It’s a tough gig, even for a man used to a challenge
After taking two months to consider their next head coach, the Houston Dynamo went with someone who knows a thing or two about tough jobs.
The Dynamo announced Tuesday that they had hired former D.C. United head coach Ben Olsen to take the reins at BBVA Stadium. Olsen last coached in 2020, after a decade in charge with United came to an end amid a dire season.
In 2021, Olsen was hired by the Washington Spirit as the club’s new president, but departed less than a year later after the struggle for ownership of the NWSL side ended with Michele Kang taking a majority stake.
“The club is proud to welcome Ben Olsen to Houston as the head coach of the Dynamo,” said Dynamo majority owner Ted Segal in a team press release. “Ben is one of the most accomplished coaches in MLS and brings championship experience, including winning eight different MLS titles as a player, to this position. His commitment to developing high-potential players and leading playoff contenders make him a great fit for the direction of our organization.”
“I am excited to join Houston Dynamo FC and contribute to the rich history of one of the great MLS clubs,” said Olsen. “I was drawn to ownership’s vision for the club, and I am confident in this new era for the Dynamo. We have a lot of work to do on the roster, game model, mentality and culture of the club, but I am energized and excited to get to work.”
Olsen steps into a seat that may be warm on day one. The Dynamo gave their last coach, Paulo Nagamura, just 244 days and 29 league games on the job before firing him. Houston struggled to a 8W-5D-16L record under Nagamura, and were not good enough in any phase of the game to contend for a playoff spot. Interim replacement Kenny Bundy posted a 2W-1D-2L record over the team’s final five games.
Tuesday’s announcement means that Olsen is the fourth person over the last 370 days to hold the title of head coach at the club, as Houston fired Tab Ramos on November 4, 2021.
Can Houston overachieve?
Olsen’s tenure with D.C. was a roller coaster, and the downhill portions of the ride ended up being particularly rough. While United had a reputation as generally struggling throughout Olsen’s tenure, the fact is that the club made the playoffs in six of his ten seasons in charge, while only having three truly bad seasons (2013, 2017, and 2020) peppered in.
That perception likely stems from just how abysmal those three years were. United’s 2013, in which they picked up just 16 points in 34 games, is by most metrics the single worst season any team has had in the Designated Player era. Strangely enough, though, that same side won the Open Cup that year in what is an almost too perfect summation of Olsen’s complicated time in charge with the Black-and-Red. 2017 and 2020 weren’t much better for United, with goals and entertainment both in desperately short supply.
However, that shouldn’t completely overshadow the fact that his characteristically scrappy teams were often able to punch above their weight. His 2012 team went to the Eastern Conference final, and he was named MLS Coach of the Year in 2014 after United finished atop the East.
Neither of those sides were anything special in terms of game-changing talent, instead succeeding through defensive organization, commitment, and a positive locker room culture. They were your prototypical “hard to play against” teams, a label that has eluded the Dynamo for some time now.
Houston can talk a big game about “making significant changes to field a more proactive, younger and competitive team,” as the club’s GM Pat Onstad said in the club’s official announcement of the hire, but right now? Their poor 2022 season reflected the quality of their roster relative to the rest of the league. It’s a long road ahead.
The Dynamo already have three DPs, so their ability to pay their way into success is severely curtailed in the short term. This is a team that will have to really squeeze every last drop of ability out of the players already under contract to climb the standings in 2023. That’s a Ben Olsen specialty.
The other side of this coin is that over the last few MLS seasons, the teams that overachieve have tended to have an impressively refined tactical blueprint. Olsen’s teams skewed towards mid-block or low-block tactics that, in attacking phases, eschewed structure in favor of being a platform for the team’s best players to improvise.
That’s an approach that can work if the attacking players are good enough (go ahead and look back on Bruce Arena’s 2021 New England Revolution for proof), but the Dynamo flat out do not have those players right now. Houston didn’t have a single player in the top 25 in the league this season in terms of combined expected goals and assists. Of their top three in that category, only Sebastián Ferreira is guaranteed to come back for 2023; the club won’t announce what they’re doing with Darwin Quintero and Fafà Picault until next week.
The bottom line is that for Olsen to succeed in that environment, he’ll have to harness the strong points of his time coaching United while also showing that he has evolved as a tactician on the attacking side of the game. Given Houston’s apparent lack of patience with coaches and the work that needs to be done to catch them up with the rest of MLS, it’s going to be a tall order.
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