John Morrissey
Where we left off last year
2024 season: 38 points, 10th in the Western Conference
FC Tulsa is innately frustrating, in that every other year seems to be a reset. This club has cycled through manager after manager for a handful of seasons, and Mario Sanchez's single-year reign in 2024 still wasn't enough to get over the playoff line.
Still, there's a sense that legitimate groundwork was laid for a new era. Sanchez settled on a somewhat direct style based out of a back four, and while he's handed off the coaching job to fellow Louisville alum Luke Spencer, that template shouldn’t face. In-season adds like Owen Damm, Andrew Booth, Faysal Bettache, and especially goalkeeper Johan Penaranda helped to inspire a late-season upswing; all four are back as core pieces heading into 2025.
Whether 2024 was a real building block campaign will be impossible to know for a few years more, but the potential forged last year is undeniable.
