Two days before Angel City opens its preseason training camp, the NWSL team completed one of its major offseason tasks Wednesday by naming Mark Parsons its new sporting director.
He is the first major soccer hire since Willow Bay and her husband, Disney CEO Bob Iger, became Angel City’s majority owners last summer, must find a coach to replace Becki Tweed, who was fired last month after Angel City (7-13-6) finished 12th in the 14-team league. And Parsons made it clear in a phone call Wednesday that he won’t be rushed.
“I have a deadline that I want to get this done by,” said Parsons, a former NWSL coach of the year who took the Washington Spirit and Portland Thorns to a combined seven playoff appearances. “The goal is that this team is competing for trophies year in, year out and we have a lot of work to get to that point.
“That means we need to get the right head coach and if that was in the next few weeks, that would be wonderful. But time in getting it done is not the priority. Getting the right person is.”
With the players reporting Friday for the start of training camp in Thousand Oaks, Parsons also has a roster to fill out. Angel City lost five key players this winter, among them goalkeeper DiDi Haracic and defender Jasmyne Spencer, who rank 1-2 in appearances for the three-year-old club. And Parsons plans to take his time there as well.
“I’m very diligent when it comes to staff and players. First we need to know who we are and who we’re looking for,” said Parsons, who engineered successful rebuilding projects in Washington and Portland.
“We have the right players that you have to have to win. We’ve got a little bit of work to do and you’ll probably see us become more active in the summer and heading toward the end of the season.”
Parsons, 38, will oversee all soccer operations, including the technical staff, scouting and analytics, and sports medicine and will report to club president Julie Uhrman.
Parsons spent parts of three seasons as coach and general manager of the Washington Spirit before moving to the Portland where he won six trophies with the Thorns, becoming the only coach in league history to win an NWSL Shield, NWSL Challenge Cup and a league championship.
After leaving Portland, he coached the Dutch women’s national team for 11 months, then returned to the NWSL and the Spirit, replacing coach Kris Ward as the permanent coach for the 2023 season.
A native of Surrey, England, Parsons began his coaching career with the Chelsea reserve team when he was 18. He joined the Thorns after the club parted ways with Paul Riley, who six years later was at the center of a wide-ranging sexual harassment and abuse scandal that rocked the NWSL.
Just before Parsons left Portland for the Netherlands, he said he was aware that Riley’s departure from the Thorns followed an investigation into the ex-coach’s conduct. And Ward, the coach Parsons replaced in Washington, was fired after reportedly using aggressive behavior and racist language during a training session.
Riley, Ward and two other NWSL coaches were later banned from the league for life. Parsons has never been linked to any wrongdoing.
