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...

The Late Tackle 01 26 2017: Personnel and Strategy (and Goals) and a Red Flag on Any CV

This is once in a lifetime. Do NOT count on it.

Aiming for a quick one today…starting with the Portland Timbers, as I’m supposed to do when flow isn’t an issue…

Depth and Squad Rotation

Stumptown Footy posted something that I’m sure nearly anyone who finds this has already read so far. The article – titled something like “How Much Attacking Depth Is Too Much” (or, exactly that) – sort maps out, combines, and re-combines the personnel that the Timbers can throw at the opposition in the year ahead and that is obviously (probably?) of interest.

But what does it mean in practice?

People who know I exist/read my stuff know that I’ve been a big proponent of squad rotation in the past. Still a fan, if with a little more conscious emphasis on the rationale – e.g., it’s about timing and/or priming the team to win MLS Cup, with the Supporters’ Shield constituting either, 1) a totally (and I mean totally) separate prize; and/or 2) something that won’t always be the primary goal. To clarify #2 a bit, I see the circumstances that allow a team to win the Shield to work in the same rough way as it dawns on someone playing Hearts that things have shifted to where Shooting the Moon (or, here, winning the Shield) has become a live possibility.

If that seems like splitting hairs, well, that’s what we do here. For what it’s worth, I think the league blessed the Timbers with a favorable start to the year, one soft enough that it should reverse the team’s traditional, um, slow (crap) start. If Portland can pocket that, and land that mystery winger we keep hearing about (and also the depth pieces), playing with one eye on the Shield becomes a consideration. If/when things line up differently, hell yes, I want the Timbers rotating and frequently. That’ll keep the regulars fresh and the new guys connected.

And, to be clear, no, I’m not claiming that some ready plug-‘n’-play system exists. No matter what any team does, it’s trial, error, and a lotta crossed fingers. What I’m talking about above is the spirit and mentality behind the approach. OK, next…

Clash of (What Passes for MLS’s Version of) Titans

Your vacation lives on! I thank you!

[The third and final game I watched this weekend pitted the then and current top two teams in MLS against one another, the Colorado Rapids v. FC Dallas.]

When it comes to parsing this year’s (semi-freakish) power match-up, it’s probably best/safest to break it down into discrete parts. There’s sort of a lot to unpack, and from multiple pieces of luggage. Even so, the balance of the chatter falls on the Rapids side of the ball – they’re the bigger transformation, after all – so I’ll end with them.

Oh, and the game ended 1-1. It really looked like the Rapids would hold on, but I guess that’s why Dallas is Dallas. Victor Ulloa cranking an equalizer from eastern freakin’ Colorado falls in line with things like Mauro Diaz’s passing and Fabian Castillo’s (or Michael Barrios’) dribbling.

Another reason why Dallas is Dallas? Chris Hedges and Walker Zimmerman. These are both good players, really good players. What sometimes gets lost with those two is just how young they are: 26 and 23, respectively. Barring a transfer (something I can see for Zimmerman before Hedges), that tandem has a long future together. In the here and now, though, having them back there buys your team time, maybe even an entire half, to scratch back into a game against a Colorado defense that gives up very, very little.

Timbers Top Dallas in Leg 1: Rumors of a Steady State

The man at left is Caleb Porter's copilot. Good times.

It all hinged on The Goal of Destiny. When a random scrap player from your team – say, Dairon Asprilla – scores that crackerjack, out-o'-nowhere special goal that your team of choice so rarely scores, it's time to set aside all sense of doubt, to suspend all reasonable disbelief, and, when all's said and done, to believe that all the trends might be too irresistible to resist, and to accept that, yes, things are going really goddamn well with your local soccer team.

As all who care to know know by now, the Portland Timbers built a big beautiful lead in the opening game of their home-and-home series against FC Dallas tonight, taking a 3-1 win (familiar? yes!) over Texas' historic also-rans (yep, I'm fronting!). The Timbers won this one in the best way possible for this kind of series: they came out and dominated, from the get, from the go, and, with small exceptions, from start to finish. The Portland Timbers look really real, people, in a way that anyone watching them in August, or even September, would have given you very good money in order to buy very good drugs that promised to let them feel some lesser form of anxiety about the current and future state of all things Timbers.

But the margin, it didn't feel so large in real time as it does now, did it? Portland drew first blood with a barreling goal from Liam Ridgewell, but Dallas threatened in some achingly familiar ways. Not the most familiar ways, mind you - the Timbers defense did a good enough job corralling Fabian Castillo that teams around the league should review the tape (Jorge Villafana, in particular, appeared to have a clear mind as to how to play Castillo right – e.g. leave a gap between you and him, assuming that the worst thing he can do is get actually past you) – and they generally stayed compact when Dallas had possession (yay!) – but the Timbers allowed a set of set pieces in a spot on the field that 100%-absolutely could have spelled disaster. With Mauro Diaz misfiring, it didn't matter in the end and that's the tale of the tape: the better team (Portland) wasn't punished for some moments of less-than-perfect judgment (free kicks), so they won the game and rightly so.

Before I bury the lead, I want to say it here explicitly: the Timbers look really solid right now; this club defends at damn-near close to the highest level in Major League Soccer, but they have since figured out how to score goals...wait...doing actual research for one of these...no, don’t spoil my moment...yes, thought so, Portland has scored 24 goals in the second half of the season, versus 17 goals in the first half; throw in the playoffs, where Portland has scored, uh, seven more goals in four games. That's not some brilliant, massive haul, but, yeah, with one goal per game giving way to something...mathematically better, I'd argue that Portland has worked out scoring goals. That's cool, but that's not the coolest thing. When your team plays defense like that, they're going to win if/when the offense comes online. And against any team in MLS. Any. Team.

Portland Timbers' Loss to FC Dallas, in a Big Frame

Adi was about this aggressive...

Because this is one to two days late (by my usual pace), I thought I'd try to add a little value to the post by stitching the Portland Timbers into their place in the Western Conference milieu. First, and because it serves the larger plot, let's explore the Timbers rather outsized loss to FC Dallas last Saturday night.

I'll get to the game in, literally, the next paragraph, but I do want to pause to praise the Dallas bugler who includes at least two Texas classics in his/her in-game repertoire – e.g. the theme from Dallas and "Deep in the Heart of Texas." Sa-lute! Now, the game...

The best thing one can say about it is that the Timbers pushed past being four goals down deep into the 90 and scored a late, late, if meaningless goal. How meaningless? Well, Dallas' three- goal-gap contributes visibly to the Timbers now -4 goal differential (please, refrain from dissecting the logic of that statement). Though still on the right side of the crimson, velvet rope that separates "winners" from losers (use of scare quotes both intentional and attributable to MLS's stupid playoff format), Portland's recent run has left them vulnerable to getting over-run by the teams below them – hence the point of the "milieu" project.

On that late goal, though, some unseemly squabbling preceded it. The new guy, Lucas Melano, drew the penalty and, (presumably) wanting to show his team a little more of what he can do, Melano also offered/insisted on taking the penalty kick he earned. In a show of poor manners for the new arrival, two longer-term Timbers, Fanendo Adi and Gaston Fernandez, both offer...no, they insisted on taking the same penalty. Adi won in the end, mostly by grabbing the ball and turning a deaf-ear to further input from the Argentine Delegation. To his credit, Adi stepped up and buried the penalty kick. Though it was, as noted above, meaningless.

Yes, yes, there's typically a process in place that decides who takes penalty kicks, it probably is Adi (though I say that without any knowledge of the relevant process), and process is process, and without it there will be chaos, etc. Given the stakes involved in the game in question (low, low, low; one "low" for each goal against), and given the larger, more pressing task of bringing a new (expensive) player into the team, it strikes me that the larger, wiser gesture would have been to let Melano take it, score it, and thereafter envelope him in the hot, ample bosom of his new club. There's healthy competition and there's back-biting rivalry...follow the modifier to see which one think is best for Portland.