FRISCO - Saturday’s match at Toyota Stadium is set to make history off the field as the south end of Toyota Stadium re-opens for good, but there’s also a chance that history could be made on it.
A win over San Jose would mark Oscar Pareja’s 100th all-time MLS win and his 75th with FCD. He’d be just the ninth coach to reach the century mark and would be the third fastest to reach 100 victories.
Only Bruce Arena (188) and Bob Bradley (199) have hit 100 at a faster pace than what would be Pareja’s 226 games, should Dallas win this weekend.
Both Arena and Bradley, though, coached in the shootout and overtime era’s of MLS, where draws were non-existent. If you count by outright wins alone, Arena reached the milestone 11 games quicker than Pareja (215), while the Dallas head man could tie Bradley at exactly 226 games this weekend.
| Coach | No. of Games |
|---|---|
| Bruce Arena | 188 |
| Bob Bradley | 199 |
| Oscar Pareja | 226 |
| Sigi Schmid | 231 |
| Peter Vermes | 236 |
| Steve Nicol | 240 |
| Dominic Kinnear | 248 |
| Jason Kreis | 252 |
| Frank Yallop | 266 |
| Coach | No. of Games |
|---|---|
| Bruce Arena | 215 |
| Bob Bradley | 226 |
| Oscar Pareja | 226 |
| Sigi Schmid | 231 |
| Peter Vermes | 236 |
| Steve Nicol | 240 |
| Dominic Kinnear | 248 |
| Jason Kreis | 252 |
| Frank Yallop | 266 |
*with a win Saturday over San Jose
Pareja’s first 100 wins, regardless of when it happens, have not come easy.
In Colorado for the first two seasons of his coaching career, Pareja took a roster of relative unknowns and in two seasons turned them into a playoff team. More than half of his core group of starters had career-best MLS seasons under Pareja’s reign: Deshorn Brown, Tony Cascio, Jaime Castrillon, Chris Klute,Dillon Powers, Nathan Sturgis, Hendry Thomas, Martin Riveroand Clint Irwin in net.
Posting a 11-19-4 record in 2012, six points out of a playoff spot, he improved to a 14-11-9 record a year later.
“I do remember that [first game],” Pareja said this week, reflecting on game No. 1 - a 2-0 win over Columbus in his debut. “Coming from coaching in the Academy and just merging into the professional side to have some games in the position, where we beat Columbus in Colorado it was special.”
In 2014, Papi returned home to Dallas and again led a charge to the postseason for the first time since 2011. He became the first head coach to post back-to-back 60-point seasons in 2015 and 2016, while bringing home the club’s first hardware since 1997.
“Absolutely happy for him. What an achievement, and we get to do it at home. Hopefully, we give him that 100th match,” Homegrown Victor Ulloa said of the man who has coached him since their beginnings together in the FCD Academy. “He’s a very passionate guy, the one thing you can’t miss here in FC Dallas is work. You see it out on training every day. He doesn’t go light on us on any given day. He’s always pushing us, and he always wants to get better. He’s a competitive guy, he doesn’t like losing. He always wants to win, and that’s helped him a lot in his coaching career.”
Despite the success early on, that drive to get better has continued evolve Pareja as a head coach. There’s no clearer example than the 2018 season.
Over his first four years, Dallas was a one-dimensional club - deploying a 4-2-3-1 formation for the majority of matches - 79 in total. He secondary formation, a 4-4-2, was seen 51 times in the same span, but 22 of those came in his first year entirely after Mauro Diaz went down with an injury in May. If you don't factor those 22 games, Pareja deployed a different formation just 25 percent of the time in his first four years.
Fast forward to 2018. The club is on pace for its best season under Pareja and it is not set in a single identity. The 4-2-3-1 is still the overall preferred look through 21 games (38 percent), but since the start of April, it’s been almost an even split of 5-6 games across three different formations.
“We used to have an identity, and people knew how we played - 4-2-3-1,” Ulloa said. “This year, he’s brought in the ideas of a 4-3-3 or 4-4-2 or 4-2-4. Just different methodologies, different ideas and identities that we can use at any given moment. For sure, it’s something that he brought on to us, and I think the team has adopted it well and it’s been working for us.”
| Formation | No. of Starts | % of Use |
|---|---|---|
| 4-2-3-1 | 79 | 58% |
| 4-4-2 | 51 | 38% |
| 4-1-4-1 | 2 | 1.5% |
| 5-3-2 | 1 | 0.7% |
| 4-5-1 | 1 | 0.7% |
| 4-3-3 | 1 | 0.7% |
| Formation | No. of Starts | % of Use |
|---|---|---|
| 4-2-3-1 | 8 | 38% |
| 4-3-3 | 6 | 29% |
| 4-4-2 | 5 | 24% |
| 4-4-1-1 | 1 | 5% |
| 3-5-2 | 1 | 5% |
The versatility within the team allows Pareja and his staff to set their lineup for each individual game plan, and it’s been working over the first five months.
FCD is at the top of the West, has the best points-per-game mark of any club and already has five road wins on the season - one away from the franchise record in the non-shootout era.
“He’s a guy that just loves the game. He’s here, the first person in the morning, the last person at night. Nobody in the league outworks him, I can almost guarantee that,” Tesho Akindele said of Pareja, who drafted him with his first SuperDraft pick as Dallas’ coach. “I think that it just shows off. His record over the years has been so good because he puts in the hours. He watches the film, he knows the game and it’s really good just to be a part of that and be able to play under him.”
In Pareja's eyes, his biggest personal growth since Game One back in 2012 has been all about gaining experience.
“The response and the reactions to difficulties,” he said of what’s different. “Understanding that the journey brings those moments where not everything is joy and that we have a lot of tears too.
“[There are] a lot of moments where the team has to bounce the other way, so learning that in the victory, I have to be very careful because sometimes the victory just makes you blind, and you need to get better. And in defeat, [it’s about] not being so down and keeping our balance. My coaching staff and players feel that balance and feel that there is always going to be a brighter day.”
