Donovan starts new chapter as coach

SAN DIEGO » Landon Donovan didn’t wander far from the soccer field once he finally retired as a player.

Turns out, he’s merely moved to the sideline.

Donovan, one of the greatest U.S. soccer players of all time, has revived his passion for the game as coach of the expansion San Diego Loyal of the professional second-division United Soccer League. He’s spent the last eight months helping to build the team, and on March 7 he and the Loyal will debut against the Las Vegas Lights at the University of San Diego’s 6,000seat football stadium.

“I am absolutely loving it,” Donovan said before a recent practice.

“I said to my wife probably a week ago, I feel like I found my calling. I think for athletes who retire who have been so involved in a sport their whole life, it’s really hard to find passion again, because it’s all I knew, and you weren’t practicing anything else. I was so singularly focused on playing. Now I feel like I’ve found what I’m supposed to be doing, again, which is a really nice feeling.”

Now 37, Donovan last played for the indoor San Diego Sockers last spring, one of the “little fun things” he did after his MLS and U.S. men’s national team careers ended.

“But that’s not sustainable. This is something that can be sustainable,” he said.

“It’s allowed me to time to find my love again and in a different way,” he added. While not missing the grind of training, “It’s fun to get that same energy while also trying to make a positive impact on these young men’s lives. That’s what’s been really great for me.”

Donovan and his family were already living in soccer-mad San Diego when Loyal president and CEO Warren Smith secured the rights for the franchise and asked the former star if he wanted to be involved. Donovan had been involved in an attempt to bring an MLS franchise to San Diego as part of a massive development to replace SDCCU Stadium after the NFL’s Chargers left for Los Angeles. That effort lost a bruising battle against San Diego State, which won the rights to the site for a campus expansion and 35,000-seat football stadium.

Once Donovan accepted the offer to be coach and executive vice president of soccer operations, he hired assistants Carrie Taylor, who has coached both men’s and women’s teams, and Nate Miller.

Donovan said “nothing and everything” have prepared him to coach.

“There’s nothing like doing it, but all my experiences, paying attention through the years, to things I liked, didn’t like, would do, wouldn’t do, give you the platform to do things the way you want to do it,” he said.