Oscar Pareja lasted three matches with Orlando City in 2026. Marco Donadel lasted seven with CF Montreal.
This MLS campaign marks the second straight with multiple coaching changes before June. 2025 saw four such changes. Pareja and Donadel are the 11th and 12th coaches to get a set of pre-June marching orders in the past five years, a trend that’s up more than double when compared to the previous five years.
Teams don’t fire coaches just for the fun of it – it’s an awfully expensive habit, if nothing else. No, managers are typically replaced to spark more success on the field. So if MLS is seeing an increase in early firings, that must be because those coaching changes are yielding results, right?
No, not at all.
Only one of the 10 most recent pre-June coaching changes prior to this season actually resulted in an improved table position come the end of the year. That outlier was the 2023 New York Red Bulls, who were last in the Eastern Conference under Gerhard Struber but pushed up to eighth under Troy Lesesne in a move that made them the only team of the 10 to even make the postseason after an early coaching change. In a league where 60% of teams make the playoffs, almost none of these teams with a quick trigger finger managed to rebound under a new manager.
