In 2004, he made a move to Valencia, a youth club in La Liga, the Spanish first division, which has won that storied league six times. Since he had grown up there, he knew that any job with the club – even coaching youths – came with high pressure and expectations to perform. However, those factors were exactly why he embraced the opportunity.
p>“The thing that inspired me to keep growing in my coaching career is the pressure in a big club. It doesn’t matter what age (of players) you’re coaching. You’re playing against the best teams in big tournaments – teams from Spain like (FC) Barcelona, Real Madrid, Villa Real, their academies,” he said. “We would also play against Lisbon, Inter Milan and Premier League teams. You need to win. There is pressure to develop young players and win. There is no difference anywhere you coach. I feel that here (with FC Dallas) and I like it.”p>Seeking a new challenge, Estevez left Valencia in 2011 to coach Spain’s Huracan Valencia. “The pro level was more of a mix between young players and veterans. I was 30, but some players were older than me,” he said. “Everyone was worried about my experience, but they saw I treated humans as humans, had a plan and a clear idea to be better and win, so they believed in me. That gave me confidence to keep growing and it kept my career going in the direction I wanted.”p>In 2013, he returned to Valencia to coach its reserve side (or “B” team) and served as the first (or “A”) team’s interim coach. As someone who grew up in Valencia, getting to coach the first team, reserves and youths for his hometown club is an experience he wouldn’t have traded for anything. “It was positive. I was very comfortable because I had my friends, family, wife and kids there,” Estevez said. “It’s true when you are on a bigger stage and coaching pro, there can be more criticism when things are not going right. Usually, it’s your family who suffers a little more. I’m in this business and know what it’s about. When things are going well, we are all the greatest coaches. And when things are not going well, we’re the worst.”p>Crossing the pondp>Estevez’s next challenge was coaching in the United States. In 2014, he accepted a job with Columbus Crew as the club’s director of methodology, a position sometimes designated as technical director or general manager. After being in that position for three years, he became an assistant under Coach Gregg Berhalter. p>After arriving stateside, two things quickly became apparent: The first was that MLS was a very competitive league, and secondly, FC Dallas was producing some of the sport’s top young talent around. “I remember coming to tournaments in Dallas and playing in other places against Dallas. It intrigued me, the ability and quality they had within the academy in how they were able to recruit a good group of players who had a future in the first team and how in that moment they were ahead of any other club in MLS,” Estevez said.p>Seeing the impressive level of talent FC Dallas had in its academy planted a seed: If ever the chance to coach in Frisco materialized, he wouldn’t hesitate to accept the challenge. p>In 2017, Berhalter left Columbus to coach the USMNT andbrEstevez followed as one of his assistants. The new position afforded him the opportunity to work closely with young players in the team’s player pool, a promising group that included such FC Dallas players as Reggie Cannon, Jesus Ferreira, Ricardo Pepi, Paxton Pomykal, Bryan Reynolds and Brandon Servania. p>In his new role, Estevez will now be regularly coaching some of these young FC Dallas stars. “It’s going to be great (working with them again) because every time an FC Dallas player came to the national team, I loved to work with every single one of them,” he said. “Servania, Reynolds, Cannon, (Weston) McKennie, (Kellyn) Acosta, (Walker) Zimmerman – all of them were FC Dallas players. They had values that made them great to work with.”div class=”image-main image-align-center”>