The fledgling Los Angeles Football Club had coaxed Todd Saldaña away from U.S. Soccer to develop the team’s youth academy. Yet just a year into the job, LAFC pointed him to some videotape, handed him a few phone numbers and asked him to scout a first-team player in South America.
He wasn’t alone. Every coach on the academy staff was asked to look at someone the team wanted to sign to its first MLS roster.
“I’m not aware it has happened. It felt groundbreaking to include the academy staff in the first-team planning,” Saldaña said last week, 10 months after the report he wrote helped LAFC land Uruguayan forward Diego Rossi, the team’s leading scorer with 14 goals in all competitions.