There are a number of ways to describe LAFC coach Steve Cherundolo.
He’s the only person to win the MLS Cup and Supporters’ Shield in his first season as a manager. With his team’s appearances in Saturday’s MLS championship game against the Columbus Crew, he’ll become one of just three coaches to take his team to the MLS Cup final in each of his first two years; and at 44, he’s also the youngest to do so. Plus with 29 wins and 96 points through his first 50 MLS games, he had the most successful start of any coach in league history.
Yet for Herculez Gomez, a former World Cup teammate who has known Cherundolo more than a dozen years, all those accolades are like the medals on a general’s uniform: they’re window dressing that tell us nothing about the man’s character or personality.
Ask Gomez to describe Cherundolo and he talks about grins, not wins.
“Steve,” he says, “was by far the funniest teammate I ever had on the national team.”
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Not a two-drink minimum type of humor; nothing that would make him give up his day job to perform at The Improv. But rather the droll sarcasm that can lighten the pressure in a tense dressing room and make a game feel like a game again.
“Teammate humor,” says Cobi Jones, another former teammate. “A little bit of a dry humor. He has that smirk that just in itself makes you laugh. There’s something about comedy or humor, you have to be able to deliver it in the right way. And Cherundolo was always able to do that.”
He’s done it so well, in fact, it has become his super power as a coach. A lot of guys can draw up effective game plans, make keen tactical changes or manage substitutions. But Cherundolo’s accomplishments may, in large part, be as much a product of his personality as his personnel moves.
Take this season. No really, take it. Please.
Saturday’s MLS Cup final will be LAFC’s 53rd game in 41 weeks, an exhausting schedule that has challenged his players’ focus as much as their fitness. But it’s also a schedule that could end with the team lifting the trophy for a second consecutive season, something no MLS team has done since…