On November 12, 2017, Giovanni Savarese’s New York Cosmos met the San Francisco Deltas in the NASL’s championship game. A win would have garnered Savarese a fourth NASL title in five seasons, but his opposite number, Marc Dos Santos, had other ideas. As coach of the Ottawa Fury, Dos Santos had lost to Savarese’s Cosmos in the 2015 final. The match featured a number of former MLS players, as well as a few who would go on to play in the top division.



For coaches, however, there was much less fluidity. Adrian Heath had made the jump from USL to MLS with Orlando City, but he was the only coach in recent memory whose work in the American or Canadian lower divisions had earned him a shot in MLS. Savarese ended up losing the 2017 championship to Dos Santos and the Deltas, but both men would soon join Heath as a head coach in MLS. And it was Savarese, who led the underdog Portland Timbers to MLS Cup in his first season coaching in the league, who many coaches credit...