Today Angel City announced the hiring of Mark Parsons as its new sporting director. Parsons is a former coach who spent 10 years in the NWSL, first with the Washington Spirit, then most notably with the Portland Thorns, where he led the team to two NWSL Shields (2016, 2021) and a championship (2017). In both positions, he also played a major role in the scouting and acquisition of new players, having brought world-class players like Lindsey Horan, Amandine Henry, and Sophia Smith to the Rose City.
Read on for a Q&A with Parsons.
AngelCity.com: What got you excited about coming to Angel City?
Mark Parsons: Well, I'm unbelievably excited and honored to have the opportunity to come here. This club has been world-leading off the field and of course I'm sure everyone here wants to see things improve on the field, so the opportunity to be a part of a project that already is world-class in many areas—but also has room to grow and improve with a great staff and a talented roster—is an exciting and appealing opportunity.
The second piece is I experienced this place in 2023, and I've only seen a couple places in the world that make women's soccer players feel the way they deserve to. I have a huge respect and admiration for what the players, the staff, this organization, but most importantly LA and the community have built in how they support their team.
ACFC: You’ve been coaching professional teams since 2013; what made you want to switch to a sporting director role?
MP: I was general manager and head coach in my first role, with the Spirit from 2013 to 15, but throughout the course of my career I've had key roles off the field as well, whether it's scouting, recruitment, staff, players, leadership, or managing departments. On the women's side the game has moved forward now to where you can't do both, so I've obviously had this big, big decision over the last few years. To be very honest, at the end of 2022 I already felt my heart going towards where I am now, which is being a sporting director leading the sport inside an organization.
To make that transition, it had to be the right place. It had to be a place that absolutely wants to compete and win, not just not just in 2025 but medium- and long-term. I've been a part of organizations that have taken the patience and time to do that, and I would say that I've been a key part of an organization building a legacy team that won multiple trophies over a short period, and for me that's what fuels me. There's only a few environments in the world that have the potential to do that.
I'm most excited I get to have a bigger impact across the organization, and look—I also get to see someone else get stressed out for 20 out of 24 hours a day! After doing that for 12 years, I’m going to enjoy cheering someone else on in that role.
ACFC: What’s going to be first on your to-do list?
MP: Connecting with my staff and our players. We're in a position where we need to do a lot of important work on our technical staff—the most important is the head coach search—but in the short term, we need to have the best possible situation for our players to start pre-season, which we’ll be doing with Interim Head Coach Eleri Earnshaw, and a technical staff that have already incredible work under our technical director, Mark Wilson, and assistant GM, Matt Wade. To do that, I need to connect and listen and learn and get to know people.
Where we stand on head coach right now is, this is Angel City, this is Los Angeles. This is a team that, when we are successful, the world will be watching, and we will be taking that responsibility seriously and finding a candidate that can lead this talented group to a place that we want to get to. So we're not going to rush. It's about getting the best and right person. While I'm sure everyone would love that to be tomorrow, if that's going to take a bit longer than we'd all love, we're going to be prepared to do that while making sure we have high performance in place now to help players prepare and compete in preseason and the beginning of the season.
ACFC: Tell us a little about your life outside of soccer.
MP: Last year for the first time in 11 years, I had a little break from the chaos of professional soccer, so me and my wife and daughter have enjoyed a huge amount of family time, which means we do what my daughter wants to do. I've brought my first pair of ice skates ever so I could try and ice skate with her. Being at soccer practices, going to watch gymnastics. I was at my daughter's first-ever sports day—I was physically there—for the first time in her childhood last summer.
One of the best parts of my fatherhood so far—maybe this says too much about me—is my daughter got to walk out of Wembley with the captain of the US women’s national team, and I'm in the stands with the camera. I said to her after, “you know, since I was born I was dreaming of walking out on this pitch and here you are doing it before me!” She's like, “yeah that was kind of cool.”
So I've been enjoying being a normal dad. When we told her I was coming to Angel City it was like telling her I was becoming the president of the United States. She couldn't believe it. She was like, “Angel City with the pink kits?” and she started talking about the players and the stadium and I was like, “how do you know this?” She says, “who doesn't!” So suddenly I was relevant again and she wanted to hang around with me, so that’s cool.
