Two days before Angel City FC opens its preseason training camp, the NWSL team completed one of its major offseason tasks Wednesday by naming Mark Parsons its sporting director.
Parsons, a former NWSL coach of the year who won a championship with Portland, is the first major soccer hire since Willow Bay and her husband, Disney chief executive Bob Iger, became Angel City’s majority owners last summer. Now he 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 that he won’t be rushed.
“I have a deadline that I want to get this done by,” Parsons said in a phone call Wednesday. “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 players reporting Friday for 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 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 championship.
After leaving Portland, he coached the Dutch women’s team for 11 months, then returned to the Spirit, replacing Kris Ward as the permanent coach for the 2023 season. His teams have made seven playoff appearances.
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. 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 banned from the league for life.
