Óscar Pareja

He's now assistant coach for the senior Colombian national team.

He was assistant coach with Oscar Pareja at FC Dallas at Orlando.

Because of him, I left to join Andromeda and then Andromeda kind of dispersed and wasn't a club and he went to FC Dallas.

So it was kind of like a full circle moment.

yeah, yeah.

I'm blessed, blessed to have that opportunity.

Again, Josema got, he's with the first team, Oscar Pareja's with the first team.

I grew up basically at Oscar Pareja's house because of my friend Diego, his son.

Oscar Pereja can be a lot of things and cannot be a lot of things, but at least one thing that our former manager used to do is he used to accept his shortcomings and it will be refreshing if Martin Perelman starts doing that.

We know he's a caretaker manager and we know that He wasn't the guy that perhaps they had in mind when they fired Oscar Pareja, but he's in that position, you know? And to quote my good friend, Kenneth Ortiz, who used to do the Spanish podcast with me years ago, he used to always have this saying, if you're going to ask for the ball, you got to finish.

So...

Sir, you are at the helm.

Un partidazo.

¿Y por qué decimos un partidazo? Hay que recordar que Orlando arrancó con Óscar Pareja.

Sí.

Fue un mal arranque de temporada.

Pésimo arranque de temporada.

Sale Óscar Pareja y traen ahora, eh, a Antoine Griezmann.

No, tre-tremendo.

Y le cambió la cara totalmente.

I know the first thing that we talk about all the time is just standard defense, but you have to know at this point how to close out a game.

And as much as I'm sure there's a lot of people in our chat that don't miss Oscar Pareja, at least Oscar Pareja could have closed that game.

[laughs]

That's all I'm gonna say.

We saw it a lot from Oscar Pareja.

He knew how to close out games.

And so, um, yeah, a lot to, lot to break down, a lot to look into.

But I thought that was, that was really cool.

Yeah.

And it's something that, like, really since Óscar Pareja left, Dallas has kind of been a little bit floating amid soccer's beautiful waters without much of a, a, a, just kind of a heading.

They brought in Lucci Gonzalez, who was a big-time academy guy, really great guy, sharp dresser, but the team's investment wasn't really aligned at the same time.

The, the, the golden generation had left, and they were kind of in the soccer space.

Wally! Who asks, please rank these four coaches in order of how excited you'd be if they were named the head coach of Orlando City next season.

And the four coaches that he has listed are Adrian Heath, Jason Christ, James O'Connor, and Oscar Pareja.

Good grief.

In the order, Oscar far and away above the other three.

... have officially signed their MLS Next Pro contracts.

So, um, definitely the purple pathway, it's, it's something important that was established m- obviously with the likes of Luis Musi and Oscar Pareja, and then obviously you have people like, um, um, Ricardo Moreira when he was, you know, before he was a director.

And then, I mean, all these people had a lot of to do for the growth.

The Javier Carrillos, the Campos, I mean, a conglomerate of, of, of people that started this, this pipeline, also with investment of the wealth, um, having the most success essentially.

Yeah

...

Oscar Pareja used to quote.

[laughs]

Um, uh, I just, I, I'm thinking about this from the, the question to the standpoint of what does a Rapids win look like in this? And to your point, Mark, Bruce Arena, for all of his nuance and all of his longevity, is still kind of...

He has moments where he goes just full MLS 1.0 in, like, a Dominic Kinnear or an Oscar Pareja style of play of just, "Oh, we're playing at altitude.

Playing at altitude is hard.

Guys, we're gonna come out, we're gonna play a flat 4-4-2.

I, I don't know if this is a Wilf mood, um, m- move, but I've seen this with Orlando City.

'Cause for Orlando City, Coach Pearlman, he was an interim from Oscar Pareja when he left.

He took over the team, and then they brought him in three assistant coaches as well.

Same thing.

They're gonna be assistants-

No, no, I understand-

... for Oscar Pareja-

But that doesn't mean that they won't get promoted next season if Yolanda's out.