The 2025 season will be the 30th in Major League Soccer history, which makes it as good a time as any to look at the longest-serving managers through MLS's first three decades.
Between one-club legends and league stalwarts who have led multiple clubs, there are plenty of successful coaches with different styles and approaches to building a team.
Here, we'll list the 10 managers with the most games coached in MLS history and dive into their history, achievements and tactics.
Games: 355
Club(s): Philadelphia Union, 2010-2024
Former Philadelphia Union manager Jim Curtin was fired him his post at the end of the 2024 campaign after 10 seasons at the helm of the club. Curtin joined the then-new MLS franchise in its inaugural 2010 season as an academy coach just after retiring as a player.
Curtin was named interim head coach midway through the 2014 season and he took the full-time manager job in the ensuing offseason. He won a Supporters' Shield in 2020, got to the MLS Cup Final in 2022 and helped develop players such as Brenden Aaronson, Paxten Aaronson and Mark McKenzie, who all play in Europe.
Games: 364
Club(s): Toronto FC, 2014-2020; LA Galaxy, 2021-present
After about five seasons as an academy director and assistant coach at Real Salt Lake immediately following his playing career, Greg Vanney took the managerial job at Toronto FC in 2014. Vanney led Toronto to the 2016 MLS Cup Final, which his team lost to the Seattle Sounders, and he helped attacking midfielder Sebastian Giovinco to the MLS MVP Award that season.
Vanney won the MLS and CONCACAF Coach of the Year Awards the following season, when he coached a talented team led by Giovinco, Victor Vazquez, Michael Bradley and Jozy Altidore to the Supporters' Shield.
The coach resigned from Toronto after the 2020 season and took the manager job with the LA Galaxy. He has built the team around Spanish playmaker Riqui Puig, and the two led the Galaxy to win the 2024 MLS Cup.
Games: 388
Club(s): San Jose Earthquakes, 2001-2003 and 2007-2013; LA Galaxy, 2006-2007; Chicago Fire, 2013-2015
England-born, Canada-raised Frank Yallop spent two seasons as a player with the Tampa Bay Mutiny after 13 years at Ipswich Town in his birth nation. After his playing career ended in Florida, he stayed with the team as an assistant coach before taking the head coaching job with the San Jose Earthquakes.
Yallop won the MLS Coach of the Year Award in his first season after the club acquired future MLS legends Landon Donovan, Dwayne DeRosario and Jeff Agoos before the 2001 campaign. In 2003, the Quakes won MLS Cup, which sparked Canada's soccer federation to hire Yallop as head coach of the men's team.
After a two-year spell with Canada that ended after the 2006 World Cup, Yallop joined the LA Galaxy, where he would coach Donovan and new superstar signing David Beckham.
Yallop stayed in LA for just two seasons as the Galaxy replaced him with Dutch legend Ruud Gullit, so the former Canada coach went back to San Jose for five seasons including the Supporters Shield-winning 2012 year. Most recently, he joined the Chicago Fire for three seasons spent in the basement of the Eastern Conference from 2013 to 2015.
Games: 421
Club(s): DC United, 2010-2020; Houston Dynamo, 2022-present
Ben Olsen was a DC United legend as a player before he took the reins as manager. He was drafted by DC in 1997 after finishing up at the University of Virginia, and he played his entire career there with the exception of a year-long loan at Nottingham Forest in England.
Olsen ended his playing career in 2009 and immediately got a job on DC's bench as an assistant manager. He eventually rose to the managerial position in 2010, staying in the role for the entire decade. He left DC in 2020 to become the president of the NWSL's Washington Spirit, then in late 2022, he was named head coach of the Houston Dynamo.
Since joining the Dynamo, Olsen has a 39-28-26 win-draw-loss record, and his team has improved. The Dynamo finished in 14th place - second to last - in the West right before Olsen was hired. Since then, they've finished fourth in the conference with 51 points in 2023 and fifth with 54 points in 2024.
Games: 425
Club(s): Colorado Rapids, 2012-2014; FC Dallas, 2014-2018; Orlando City SC, 2019-present
Colombian-born manager Oscar Pareja played most of his career in MLS before joining the coaching ranks. Like a handful of the names on this list who retired as players only to be rehired by their most recent club, he retired with FC Dallas after seven seasons there and immediately got hired as an assistant coach.
Pareja spent six years as an assistant in Dallas before the Colorado Rapids appointed him as manager. He spent two seasons there, leading them to a seventh-place finish out of nine Western Conference teams in 2012 and a fifth-place finish in 2013, which saw the team make the playoffs but lose in the first round.
The longtime FC Dallas player was finally hired as the club's head coach in 2014, and he led them to the 2016 Supporters' Shield before leaving for Mexican side Club Tijuana in 2018. He spent a year there and then took the Orlando City SC job, where he remains today. Pareja has led Orlando City to the playoffs in all five of his seasons at the helm.
Games: 476
Club(s): San Jose Earthquakes, 2004-2005 and 2014-2017; Houston Dynamo, 2006-2014; LA Galaxy, 2018 and 2020-2021
Current FC Cincinnati assistant coach Dominic Kinnear was one of the managers to influence the development of MLS. Having been the assistant to two other names on this list, Kinnear has led teams himself and learned from some of the league's brightest coaching minds.
Kinnear ended his playing career with the Tampa Bay Mutiny in 2000 and immediately joined former Mutiny teammate Frank Yallop's staff with the San Jose Earthquakes. After Yallop left for the Canada job, Kinnear took over as manager and averaged 1.60 points per game across 68 games in two seasons, and the Quakes won the 2005 Supporters' Shield at the end of Kinnear's second season.
The Scottish-born coach was then poached by the Houston Dynamo to lead the expansion franchise in its inaugural season. All Kinnear did was win MLS Cup in each of the team's first two seasons, 2006 and 2007. After nine seasons in Houston, Kinnear returned to assistant management under Sigi Schmidt - more on him soon - at the LA Galaxy. He had two stints as interim manager there in 2018 and 2020 before joining Cincinnati.
Games: 484
Club(s): Chicago Fire, 1998-2002; New York/New Jersey MetroStars, 2003-2005; Chivas USA, 2005-2006; Los Angeles FC, 2017-2021; Toronto FC, 2021-2023
One of the names most synonymous with American soccer, Bob Bradley has held all sorts of roles across MLS and for the National Team. Bradley spent just over a decade coaching Princeton University's Men's Soccer team after graduating from the program before Bruce Arena hired him as an assistant for the US under-23 team and then brought him to DC United.
After two seasons under Arena in DC, the expansion franchise Chicago Fire hired Bradley as their manager, and he led the team to win MLS Cup in its expansion season. In Chicago, Bradley coached future MLS coaches Jesse Marsch, Chris Armas, Piotr Nowak and Frank Klopas.
In 2003, Bradley left Chicago to join the New York/New Jersey MetroStars, who are now known as the New York Red Bulls. He didn't win any silverware despite consistent playoff appearances there, and then he joined Chivas USA and helped the team improve before taking the head coaching job with the United States men's team.
Bradley left US Soccer in 2011 and spent the first half of the 2010s trying his hand in international soccer. He managed the Egypt men's team, Norwegian club Stabaek, French club Le Havre and Welsh club Swansea City. He then joined LAFC in its expansion season in 2018 and led them to the Supporters' Shield in 2019 before taking his most recent MLS job with Toronto FC where he stayed from 2021 to 2023.
Games: 532
Club(s): Kansas City Wizards/Sporting Kansas City, 2009-present
Peter Vermes played soccer for two different colleges and for eight different clubs in four different countries, but as a coach, he has been a true one-club man. Vermes ended his playing career with Sporting Kansas City - called the Kansas City Wizards at the time - and has been with the club ever since.
He started his post-playing career as the technical director for Sporting Blue Valley, a youth club affiliated with Sporting KC. He was promoted to become the MLS side's technical director in 2006, became caretaker manager in 2009, and was appointed to the role full-time after that season ended.
Vermes led Sporting KC to MLS Cup in 2013, and he has guided his team to top-10 finishes (league-wide) in 11 of his 15 full seasons in charge. He is the longest-tenured coach at a single club in MLS history, and the longest-tenured active coach heading into the 2025 season.
Games: 598
Club(s): LA Galaxy, 1999-2004; Columbus Crew, 2005-2008; Seattle Sounders, 2008-2016; LA Galaxy, 2017-2018
Sigi Schmid was so influential in the MLS coaching ranks that the league's Coach of the Year Award is named for him. Schmid was born in Germany but played college soccer for UCLA before starting his coaching career there.
Schmid took over as UCLA head coach in 1980 and stayed until 1998, when he was named US under-20 manager. The next year, he took his first job in MLS with the LA Galaxy, where he stayed for five seasons, led the team to an MLS Cup, and coached the likes of Cobi Jones, Alexi Lalas, Chris Albright, Alejandro Moreno, Greg Vanney, Robin Fraser, Danny Califf and many more players who would later have influence over American soccer.
After leaving the Galaxy in 2004, Schmid went back to the US under-20 team for seven matches before joining the Columbus Crew in 2005. The Crew struggled in his first two seasons, but the team won the 2008 MLS Cup, after which Schmid left to join Seattle Sounders FC. Schmid's longest tenure was in Seattle, where he stayed from its expansion year in the 2009 season through 2016 and won one Supporters' Shield (2014) and one MLS Cup (2016).
Schmid's final managerial position was his second spell with the LA Galaxy from mid-2017 through 2018. He was tasked with rebuilding the squad after it lost 10 out of 20 matches to start 2017, and by the time he retired in 2018, the team was back to mid-table.
Games: 599
Club(s): DC United, 1996-1998; New York Red Bulls, 2006-2007; LA Galaxy, 2008-2016; New England Revolution, 2019-2023; San Jose Earthquakes, 2025-present
With one more game in MLS than the man in second place entering the 2025 season, longtime MLS and USMNT head coach Bruce Arena is the longest-serving manager in the league and the only one to win over 1,000 points from regular season matches. Arena got his start in coaching soccer when the University of Virginia hired him as its Men's Soccer coach in 1978, where he stayed until 1995.
Ahead of Major League Soccer's inaugural season in 1996, Arena was hired as DC United's first-ever head coach. He stayed there for three years and won the first two MLS Cups in league history while coaching the likes of Jaime Moreno, Roy Lassiter, Jeff Agoos, John Harkes, Marco Etcheverry and Jesse Marsch.
Arena took over as USMNT head coach in 1998 and stayed there through the 2006 World Cup. He then joined the New York Red Bulls for the 2007 and 2008 seasons, neither of which ended with silverware, before heading across the country to coach the LA Galaxy, where he stayed from 2008 to 2016 and won two Supporters' Shields and three MLS Cups.
His most recent spell as USMNT coach was from 2016-2017, when the team failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. He then got a job as manager and sporting director of the New England Revolution, who he led to the 2021 Supporters' Shield before he left the team late in the 2023 season due to disagreements with players. Ahead of the 2025 season, he was appointed as manager and sporting director for the San Jose Earthquakes.