In MLS, there are many factors that determine whether a chief soccer officer is successful. Obviously, the top-line metric is simple: winning. But plenty of other things determine if you can do that. Do you create pathways for homegrowns? Do you move on from players at the right time? Do you maximize your budget? All of these things matter.
So, too, does signing excellent Designated Players. There are no more potentially impactful spots on an MLS roster than the DP spots, because there’s no limit to what you can spend on those players. What’s one way, then, to suss out which front office heads are the best in the business? Determining which CSOs excel at signing DPs.
To do that, I found and evaluated every DP signing made by all of the current CSOs in MLS. Quickly, here’s my evaluation methodology:
- Using per 96 data from American Soccer Analysis, all data factored into the evaluation comes from the past five seasons. Too much changes too fast in MLS to go back any further and very, very few eligible players or CSOs have data that spans before that five-season window anyway.
- Players must have played a minimum of 600 minutes in a season for the club to be eligible for inclusion.
- CSOs must have at least two DP signings that meet the above criteria to be evaluated. If you haven’t done that, well, you’re either new to your post or you and your organization have some things to sort out.
Now for the criteria:
- Goal added (g+), American Soccer Analysis’ a possession value statistic
- Expected goals plus expected assists (xG+xA)
- Goals plus assists (G+A)
- Above benchmark (AB)
For that last bullet point. I wanted something more than just raw numbers, so I built a season-by-season comparison of each DP in each of the first three categories against the average contributions of the top 100 non-DP players in the league. That’s the benchmark for that season. So for example: if Hany Mukhtar performed better than that benchmark in four out of five seasons, he would be “above benchmark” 80% of the time. A DP should be better than a non-DP, after all, so it’s a useful comparison tool.
One more caveat before we get to the rankings: at times, there’s mystery around who exactly gets DP deals over the line. An owner might dictate a big signing. A CSO might serve as the public face of the front office while someone underneath them truly recruits and signs players. With that in mind, this isn’t a hard and fast ranking. I’ve drawn in as much available context as possible all the same.
So, which CSOs are the best of the best when it comes to adding stars? Behold, the tiers:
Best in class
John Thorrington, LAFC | 0.33 g+, 0.58 xG+xA, 0.64 G+A, 81.82% AB
Mike Jacobs, Nashville SC | 0.28 g+, 0.56 xG+xA, 0.58 G+A, 81.43% AB
When it comes to signing DPs, two CSOs stand above the rest. Not only have John Thorrington and Mike Jacobs consistently added good players but they’ve also signed legitimate superstars.
It would be pretty difficult to beat Thorrington’s top three DPs in Carlos Vela, Denis Bouanga, and Son Heung-Min, who have all been among the best signings in league history. His only real misses were giving DP contracts to Olivier Giroud and Eduard Atuesta – even the short-term deal for Cengiz Under was statistically a successful one.
