LAFC sack Marc Dos Santos: the MLS's most expensive attack ranks 19th in big chances created

In the 84th minute at BMO Stadium, Son Heung-min dropped all the way back to the halfway line to collect the ball from a centre-back. He turned, held it for perhaps three seconds, looked up, and nobody ran. Denis Bouanga drifted wide right, both central midfielders were still behind him, and the left channel was completely empty. Son pushed the ball sideways. The attack died right there, some forty metres from goal. I watched that passage four times with the sound off. A match without crowd noise still tells you more than an entire loud season. No commentator was whispering in my ear that Son is finished, that he is old, that his legs have gone. There was only the repeated image: the team's number one forward leaving the penalty area, and nobody stepping into the space he vacated. The next morning, LAFC announced the dismissal of head coach Marc Dos Santos. The announcement came on Sunday night. The club issued a statement confirming the parting and said it would soon set out interim plans and begin the search for a new head coach. For anyone who has followed LAFC all season, this was not a surprising decision in terms of results. It was only surprising in terms of timing, with six regular-season games left and the team still sixth in the Western Conference, a position good enough for the playoffs. The deeper story is the interesting part. Before the campaign began, LAFC were widely tipped as MLS Cup favourites. They had Son Heung-min, they had Denis Bouanga, and they carried one of the highest wage bills in the league. Steve Cherundolo left the head coach job to move into the U.S. youth national team setup, and the board chose to promote Dos Santos from within. At the time, that decision raised eyebrows. Dos Santos' record across 39 games: 19 wins, 10 draws, 10 defeats. Set against championship expectations, that is a very wide gap. But what caught my eye more than the total was the rhythm. After the World Cup break, LAFC won three on the bounce, and people began talking about a revival. Since 1 August, they have won exactly once in MLS. This team did not decline slowly. It dropped. Before that, LAFC were also eliminated from the Leagues Cup at the group stage despite not losing a match. A small detail, but enough to show that this side has a problem in games where a single moment decides everything. LAFC's pain sits in the stretch of play where the ball is delivered to the finisher. According to data published by Goal.com, LAFC rank 15th in the league in goals per game, 19th in big chances created, and 16th in expected goals. Read together, those three numbers paint a very specific picture. Sixteenth in expected goals means the quality of the chances they create sits below the league average. Nineteenth in big chances created, out of 30 teams, means almost nobody is worse than they are at generating clear goalscoring situations. Expected goals measures the quality of a shot based on position, angle and the situation leading to it. It does not measure the reputation of the shooter. It measures how many goals that shot was worth. When a team ranks 15th in actual goals but 19th in big chances created, that ordering says the most important thing: their chance creation is worse than their finishing. If the quality of the chances is lower than the conversion rate, then blaming the forwards' feet is a conclusion filed in the wrong drawer. The ball has to arrive in the dangerous zone first, and at LAFC it tends to arrive half a beat late, or from a position nobody expects. This matters because the squad is not short of people who know how to score. LAFC are one of the clubs carrying the most expensive players in MLS. Dos Santos had Son Heung-min and Denis Bouanga at his disposal, two attackers any team in this league would take. With two names like that, ranking 19th in big chances created is no longer a question of form. It is a question of structure. I want to isolate Son's numbers, because this is where the misreading is loudest. At the back end of 2026, shortly after arriving, he scored 12 goals in 13 games. That rate had people calling it one of the most successful signings in the league's recent history. This year he has scored six, and the media have questioned his form. But over the same period, Son has supplied 13 assists. A player with six goals and 13 assists is not a player who has lost the ability to play. He is a player who has been pushed into a different role. He still touches the ball in dangerous areas, he still creates goals for others, but the number of times he finishes from a favourable position has clearly fallen. If a world-class forward has to drop to the halfway line to receive the ball in the 84th minute, that is not a signal about his legs. It is a signal about the passes behind him. Based on my experience watching these matches, an attack with two stars that still ranks 19th in big chances created is rarely a problem of individuals. It is a problem of movement structure: who runs into the box when the ball goes wide, who opens space for whom, and by which route the ball is progressed. When there are no answers to those three questions, everything depends on individual moments of brilliance. And brilliance, across a 34-game season, is the worst possible thing to build a plan on. There is another layer of cause sitting inside how MLS itself operates. The most expensive squad in the league is not the same thing as the best squad in the league. The Designated Player mechanism lets clubs concentrate most of their budget on a few stars while the rest of the roster is squeezed into a low wage band. The result is that clubs like LAFC often have a glamorous front line while midfield and full-back slots are patched together with cheap contracts. When the supply line is limited in quality, even the most expensive attack in the league can go hungry. Collapse does not arrive with a single conceded goal. It arrives through hundreds of small details that were ignored. The explanation currently favoured by the media is very simple: Son Heung-min has declined. He is past his peak, his legs have gone, and LAFC are paying wages to a name rather than a player. That explanation sells well, reads easily, and comes with a ready-made figure to blame. It also ignores 13 assists. The second popular explanation is no less common: the coach never found a working formula with a star-studded squad. That description is accurate, but it stops at the surface. What does failing to find a formula actually mean? With a front line containing two stars, the minimum formula has to be getting the ball into the box more often. LAFC could not do that, and 19th in big chances created is the quantitative evidence of a problem the naked eye struggles to see from a single match. I still hold a suspicion about the way this industry reads data. Analysts are moving deeper into the dressing room, carrying spreadsheets and models. But their conclusions often sit apart from the real rhythm of a team: a player can stand in exactly the right spot on a heat map and still not reach the pass, and a pass can travel in the right direction while being half a second off in tempo. Data points to the pain. It does not automatically point to the cause. And one more thing few people count: changing a coach is an administrative procedure, not a tactical plan. It changes who makes the decisions; it does not automatically change the passing lanes. With six games left, the fixtures include Vancouver, NYCFC and an El Tráfico derby against a resurgent LA Galaxy. If the successor still leaves Son to find the ball on the halfway line, 19th in big chances created will not move on its own. The signal to watch over the next fortnight is not the name in the hot seat. It is whether the interim coach changes the chance-creation structure: how often the ball is delivered into the box from wide areas, how often a central midfielder appears inside the penalty area, and where Son receives the ball. A club that has Son Heung-min and Denis Bouanga and still ranks 19th in big chances created has every chance to fix this, provided someone is willing to look at the right place. Six games is a short stretch of time, and in Los Angeles nobody has the right to wait.