FC Dallas give boot to Morrow

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time

Surprisingly, DC's Tom Soehn was not the first MLS head coach to get the ax, as FC Dallas announced today the firing of their head coach Steve Morrow on the heels of an embarrassing 5-1 home loss to the LA Galaxy last Sunday.

Hoops GM Michael Hitchcock appointed assistant coach Marco Ferruzzi interim head coach, according to the report on mlsnet.com.

FC Dallas is in the midst of a four-game winless streak and has managed only one win in four home matches. Given last year's fourth-place finish (overall) in the regular season, and an early exit from the playoffs at the hands of the Houston Dynamo, expectations were apparently high and results were expected sooner rather than later.

"We have set high standards, expectations, and goals for this team and organization," Hitchcock told mlsnet.com. "I feel that the team was not heading in the direction we had planned, and believe it is in the best interest of the club to make a coaching change at this time."

Morrow, a former Northern Ireland international, played two seasons for FC Dallas in 2002 and 2003, before taking a position as an assistant a year later. He resigned due to personal reasons later that year but returned to act as Colin Clarke's assistant in the 2005 season. He was named head coach in late 2006. In his first (and now only) full year as head coach, he guided the Hoops to a 13-12-5 record and an MLS Cup playoff berth. Morrow also managed to get FC Dallas to the Championship game of the US Open Cup where they lost 3-2 to New England.

"I have thoroughly enjoyed my six year association with this organization and was proud to be Head Coach of FC Dallas," Steve Morrow told mlsnet.com. "I feel I leave the team in a very strong position with a wonderful group of players that are capable of achieving great things. Due to a recent run of poor results, I fully accept responsibility, and, if the team needs to go in a different direction then I wish the players nothing but great success for the remainder of the season and beyond. I'd like to thank my staff, the players, the Hunt family and all the fans for their support."

As evidenced by his statement above, Morrow is a class act. This is an inscrutable move by the Dallas front office. Morrow had a single season under his belt and many would argue that he was still in the process of building his team.

He was primarily responsible for bringing in talented midfielder Juan Toja, who has admittedly had a poor sophomore effort but who also has caught the injury bug, and Morrow was still trying to fill the absence of goal-machine Carlos Ruiz, who was traded away so the league could boost the pathetic attack of the LA Beckhams.

It's amazing to me that mediocre coaches like Tom Soehn and Fernando Clavijo are thrown a lifeline year-after-year, loss-after-loss, while a guy like Morrow is left to drown after just a single season. Hopefully, Seattle or Philadelphia will seize on this mistake and we'll see Morrow on the sideline again. And maybe then he'll get a chance to burn his old team like they burned him.