The Houston Dash are in a familiar spot. After sacking Fabrice Gautrat on Sunday, the only NWSL club in Texas is looking for a new head coach.
The Dash tend to get through them pretty quickly. Next season will be the fourth of the last five in which they’ll start with a new head coach, and since being formed in 2014, Houston have rattled their way through six permanent head coaches and six interim head coaches.
The last two to take the job before Gautrat – Sam Laity and Fran Alonso – never even made it through a full season in the job. For the 38-year-old rookie coach to last almost two years in the job and oversee 50 matches is an achievement in the circumstances, and his tenure at the Dash is the third-longest behind Randy Waldrum and James Clarkson.
In the wake of his sacking, club president Angela Hucles Mangano addressed the media on Wednesday to discuss her plan for the future. She was bold in her backing of the players and in her decision to hire an untested, inexperienced Gautrat in the first place.
“This is about positioning this club to take the next step,” Hucles Mangano said on Wednesday. “Our ambitions have not changed. We believe in this player group.
This decision is not about losing faith in them. It’s about putting them in the best possible environment to reach what we know they’re capable of.”
She continued: “ I’d say, given the circumstances, the timing, and the availability at that time, I would make the same choice with Fabrice [Gautrat] again,” Hucles Mangano said.
Hucles Mangano’s hiring of Gautrat was one of her first actions as the Dash’s president of women’s soccer, which came after the club posted one of the worst seasons in NWSL history.
Head coach Fran Alonso basically vanished midway through 2024 before mutually parting ways with the team a few games before the end of the season. In his wake, interim head coach Ricky Clarke could only manage two wins across 15 hellish matches. General manager Alex Singer was fired, and so too was technical director Pabo Piñones-Arce.
