against it. That sounds like paradise for rich clubs, but the consequence is that when you concentrate money on two stars, the rest of the squad has to be cheap. LAFC optimised the tip and left the root empty: no central midfielder good enough to set the tempo, no full-back capable of running both ways for 90 minutes.

The result is a team that controls the ball through individuals rather than through structure. And structure is the only thing that does not collapse when a star loses form.

One detail gets overlooked: LAFC exited the Leagues Cup early despite losing no group game. That is the signature of a side that cannot handle knockout pressure, precisely the pressure that would arrive in the MLS playoffs if they qualify. I once asked a coach directly about his personnel mistake; the press room went silent for ten seconds. When the whole press room falls silent, I know I have touched the sore spot. In Los Angeles this time, the silence lasted two months, and it ended with a sacking statement.

But I could be wrong, and I want to be clear about where.

Dos Santos may simply be the scapegoat. Final responsibility lies with the recruitment department, the people who built an expensive but unbalanced squad and then pushed an internal appointment into a position where he had to satisfy both a dressing room full of stars and an impatient board. From that angle, every defeat is the fault of the man in the dugout, while the squad blueprint is the fault of the men in the meeting room.

Age may also be the issue. Son is 34 this year. Some declines no tactical diagram can patch. If peak speed and the ability to repeat sprints across 90 minutes have fallen away, his deeper positioning is biological more than tactical. I still see elite vision in his passing; what is fading is the number of times he can accelerate to create space for himself. The source analysis mentions no injury, so I keep this possibility at low confidence.

And 39 matches may be a sample blending two seasons with two different squad contexts. Pinning everything on one man is the most convenient reading, and the most convenient reading is usually the wrong one.

One more thing: the "new manager bounce" the media will celebrate over the coming weeks is largely a statistical illusion drawn from three or four matches. Six remaining rounds are not long enough to prove anything about a successor's ability.

So here is my public bet, for you to track.

If, between now and the end of the 2026 MLS regular season, LAFC do not climb into the league's top 12 for big chances created, then the coaching seat in Los Angeles is something to swap, not something to fix. If Son finishes the last six games with fewer than four goals, the answer lies in his birth certificate more than in the tactics board. And if Bouanga suddenly explodes again under a new coach, remember this set of September numbers and ask yourself why the explosion only came after someone was shown the door.

People hate me because I say it first, then remember me because I said it right. At 65, I still stand by that line. What is worth watching is not who takes the empty seat, but whether LAFC dare admit they bought the wrong thing.