FC Dallas won’t begin the offseason with a full-time head coach. On Tuesday morning, during the club’s end-of-the-year press conference, Dan Hunt and Andre Zanotta confirmed that they are entering the final stages of their coaching search, with three candidates interviewing for the position in the coming weeks.
Interim manager Peter Luccin was confirmed as one of those three candidates. He went 8W-3D-7L (1.5 PPG) with 2 goals per game after taking over from Nico Estevez in early June.
“I will always commend Peter for his efforts here, and he deserved to be a finalist,” said Hunt.
Zanotta explained that they had more than 120 candidates from all over the world who were interested in coming to FC Dallas. They then narrowed that down to 13 or 14 candidates before narrowing that group down to the final three, who will return to interview again in the next couple of weeks.
Zanotta and Hunt did not confirm who the other two candidates in the running would be, but they did stress that their decision is influenced by their knowledge and understanding of how teams work in Major League Soccer.
”There are great coaches from around the world,” stated Hunt. “We’ve been interviewing international candidates, but MLS is a unique league. It’s got a unique set of rules that is so different. It is always nice to have a candidate with some kind of experience, MLS roots, an understanding or a personal relationship that we as an ownership or the technical staff have because we’ve all seen plenty of international coaches that come in and have struggled with the structure of the league.”
Zanotta also confirmed that the three finalists all have “at some degree, a different kind of MLS experience.”
Hunt later described that adapting to the league is hard for any new coach. He hopes to find the right candidate who can bring the right experience level while also helping the club return to its roots a bit more.
On the other side of things, the players will be off from training this week before returning to Frisco to wrap up their end-of-season training sessions that will run for the next two to three weeks. Once they have met with each individual player, the club will announce who is staying and who is leaving. Those player meetings are expected to occur later this week or early next week.
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