Houston Dynamo FC hits the reset button with Nagamura's dismissal

With a big smile and optimism about a successful tenure, Paulo Nagamura arrived ready to "rescue the identity" of Houston Dynamo FC when he was introduced as head coach barely over eight months ago. Late Monday afternoon, in what functioned as a holiday news dump, the club announced the end of his tenure.

The club reviewed "probably over a hundred" applicants, according to general manager Pat Onstad at the time, but the former MLS midfielder emerged as the "very easy" decision to lead the club from the sidelines. Even when the Houston public had questions, the club displayed faith in its new hire.

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After a 8W-16L-5D record, resulting in the last-place spot in the Western Conference, that faith ran out. Onstad and his staff were given a vote of "full confidence" from owner Ted Segal for its part in the acquisitions of Sebastian Ferreira and Hector Herrera just last week. Nagamura and his assistants, winless in 12 of 15 since the June international break, were shown the door.

The announcement comes as a shock for a fanbase not used to seeing proactive and strong decisions from the Houston club. That all has changed under Segal, who has stamped his fingerprint on the team in his first full year as majority owner.

Accountability has been loosely preached for years by the Dynamo front office but few times has it been backed by action. Nagamura may have taken the fall but this is also a decision that comes as a warning across the entire organization.

Dynamo 2 head coach Kenny Bundy has been named the interim as the search commences for Nagamura's replacement. A search for a new club president is also underway after John Walker's departure was preempted earlier this season.

Changes are afoot in Houston. A coaching change won't solve all the problems in the organization but it's the first place to start. For Nagamura, the rescue mission ended before it started.

Lack of results proved costly

Houston Dynamo FC began the year with a favorable schedule; eight of the team's first 12 matches were at home. The club came away with 15 total points from its first dozen games, an average of 1.25 per match, but, more importantly, left 12 points on the table in their home encounters.

Call it a missed opportunity, but those points — even if they didn't result in a playoff spot — might have saved Nagamura's job. Even so, through April 16, the Dynamo were looking good with a 3W-1L-3T record including their first away win in over a year.

Back-to-back losses in Copa Tejas encounters and a defeat at D.C. United made for three losses in a row from mid-April to early May. The team picked up a second road win at LA Galaxy but ended the month of May with elimination from the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup and a loss on the road at RSL, placing it seventh in the West.

That's the last time the Dynamo occupied a playoff spot.

Understandably there would be an adjustment period for the new coach to implement his direction to his players. The return from the June international break was expected to be a turning point and provide more progress as the pre-announced arrival of Hector Herrera loomed for July.

The team lost its first match back, a 1-2 result in Orlando, but bounced back with a 2-0 win at home over Chicago Fire. It then took a nosedive by going winless in 11 of 12 encounters, losing eight times. 

Hector Herrera, the biggest signing in club history, arrived during that stretch. He was presented to fans at halftime of the July 3 match against expansion side Charlotte FC, a 2-1 loss. The debut of the Mexican midfielder, in a Texas Derby sellout on July 9, nearly ended in disaster as the 2-2 result was rescued late into stoppage time. The only win with Herrera, so far, came on July 17 in San Jose.

The most embarrassing result of the season came in a 6-nil defeat, the most lopsided loss in club history, on July 30 in Philadelphia. More alarming than the results was the lack of progress the team showed. The same problems that were visible in the opening day draw with RSL and, to make matters worse, the team seemed to get worse with the addition of its biggest signing in club history.

That's probably when the club began to explore a change in direction. Second-half collapses in road matches at Vancouver, Minnesota and Seattle certainly didn't help overturn the situation. The 2-1 loss at Sounders FC proved to be the last straw.

In-game adjustments, or lack thereof, raised flags

The biggest argument against Nagamura, especially for fans that increasingly asked for his dismissal, was the inability to see out results. A 5-5-4 home record means the team only came away with 19 points out of a possible 42, leaving 23 points on the table when playing at PNC Stadium.

The team did collect three wins on the road, the most the club has since in a single season since 2014, but the quality of opposition in those matches make those results less impressive. Nagamura leaves with a 3-11-1 away record but should have left with more favorable results.

Overall, the team was in position to win on eight occasions after collecting the opening goal. Four of those came within the last month and all ended in defeats.

More importantly, an idea of play never fermented on the field. The team was unable get the most of its new star forward, who should have more than the 10 goals he's scored this season.

In 19 of the 29 games played, the Houston Dynamo were held to just a single goal or shut out entirely. The attack was nonexistent at times.

Darwin Quintero, a player that the club bet by bringing him back on a restructured deal in the offseason, saw his role diminish and played under 1,500 minutes this year. Others like Memo Rodriguez, Matias Vera, Fafa Picault, Corey Baird never found their best form under Nagamura's guidance.

Lastly, although Nagamura preached consistency, his use of over 20 different starting lineups goes to show that he never found his best XI. The starting eleven was only repeated on less than a handful of occasions.

It's not all on Nagamura

Anyone that is being honest knows that Nagamura was not set up to succeed. That's not to say he deserved a second year, only to say he was put in a losing situation.

For one, someone with his background should never have been hired. That falls on Pat Onstad and Asher Mendelsohn. A coach with vast experience, as was requested by the fanbase, should have been put in place. Onstad insisted on a candidate with "MLS experience" and, while he may not have gotten his first choice, there was definitely a large pool to choose from.

Two, the right signings never arrived. Priority number one should have been a bona fide playmaker. While Sebastian Ferreira is a really good player, he did not fill the highest need on the first team. Hector Herrera didn't either. To make matters worse, the summer window was not only uneventful but almost inexistent. An unproven commodity in 20-year-old Nelson Quinones made his MLS debut literally one month after he was announced. The counterpoint is that Nagamura was hired to get the job done under these conditions.

Three, the head coaching job is not the biggest problem at the Houston Dynamo. Fans, rightfully so, want to see more academy products in the first team, but how well is the development system progressing?

The last three Dynamo head coaches — Wilmer Cabrera, Tab Ramos and Nagamura — all arrived with youth backgrounds and hopes of playing more academy products. Why didn't they? Perhaps there's only a shallow pool of MLS-ready players, if there are indeed any at all, in the Dynamo system.  

Without admitting it publicly, Onstad has admitted it through action. Brooklyn Raines is the most exciting prospect in the current system, and he was acquired from Real Salt Lake. Yes, the head coaching hire has to be a success, but there's a larger issue here with the in-house pool of players. Onstad and company have to start addressing that as proactively as they've begun to — but only begun to – address the first-team roster.