Level Set 14, FC Dallas: Embracing the Ceiling, Perhaps Reality

FC Dallas Academy, Class of [Every Year].

What follows is a brief history of FC Dallas, plus more brief notes on whatever long-term tendencies they have. Their 2025 season gets weighed on both sides of that and the whole thing ends with where I see things with them in this very specific moment in time - i.e., before First Kick 2026. You should count on things happening between here and there.

The post ends with a scale I came up with to measure the long-term success of every team in Major League Soccer. It does some things well (e.g., count trophies/achievements), other things less well (capture recent trends). It's called the Joint Points Scale and you can find a link that explains what it does. I was really stoned when I came up with the scale and wrote the post. Caveat lector. With that...

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FC Dallas, fka, the Dallas Burn have the singular honor of playing in the most WTF MLS Cup ever played. When they lined up against the Colorado Rapids – then competing in their second final – I have to believe that the collective response boiled down to, “sure, why not?” Apart from winning the 2016 Supporters’ Shield (and tying Red Bull New York on total points in 2015), FC Dallas have not enjoyed what most people – including what I'm guessing is a non-trivial percentage of their fans - would call obvious success. When it comes to actual silverware, they have the Shield mentioned above plus U.S. Open Cup titles in 1997 and 2016 (a great year, by their standards), aka, not much to fill the cabinet after 30 seasons. And yet they still gently undermine the entire “Joy Point” concept (see below for methodology*) because they rank ninth in MLS history based more for consistency than what any fan would recognize as joy. They racked up most of those points by just clearing low bar to make the playoffs over MLS’s first ten seasons – which took some fucking missing when the league had only 10-16 teams – and, while things have slowed down, they have generally made the playoffs every other season (or so) since then. More to the point, it’s not like Dallas hasn’t tried to keep up with MLS’s bigger, richer teams: hell, they swung hard to land one-time FIFA Player of the Year, Denilson, if at a bargain price; they very much got what they paid for. To their credit, they kept their chins up on either side of that debacle, with smart(er) signings like Ariel Graziani (his second stop) and Ronnie O’Brien, some of your better surprises of their eras, even if injuries ate too much of O’Brien’s career. Their hit-rate improved on the foreign signings side, even with some hitches, with league-elite players like David Ferreira and, less so (due to injury), Mauro Diaz, or even a higher-profile (if gently under-performing) player like Fabian Castillo. More than anything else, Dallas has relied on, and I mean this sincerely, top-notch budget signings – e.g., Michael Barrios, Blas Perez, and running one of, if not the most effective academy systems in these United States. The long list of graduates include Kellyn Acosta, Jesus Ferreira, Reggie Cannon, Brandon Servania, Ricardo Pepi, and, from the LA Galaxy’s 2024 MLS Cup team, Edwin Cerrillo. [NOTE: I like to limit links with active players; who knows where they'll go?] Moreover, Dallas’ belief in youth has kick-started some of the all-time great careers in MLS history (picking through this all-time list), e.g., Walker Zimmerman, Drew Moor, Clarence Goodson, Matt Hedges…I hope you’re seeing the pattern in there (see below). Against that, I’ve covered what all the above has given them and have no doubt that falls short of what both the organization and the fans of it want. Still, that dynamite academy, aka, America’s answer to the Eredivisie’s AFC Ajax, doesn’t look like it’s going away anytime soon…and yet, who can help but wonder how high they could rise if they kept some of those promising players two days after their 20th birthday.

Getting Reacquainted with FC Dallas, MLS's Consummate B (or B-) Students

How's your Italian, young man?

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

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FC Dallas, fka, the Dallas Burn undermine the entire “Joy Point” concept (see end of post for methodology*) because they rank seventh in MLS history more for consistency than what any fan would recognize as joy. Choosing their best season required no more thought than choosing between the two seasons they actually won a trophy. Dallas rose to these lofty heights the same way Red Bull New York did – i.e., by being in the league for as long as they have and consistently making the playoffs. Unlike the Red Bulls, I don’t believe anyone outside their most committed fans (meant, here, as both committed and “committed”) have ever uttered the words, “I think this is Dallas’ year. They did reach MLS Cup once, in 2010, but they lost to…the Colorado Rapids. (When people tell you that MLS is a weird league, believe them.) And yet, and to their very real credit, Dallas have missed the playoffs just seven times in 28 seasons (including one season they got tagged by the Wooden Spoon (2003)) and they finished in the top half of the table in (literally) half the time. Not a bad run, all in all, but not a great one, and not what any reasonable person would describe as “joy.” If one had to grade the Dallas franchise what could you give them but a B, or maybe even a B-. On the plus side, they do have that dynamite academy, aka, America’s answer to Ajax in the Eredivisie…makes you wonder how high they could rise if they kept some of those promising players two days after their 20th birthday. Or thereabouts.

Best Season(s)

The 2016 season, easily, and with nod to the prior season as a sign of things to come. I had to check back to both rosters to remember who suited up for them in both years (2015 and 2016) and, small coincidence, those same players are well-represented (if not over-represented and via a cheat) in the 10 Players to know section below. Those sections speak to another general truth about FC Dallas: it’s less that they never make ambitious signings than that they often miss the mark when they do, sometimes wildly. At any rate, Dallas won both the Supporters’ Shield and the U.S. Open Cup in 2016, which means their fans felt actual joy once – which I suppose beats the usual experience of salivating over the latest academy kid that they’ll say goodbye to right around the time they remember his name...

Gold Cup: The U.S. Frustrates Panama, and Honduras/Haiti Bores Neutrals

That some serious, long-term casting for bully and toady.

Holy shit, that was fun! The U.S. v. Panama was a damn good game. The way the first half ended with that roiling boil that threatened to pour over every side of the pot? It rarely gets better than when an underdog pops the Alpha with a surprise shot to the chin. Good times, good times...

Know what wasn't good times? Honduras' tournament-ending loss to a, let's face it, solid Haitian side. Somewhere in the middle of a lengthy rant that shifted from a specific point – e.g. the prolonged, pointless whine that Honduran coach Jorge Luis Pinto directed at that match's fourth official – to a general one – e.g. the general, embarrassing bitchy petulance toward referees by Major League Soccer players and coaches – the commentating crew noted that the second half of Haiti v. Honduras boiled down to Haiti inviting Honduras to try to break them down. And, lord did they have time for that rant about whining players. That game contained more dead air than a coffin.

They never did it. Honduras, I mean. They barely accepted the invitation to attack, and came close all of once. So, beyond congratulating Haiti for going through, the less said about that game, the better.

Fortunately, the night's second act made up for a grimly poor first and on multiple levels. Panama came out firing on all cylinders, pinning the U.S. back into their own half for large portions of the, well, the half. The Central American side put a young, fairly untried defensive set through a tricky set of wringers before the whistle blew for halftime. As someone who watched the game with me pointed out (and please claim via tweet, if you read this), the Panamanians serve up a mean cross – and that's something they carried into the second half. Panama knocked, knocked, and knocked again, until they finally scored the goal they needed to lift them over Haiti in the Group A standings.

Portland Timbers Review/Preview, Week 4/Week 5: Little Things, When Big Things Are Needed

Portland needs this guy. He's pinning stuff down blind.

Caught in a crazy, busy week here at Conifers & Citrus, I don't have the time to do the usual Tour d'Agony through all that Portland Timbers-related commentary and speculation. Then again, is it really necessary? I mean, we all know happened, right, in that distasteful loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps? A mighty comeback, even a near-win via Fanendo Adi's second crack at damn, dirty David Ousted (there's yer twitter handle, son; I suggest you take it), undone when That Goddamn Pass met a Keystone Kops Kaper from Nat "Natty Bo" Borchers and Liam [Nickname Pending] Ridgewell ("Ridgey" is wholly inadequate). It's a sad song, but at least we all know the tune.

Even with Matthew "The Armchair Analyst" Doyle threatening to provide numbers that demonstrate that Darlington Nagbe roared like a lion through March (on Twitter; and then Doyle provided; well worth the read), I'm done looking back...Oh, all right!

I'll keep my over-arching point short and sweet. Sure, the second defensive collapse of the season is a big, glum cloud, but a silver lining surrounds it: the Timbers played decently last week, and are playing decently enough, despite the absence of two key players (arguably more once one throws in Ben Zemanski, who can help kill games, and Jack Jewsbury, who (I don't care what anyone else says), provides a range of passing in deep midfield that helps the team overall). Portland has been in every game, complete with good-to-great spells. It's just pinning down the result that causes the headaches and absence of points.

This week's brief Tour d'Agony supported that point and it didn't. Stumptown Footy's Chris Rifer put together what was, in all honesty, a compact, yet nutritious review of the season so far in service of arguing that coaching isn't the problem. And, yep. Chris Gluck compiled a bunch of stats for the same site, which revealed where the Timbers came short. Or didn't. That's the funny thing with numbers, when it comes to soccer: too many damn variables – e.g. possession against this team isn't possession against that team. Gluck notes the averages, though, which I'm sure communicates something. Uh...moving on to the familiar ground of naked speculation.