While some of its recent expansion brethren have constantly pushed buttons and pulled levers to try to find success, Nashville SC has sought that goal through stability.
FC Cincinnati joined Major League Soccer in 2019 and has had six coaches since then. Inter Miami, which entered the league with Nashville in 2020, is on its third coach. So is Charlotte FC, which began play in 2022.
Nashville, however, had only ever employed one coach prior to firing Gary Smith on Thursday. The man who fired Smith, general manager Mike Jacobs, has held his position since NSC began as a United Soccer League franchise in 2018. Nashville reached the playoffs in each of its first four MLS seasons behind a large core of players — Hany Mukhtar, Walker Zimmerman, Joe Willis, Dan Lovitz, Anibal Godoy — who have been with the club since 2020.
So why was Smith, considering his track record in Nashville, dismissed when he was? Just 12 games into the season, with Nashville sitting a disappointing but respectable 10th in the Eastern Conference, one spot out of the playoffs? After a 2-0 win over Toronto FC, no less?
To hear Jacobs tell it, the decision was not an abandonment of the club’s core principles.
“We just can’t afford to be reactionary or be in a situation where we make decisions rash, based off one game or one day or one week,” Jacobs said Saturday after Nashville drew Atlanta United under interim coach Rumba Munthali. “Something like this, a decision like that, it goes over a period of time.”
Gary Smith failed to reverse trends dating back to last season
On June 17, 2023, Mukhtar had a hat trick in a 3-1 win over St. Louis City. The victory gave Nashville 35 points through 18 games, good for second in the Supporters’ Shield standings. They totaled just 28 points in the 28 games from that game until Smith’s firing. Jacobs noted “some trends that we had hoped would reverse” that failed to do so.
Leave a Reply