Just one year after hiring him, Florida has fired soccer coach Tony Amato, with athletic director citing “a disconnect with his players” as part of the reasoning in Florida’s release.
Florida posted a record of 4-12-4 in the fall of 2021, its worst in program history, regressing even from the 6-8-3 mark in the COVID-marred 2020-21 season that helped lead to the retirement of legendary and beloved coach Becky Burleigh, who was at that point Florida’s first and only soccer coach. Amato, hired from Arizona, was supposed to reinvigorate a program that had won a national title and 13 SEC titles under Burleigh’s watch but had fallen to mediocrity following a trip to the quarterfinals of the NCAA Tournament in 2017.