MLS, U.S. soccer trying to make pathways for hiring more Black and minority coaches

Rumba Munthali wasn’t accustomed to seeing many coaches who looked like him when he was growing up as a soccer player.

Black coaches were hard to come by at the youth level in Toronto. They were even harder to come by at the professional level in North America.

Frankly, it gave Munthali the idea that coaching was something he’d never be able to do either.

But that never stopped the Zambian-born immigrant from trying.

After a 15-year playing career during which he competed in America, Canada and China, Munthali refused to hang up his cleats for good. Soon after retirement, Munthali landed in Kansas City as an academy coach in Sporting Kansas City’s youth academy,

And now, Munthali is looking to end the stigma that minorities can’t find a place in soccer beyond playing in U.S. Soccer.

Munthali was selected as one of nine individuals to sit on the 2021-22 MLS NEXT Equity Action Committee. The committee’s aim is to build awareness and create greater inclusivity in U.S. Soccer for minority youth players and to allow minority players to feel safe and comfortable in academy and youth soccer environments.

“To be on this committee to help bring a little bit more awareness and light to this issue is really important to me and who I am, but I also think very important for the kids,” Munthali said Thursday.

One of the long-term goals of the committee is to not only raise awareness and inclusivity but also build paths for Black and other minority groups to build a presence in coaching.

In Major League Soccer history, there have been 142 non-interim head coaches. Of that number, only five have been Black men.

Of those five, none of them have been American-born. The only American-born Black man to hold an interim head coaching job in the league and coach a game is Cobi Jones, who served as interim coach of the LA Galaxy in 2008 following the resignation of Ruud Gullit — one of the five Black head coaches.

Jones led the Galaxy to a 2-2 tie against Chivas USA just three days after Gullit’s resignation. Four days later he was replaced by Bruce Arena.

“I think that as we’re more concentrated on this, you’ll find that there are more candidates and people who are qualified and minorities who are qualified that can fill those roles,” Munthali said. “And hopefully as we’re adapting and evolving and progressing, we start to see people of color just as adequate and as qualified as other candidates who aren’t.”

Some of the initiatives that the committee plans to enact begin as soon as Friday. The committee is hosting a webinar for academy directors as well as a webinar for head coaches soon after.

The committee also plans to host training for both officials and players on inclusivity in U.S. Soccer.

“There’s a lot of things coming down the pipeline just to make sure that we’re touching all the bases to make sure that everybody within the MLS NEXT ecosystem has the support, has a voice and feels empowered and part of the ecosystem and is represented,” Munthali said.

Looking back on his youth career, Munthali doesn’t want the current and future generation of minority youth players to feel like they don’t have a place in the game following retirement.

Even on Sporting KC’s first team, five of the 14 American-born players on the team are non-white.

“I think that the more that we see and the representation and that also goes for everybody, not just being Black it could be Hispanic, Asian, it could be female,” Munthali. “I think there needs to be more representation so it’s actually something that kids think is tangible and attainable.”

This story was originally published March 18, 2021 at 6:40 PM with the headline "MLS, U.S. soccer trying to make pathways for hiring more Black and minority coaches."