A three-game home losing streak puts a lot of things into focus in Major League Soccer for any team. The fact remains in this league, if you have built out a decent enough roster, you should be competitive enough at home to earn most of your season point total there.
In 2025, FC Dallas is doing the opposite by picking up more results away from Toyota Stadium. Out of ten games, the club has picked up five points this season. Let that sink in a bit more. Five points through TEN home games.
Currently, I’m seeing some different camps pop up from the fan base. There are those who are very quick to say that Eric Quill isn’t the right fit as manager, while others are more in the front office needs to examine things better camp.
I want to break down both sides of the coin here. There is some context that is worth discussing for why I think Quill is actually safe at the moment and why the roster build issues continue to haunt this club more than anything else.
Let's dive in. Right now, Quill and FC Dallas are currently in 13th place in the MLS Western Conference, with a 5-9-6 record through 20 games, or 21 points.
For perspective:
- Nico Estevez was fired 16 games into the 2024 season after picking up 20 points.
- Luchi Gonzalez was fired 26 games into the 2021 season after picking up 21 points.
- Schellas Hyndman was fired 32 games into the 2013 season after picking up 41 points.
- Steve Morrow was fired eight games into the 2008 season after picking up 25 points.
You could go further back to Colin Clarke or Mike Jeffries. I'm mostly looking at the coaches who were part of the group in Frisco under the Hunts and not some of the guys who were part of the original franchise.
I discussed a lot of when each manager was let go last year when we were examining whether or not Estevez was on the hot seat.
What this means for Quill
I said in that discussion for Estevez a year ago that the Hunts always take their time with making a manager change. It isn't something they do drastically, but it is something they'll pull if things go a certain way.
You could go back and look at Estevez and Gonzalez as two coaches who lost their locker rooms over a long period of time. I still think that Gonzalez was thrown into the head coaching role too early, the COVID-shortened season didn't help and by 2021 it didn't really matter what he did, the group wasn't behind him.
In some ways, you could say that Estevez lost his locker room toward the end of the 2023 season but a playoff appearance likely gave him another shot going into the 2024 season. Going into the home game against Houston last year, there was a feeling that if FCD didn't pull out something positive, Estevez would be let go that night. An early red card in that match helped save Estevez for at least a few more weeks until the Hunts decided that things weren't going to fully turn around.
Out of the four coaches I pulled up above, only one really stands out as a long play. That was Hyndman. His 2013 team started off the season pretty strong. By June they had collected 27 points and were firmly in the playoff race. But, between June and October, things took a nosedive. Hyndman only earned two wins across those months and his locker room crumbled as a result.
In nearly every case listed above (though I wasn't around the locker room as much during the Morrow days as I was the other three), once the locker room was 'lost' by the manager, it either took a blowout loss or a bad loss to a rival for the Hunts to make their move.
