5 Things to know about Todd Dunivant

New York City FC has a new Sporting Director, with Todd Dunivant of Sacramento Republic FC in the USL Championship officially set to become the third person to hold the club’s top soccer executive role.

It’s the first time he’ll work as a front-office executive in Major League Soccer, but Dunivant is no stranger to MLS, playing 13 seasons in the league for four different teams before hanging up the boots and moving into the front office.

Dunivant is not an internal hire plucked from the far reaches of City Football Group, or promoted from within the existing sporting setup created by the recently departed David Lee. That makes him something of an outsider and something of an unknown to followers of New York City FC — that, plus the fact that the majority of his playing and post-playing career has been spent in the far-off state of California.

It’s not yet possible to know how Dunivant will approach the job of NYCFC Sporting Director as he steps into running a team with 29 players under contract heading into 2026, and with a successful, respected Head Coach in Pascal Jansen already in place.

Until we see Dunivant in action, making roster moves that shape the present and future of NYCFC, all we can do is look back at his career as a player and executive to try to figure out what might be in store for New York City as the club adjusts to its new top soccer boss.

After doing some reading, watching, and listening, here are the big things that stood out about Dunivant and his journey to becoming NYCFC’s sporting director.

1. From player to architect: ‘I’ve never taken shortcuts’

The success Dunivant enjoyed during his 13-season playing career in MLS is striking and can’t be brushed aside, even as he’s in New York to take on a front office job.

Winning five MLS Cups, two Supporters’ Shields, and a US Open Cup means trophies were an expectation during his playing days. There’s got to be something that translates from being a part of so many successful MLS teams to then being a successful soccer executive.

Dunivant put that theory to the test right away when his career as a player reached its conclusion. The left-back’s final MLS season was in 2015, and by 2016, he was working on a from-the-ground-up build of a lower-league team, the San Francisco Deltas of the North American Soccer League (NASL), taking over as general manager.

He was one of the first five employees hired by the Deltas, going to work with a friend from his college days at Stanford University. As Dunivant told Grant Wahl in a must-read July 2022 interview, he joined the Deltas with just one year to build the NASL club up from scratch. Dunivant says he “had the small task of putting together the soccer operation, creating a merchandise line from scratch, and then also being in charge of sponsorships.”

His decisions worked out and led to a championship in the one and only season the Deltas existed. Dunivant called the coach he worked with that year, Marc Dos Santos, “the best hire we made” in that same Grant Wahl interview. Dos Santos just might join Dunivant in starting a new high-profile MLS job in 2026: The head coach is reportedly the frontrunner to take over for Steve Cherundolo at LAFC.

Dunivant chose the “learn by doing” approach to becoming a front-office executive in American soccer, and showed a proclivity for doing it from his first gig.

He didn’t start right at the MLS level at which he spent over a decade playing, either. He instead worked up the proverbial American soccer ladder, starting in NASL in 2016 and 2017, then spending 2018-2025 at the highest level of the USL setup. As Dunivant put it when answering a Grant Wahl question about future aspirations to run an MLS team, “I’ve never taken shortcuts and always try to earn everything I get.”

The Interview: Todd Dunivant

The Sacramento Republic president/GM on meeting KC in the US Open Cup semifinals and trying to become the first non-MLS team to win the Open Cup since 1999

Fútbol with Grant WahlGrant Wahl

2. Sacramento’s on-field identity

Since Dunivant arrived in 2018, Sacramento’s on-field foundation has been built on the defensive side. Sacramento has consistently been one of the stingiest defensive teams in the USL Championship. Across the last three seasons dating back to 2023, Sac Republic ranked in the top-three in USLC for fewest goals allowed, conceding only 27 times during the 2025 season, the second-fewest in the league.

Stretching back to when Dunivant first arrived in 2018, Sacramento finished outside the Top 10 ranking for teams with the fewest goals allowed just once, in 2021, the one season the club did not qualify for USL Championship’s postseason.

Todd Dunivant’s Sac Republic FC

The string of seven postseason appearances out of eight seasons is impressive, as is the fact that the club finished second in the overall USL Championship table in 2023. One slight hangup for the Republic: They’ve been knocked out in the first round of the USL Championship Playoffs five different times during their Dunivant years, only reaching the Conference Final once in 2023.

The club’s biggest claim to fame while Dunivant was in charge might be making the final of the 2022 Lamar Hunt US Open Cup, the first Division II team to reach an Open Cup final since the 2008 Charleston Battery. They started the run in the tournament’s Second Round, so they had to earn six wins to reach that final.

That 2022 Sacramento team pulled off a string of late-round Cupsets, winning three straight matches against MLS clubs from the Round of 16 through the Semifinals. Those wins included beating two teams with which Dunivant won MLS Cup as a player, San Jose Earthquakes and LA Galaxy. In the Open Cup Final, they lost, 3-0, to Orlando City SC.

Dunivant appeared in a video made by US Soccer ahead of the Open Cup final in 2022 and said, “Trophies are really hard to come by, they just are. You don’t know when you’re going to have another opportunity, you may never, and some never get the opportunity in the first place.” Sacramento missed out on their 2022 opportunity, but their string of Cupsets showed Dunivant built a team built to punch above its weight.

3. On the transfer market

The worst season of the eight Dunivant oversaw in Sacramento came in 2021, when they missed the USL Championship playoffs. That was followed by the president and GM’s busiest and arguably his most successful offseason.

Sacramento brought in a wave of new players that would set the club up for the success they’d enjoy from 2022 to 2025. The group included goalkeeper Danny Vitiello and defenders Jack Gurr and Lee Desmond, who arrived before the 2022 season. They remain in place as 2025 draws to a close, after consistently contributing to Sacramento’s strong seasons since that 2021 disappointment. Gurr and Vitiello even earned Second Team All-USL Championship honors for their 2025 seasons, proving they’ve been Dunivant signings that have lasted in SacTown.

Gurr and Desmond, for example, were plucked from teams in Scotland and Ireland, respectively, while Vitiello came from another USL Championship side, Pittsburgh. Dunivant has found success when tapping into the European player market and when picking up players and coaches who have excelled elsewhere in USL.

It will be a different reality for Dunivant coming to New York City FC, as Sacramento’s squad value sits at $4.3 million compared to a current $56 million valuation for New York City’s players, if you go by Transfermarkt’s somewhat vibes-based valuations. His scouting approach worked, largely, in the USL Championship, but now we’ll see what Dunivant can do with the transfer and scouting resources of City Football Group at his fingertips.

4. Not big on coaching carousels

Stability was a reality during Dunivant’s time with the Republic. Sacramento had three head coaches across Dunivant’s eight seasons in charge. They were a relatively stable operation, with Simon Elliott the coach for Dunivant’s first two seasons, then with Mark Bridges overseeing Sac Republic for five consecutive seasons, the most successful spell in Sacramento’s history.

Bridges was followed by Neill Collins in the dugout for 2025, Dunivant’s swan song season in Sacramento. Collins was a bit of a hiring coup for Sacramento, as he coached the Tampa Bay Rowdies for 176 matches across parts of six USL seasons before leaving USL and the United States in July 2023 to take over as manager of Barnsley FC in England’s third-tier League One.

Dunivant brought Collins back to USL after his European coaching journey took him from Barnsley to Raith Rovers FC in Scotland. With Collins leading Sacramento in 2025, the Republic improved their standing and placed 4th in the overall table and 2nd in the Western Conference while also reaching the final of the USL Jägermeister Cup, where they lost at home to Hartford Athletic to again fall short of a trophy.

The only trophy Dunivant’s teams claimed during his front-office career so far came in that one magical NASL season with the San Francisco Deltas in 2017, though Sac Republic squads came close to silverware multiple times across their few head coaches.

5. Willing to embrace the youth

Da’vian Kimbrough became the youngest professional soccer player in the United States on Dunivant’s watch. Kimbrough, a Woodland, California, native who is doubly eligible to play for the United States and Mexico internationally, signed a professional contract at 13 years, 5 months, and 13 days old, breaking a “youngest professional soccer player” record previously held by New York City FC’s Máximo Carrizo, who went pro when he turned 14 years old.

Kimbrough made his Sacramento first-team debut while still only 13 years old, after having progressed through the Sacramento academy. He made three appearances for Sacramento in each of the 2024 and 2025 seasons and is now a seasoned veteran at 15 years old. While his progress continues slowly as befitting a teenager, Kimbrough’s story is a huge indication that Dunivant won’t be afraid to lean on the young talent already in New York City FC’s developmental pipeline.

There’s some irony that Dunivant’s former team broke a record set by NYCFC and Carrizo, because the 17-year-old midfielder seems like the next player up to see his contributions to the First Team increase in 2026 and beyond. There’s also an entire NYCFC Academy infrastructure for Dunivant to now oversee.

Dunivant will have his clearest chance to make his mark on the club’s youth development simply by appointing a new Academy Director. Morten Grahn held that role with New York City since his appointment in July 2021, but Grahn left the position this year to go back to his native Denmark and back to his old club to become a development director at FC Copenhagen.

The NYCFC Academy produced lots of talent over the years, and this seems like an area of the club Dunivant will be paying close attention to, maybe starting with one of his first key hiring decisions.

Episode 67: Season ends and The Todd Dunivant Era begins

We revisit what went wrong for New York City FC in the heavy Eastern Conference Final loss, share first impressions of new NYCFC Sporting Director Todd Dunivant, and discuss the club’s end-of-year roster decisions.

Hudson River BlueHudson River Blue Staff