August 15, 1998 will go down as one of the most monumental days in FC Dallas franchise history. Just five days after he turned 30, it was the day Oscar Pareja found his home.
After leaving his native Colombia to join a budding professional league in the United States, the midfielder signed with Major League Soccer and was allocated to the New England Revolution. Just 13 games into the season, however, Pareja was ready to end his North American experiment.
“When I came in ’98, after a few months I had the desire to go back home. I found it difficult for me, my wife and my daughter to adjust to the culture because we didn’t know the language and that creates a little bit of a gap,” Pareja said, recalling with vivid detail how his life was changed forever when the Revs traded him to the then-Dallas Burn in mid-August. “The people here in Dallas, they were terrific with us and made us feel very comfortable. I started growing into the culture and in that moment things started changing.
I did not for one moment, though, think that I was going to be here this many years.” he said with a laugh.
He hung up his boots in 2005 and has had even more of an impact off the field since than in his eight seasons as a face of the club on it.
Pareja worked as an assistant coach with the pro team and helped jumpstart the nationally-renowned FC Dallas Academy back in 2008, from which he now draws professionals better than any other club in MLS. He led the club to three straight playoff appearances and became the first coach in history to reach 60 points in back-to-back seasons, along the way capturing the 2016 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup and the MLS Supporters’ Shield just a month later.
Pareja’s roots in Dallas now go back almost 20 years, and after signing a multi-year contract extension on Thursday, he’ll be here for many more to come.
“This is truly home for me,” he said. “The relationships that I have with people in every corner of this club, the human beings that are part of this organization, I really consider as my family - and this is not a cliche.
“I have two kids that were born here and they’ve known nothing but this club. They have been, every weekend, in the stadium for 17 years and 20 seasons. There isn’t any other love here in America. I love this place.”
FC Dallas has come a long way since August 15, 1998, but it’s only the beginning. Oscar Pareja still has much loftier goals to achieve with his hometown club.
“I came back from Colorado because I had a job to do here still, and it’s winning MLS Cup,” Pareja said. “The game and the results are nothing we can guarantee, but what I can guarantee to the ownership is that our coaching staff and I, we’re going to work every single minute to achieve that for this club.”