Orlando City are still looking for a new head coach. It has been reported that Oscar Pareja is a potential candidate. The Club Tijuana manager would be a perfect appointment.
Orlando City SC are a curious expansion team. Always offering so much potential, and yet relentlessly falling short. They have been caught in a relentless cycle of rebuilds, which at first offer hope before eventually ending in disaster.
Ever since they entered MLS in 2015, which is now five seasons, they have spent, recruited stars, hired new managers, and yet always ended with the same result: missing the playoffs.
They will enter their sixth season in 2020 with a new head coach, their fourth new head coach across those six seasons. James O’Connor was fired at the end of last season, not unjustifiably, and that decisions thrusts the Lions back to the start of the rebuilding process once again.
As they begin their search for the man to lead them forwards in the next era, Orlando City must have a longer-term focus than their recent appointments. They are not the newly expanded team of 2015, desperately trying to make a commerical splash as much as a footballing one. They have a stadium in place, a developing fanbase and market, and money to invest. They simply have to now produce on the pitch.
This process started with a changing of the front office. The club brought in Luiz Muzzi from FC Dallas to be their Vice President of Soccer Operations. Muzzi is an experienced director who developed a terrific academy in Dallas, a process that is now being replicated throughout MLS. And now they have a chance to double-down.
In their search for a new head coach, it has been reported by Orlando City site The Mane Land that former FC Dallas and current Club Tijuana head coach Oscar Pareja is in serious consideration to be O’Connor’s successor.
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For the first time in a long time, Pareja would represent the type of appointment that seeks to lay down long-lasting foundations upon which a team identity can be built. Like Muzzi, he was integral to the academy-orientated rebuild of FC Dallas, including leading the team to the Supporters’ Shield and U.S. Open Cup double in 2016.
Pareja is an especially adept coach. He improves players. He is renowned for his individual input with specific players. He is as much a teacher as he is a football manager. And this, for Orlando City, would provide them with a clear and defined identity and philosophy, which is precisely what they have missed ever since they arrived in MLS.
Pareja would presumably join with Muzzi in their pursuit of youth development, but would blend this admirable process with winning football — this is what made his time in Dallas so remarkable, the fact that there was not a compromise between youth and success. That would then provide Orlando with a foundation, from which every subsequent decision can be made.
Orlando City need direction. But to have that, they must develop identity. Should they hire Oscar Pareja, that is precisely what they will have. That is why he is the absolutely perfect candidate.