Getting Reacquainted with FC Dallas, a Narrowly Successful MLS Team

But....is it really waiting to be filled?

Thumbnail History
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 in MLS Cup 2010 – 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, very much including a whopping percentage of their fans, would call 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 29 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 simply by clearing low bar to make the playoffs over MLS’s first ten seasons – it took some fucking missing when the league had only 10-16 teams – and, while things have slowed down, they have (very) 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 a one-time world-record transfer, Denilson, only to miss harder than the swung. To their credit, they kept their chins up on either side of that debacle, signing players like Ariel Graziani and Ronnie O’Brien while most MLS burned time waiting for the next kids to graduate (yes, that’s a gross over-simplification). They improved on the signing side, if with some hitches, by landing playmakers like David Ferreira and, less so (due to injury), Mauro Diaz, or even a higher-profile (if gently under-performing) player like Fabian Castillo…and, unless you want to throw in a current player like Petr Musa, thus endeth the short list. More than anything else, Dallas has relied on, and I mean this sincerely, top-notch budget signings everyone else missed – e.g., Michael Barrios, Blas Perez, and running one of, if not the most effective academy/homegrown system in these United States. That long list includes Kellyn Acosta, Jesus Ferreira, Reggie Cannon, Brandon Servania, Ricardo Pepi, and, a star from the Los Angeles Galaxy’s latest run to MLS Cup, Edwin Cerrillo. 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). Going the other way, 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. On the plus side, that dynamite academy, aka, America’s answer to the Eredivisie’s AFC Ajax, doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere 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.

Total Joy Points: 21

USA 0-0 Colombia: Mom, Dad, I Don't Know How I Feel About (January) Camp

Me tonight, only 20 years ago and with a lot more hair.

I was a little torn about the line-up the U.S. trotted out in tonight’s positively somnolent 0-0 draw against Colombia. January camp is, or has become, all about calling in players from the fringe and giving them a moment – I get that - but I would have rather seen interim coach Anthony Hudson name and stick with a starting XI over both games. Instead, he played the camp like a bad hand in draw poker and swapped out 10 players between Wednesday’s loss and tonight; unless I’m miscounting, only Walker Zimmerman started both games (and he lasted longest in this one).

Now, had you presented me with both line-ups and asked me which would do better, I’m pretty sure I would have picked tonight’s line-up, regardless of opponent. If nothing else, it featured the more experienced/accomplished players, particularly with the national team set-up – e.g., Paul Arriola, Aaron Long, Jesus Ferreira, Kellyn Acosta, Sean Johnson – and yet they delivered less in every category I could name outside the spine of the defense.

To state the obvious, Serbia and Colombia are different teams that played different styles. Perhaps knowing they could get something lethal going given the right circumstances, Serbia gave the U.S. more of the ball while Colombia played its defense high enough to force errors and broke from there; call it a second cousin to a press, twice removed. I don’t know what Wednesday’s line-up would have looked like against Colombia, in other words, and mostly hope that that multiverse got treated to a more entertaining game because, my god, was tonight’s game like watching old people fuck in front of drying paint....you have my apologies for the mental image...

The Mothership’s stats page doesn’t post xG for U.S. games, but the Yanks’ five total shots suggests something in the 0.5 range. The only two shots on goal involved Matthew Hoppe – he set up Paxten Aaronson for one (and he could have done better) and fired from the channel for the other – but those didn’t amount to anything besides easy-ish saves for “A. Montero,” Colombia’s ‘keeper. The only other decent U.S. chance I can recall from my times of full, attentive consciousness was the chance Ferreira opened up with a smart first touch. The way he lost that ball to a swarm of Colombian defenders sums up the game in a singular moment. The Colombians broadly overwhelmed the Americans tonight, but without ever coming close to beating them - i.e., boredom, by any other name.

MLS Weakly, January 21, 2023: A Scrabble Bag, Honestly, Weaklier Than Usual

Vox Media's HR department.

I saw something late last week about a tech company that had their people show up to work and attempt to gain entry with their keycards. If an employee saw green, in they went...with a momentary reprieve, but if they saw red...

Red light, green light. Where have I heard that before?

I don’t mean to make light of the layoffs that appear to have wiped out what’s left of Major League Soccer coverage on SB Nation. I do, however, know that I’ve relied on SB Nation’s devoted team sites for years – particularly in preseason, when I’m sniffing around for hype on a player I don’t recognize. Some of those sites were better than others – bluntly, a couple employed stenographers instead of writers – but I’ll miss them all. And whatever I thought of any given writer, that’s a person now looking for work and that sucks.

Losing Stumptown Footy hits closest to home, obviously. The Portland market has always had a decent stable of writers and, more recently podcasters, but Stumptown made the local scene feel a little bigger and more stable. They had some good people to boot. Anyhoo, Vox Media can go to heck. Yearning for the days when people ran local media, and many other things, as a community concern. If I win the lottery. Or invent something...I listed each in the order they’re likely to happen...

The past week also saw the tragic, savagely unlucky death of Charlotte FC’s Anton Walkes. My oldest child turns 25 this year, which drives home the the agony of Walkes' parents. My heart goes out to his friends and teammates as well.

That’s it for the week’s tragedies, thank gods...

Last week was a slow fucker outside all that. (How slow was it?) The MLS Kickoff letter posted power rankings so premature that I couldn’t see the point in the reading – or the writing for that matter. [Ed. - Totally unrelated, but the soap dispenser next to one of the sinks at the bowling alley literally prematurely ejaculated. It went off when the water turned on and could not perform when the time came.] In fact, this little nugget from the second of Matt Doyle’s mailbag posts (again, the scrounging is universal) might have been the most interesting soccer-related thing I read all week:

Timbers v FC Dallas Preview: Don't Stop...Believin' (Hold on to That FEE-eee-ling!)

Don't fuck with the Jesus...

With the Portland Timbers approaching the now-or-never moment of the season – and they just let a moment go last night – they’ve got FC Dallas coming to visit on Saturday. On the plus side, Dallas has by and large followed the same script – i.e., start strong, then.....fade away - that has dogged their entire history.

In a fun twist, they’ve turned that grand narrative into micro-narratives for their games lately. I’ll get to that below, but let’s start with the basics:

FC Dallas
Record/Basics: 9-7-9, 36 points, 6-3-3- home, 3-4-6 away; 33 gf, 26 ga, +7 goal differential
Last 10: LTLTTLTWWL (2-4-4, 1-2-2 home, 1-2-2 away; high side of middling)
Oppo: v VAN, @ ATX, @ LAFC, v MIA, @ HOU, v NYC, v ATX, @ RSL, v LAG, @ SEA

What We Know About Them
They’re perennial contenders for MLS’s most effective development/selling team – a model that has consequences for their consistency, obviously – but Dallas also serves as the stomping grounds for MLS 2022 MVP candidate, Jesus Ferreira, as well as another USMNT-bubble player, the indefatigable Paul Arriola. Matt Hedges, one of MLS most reliable long-term CBs, anchors a backline that, as evidenced by the numbers, doesn’t allow a ton of goals. The who’s who gets a little thin from there, but still includes Paxton Pomykal, the eternal Comeback-Player-of-Next Year (though he has had a decent run this season), and Timbers fans will recognize at least one right back, assuming the start him (Marco Farfan.

Notes on Recent Form
As repped in numerical form above, pretty shaky – and regardless of venue. Their schedule hasn’t been easy by any means – and the wins they posted (0-1 at Real Salt Lake, and a 2-1 home win over the Los Angeles Galaxy) had the added bonus of taking all the points from rivals – but a frisky, upwardly-mobile team gets more than a third of the points out of that stretch. That said, both wins came recently and the way Dallas rotated their starting XI at Seattle (pretty thoroughly) floats a plausible theory that they rested starters for the Timbers because they felt better about getting points against them (or, alternately, they saw Seattle as vulnerable (fairly, given their recent record) and gambled). In other words, they might have shaken off a bout of midsummer doldrums just in time to ruin a Rose City Saturday afternoon.

Portland Timbers 1-0 FC Dallas: One Good Step and a Mess Besides

I fail. I succeed. I live. I die.

How can a game be everything you want, only less? That’s how I feel about the Portland Timbers’ narrow, yet necessary 1-0 home win over piteous FC Dallas. Neither team covered itself in glory tonight - in fact, one could argue that, if Portland strained that hard to beat Dallas, therefore… - but let’s dwell on the happy shit, for there was some. But first, a word on Dallas.

They have had a terrible season, without question, and…. yep, they’re the last team in the Western Conference again, but I see them playing most teams close every time I check box scores and the highlights, they get their chances, and so on. Still, why not sleep on a team that shows no real sign of waking up? As for tonight, and box score be damned, they had the better chances to go ahead early - Ricardo Pepi knocked on Heaven’s Door when he pinged the post on a great cross from Paxton Pomykal in the first half (and Pomykal had a great chance of his own later) - but I also suspect that’s Dallas’ season in a nutshell: a lot of not nearly enough. Call it the wages of life as a selling club (au revoir, Tanner Tessmann), and not getting enough out of players they bank on like Franco Jara (bordering on flop) or Matt Hedges (broken), but Dallas presents as a team all but screaming for an on-field ratio of mentors to mentees of 1:3 at a minimum.

A player like Justin Che provided a good example tonight: he got beat, he lunged, he poked he missed, and so on, but he also played the full 90 without allowing a total collapse. At the same time, against a team with a better idea of what they want to do in the attacking third? That shit’s fatal…

…sadly, Portland is not that team, or wasn’t tonight. There was so much nothing before Diego Valeri came on at the 65th minute, and even then it took some minutes before things - or, rather, Jeremy Ebobisse’s, on review, fairly low-percentage, and yet entirely wonderful goal - to come together. And I’m serious about that: 80% of this was a game of snatching coherence out of its opposite; getting into timelines and brass-tacks makes no damn sense. Somehow the same game contained an endless parade of soccer players making soccer plays (i.e., so many players did so many good things on an individual level to keep possession and/or the ball going where the team wanted it to) while still containing multitudes of futility.

Portland Timbers 1-0 FC Dallas: The First Thing, You See, Is to Get Your Foot Planted

Like this, but with just one yellow card.

Dear God, if that wasn’t a cage match. Referee Allen Chapman blessed the whole thing with professional indifference but, in the end, no limbs were lost and no real crimes committed. The Portland Timbers came out of the rough and tumble with one goal more than visiting FC Dallas. And that felt fair, at least where I live (Portland, OR, so…), but a 0-0 wouldn’t have exactly insulted justice. Dallas gave as good as they got. That’s as much for me as it is for you, because I don’t know what the hell to make out of that goddamn team…

To dust off some clutter, Portland beat Dallas 1-0 last night at Providence Park and not one damn thing about that came easily. At the same time, I thought I saw the unveiling of the Timbers’ broad attacking approach to the game in the stretch between the 5th and the 10th minute: believe that every pass will connect, so try everything, and ruthlessly hunt down anything that tells you differently like the damned lie it is. At the precise time I sketched that note onto my pad, Portland was merrily marching up the field by flailing the ball from one side of the field to the other. It looked a little desperate and more than a little low-percentage, but it generally came off, while definitely confusing Dallas and throwing them off. The (highly relative) success of the whole “swinging for the fences” strategy didn’t last for long, and Dallas came back into the game and, generally put up a real fight…

…but, in one blessed/curs’d moment, every cog in the Timbers game-plan, and broad theory of roster construction, meshed together to steal a goal out of a game seemingly sworn to give up no goals. And I think that’s the real story of last night’s game.

Both of these teams took similar approaches to the game. When I tried to phrase it last night, I started with “defending aggressively” – by which I meant chasing down the ball and/or passer at some point on the field, as opposed to keeping your shape and making him break you down. Both Portland and Dallas assumed that general position, but they started at different parts of the field. In their better moments, Dallas rasied a bristling line of confrontation at the center stripe – i.e., anything that crossed it got swarmed like piranhas on whatever the hell is dumb enough to walk into the Amazon. During one truly fascinating phase, the kept both of Portland’s centerbacks and Sebastian Blanco trying to force their way inside that line; Blanco, specifically, could drop out of it, but he couldn’t go back in. Given that Blanco is, or has been, a major piece for Portland getting the ball moving forward, maybe Dallas studied some video and adopted that strategy to nip his usefulness in the bud.

Sporting Kansas City 0-0 FC Dallas, aka a Tense Inter-Generational Indie Comedy

I shit you not, Noah Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming is EXCELLENT.

What Sporting Kansas City v. FC Dallas lacked in heightened moments - ended knotted in zeroes again; like SKC wanna be this year's Colorado - it more than made up for in framing. Call it the bone-dry coming of age comedy to the action movie experience we all expect from spectator sports, but that we get less often than we’d like to admit.

All in all, Dallas had the better game – and not in the way that Sporting’s color commentary kept bitching that they did. Yeah, Dallas played conservative, maybe even safe, but they played the better game: they consistently had defenders where they needed them and they created the best, cleanest chances.

The other subplot in here is the one alluded to in the first paragraph. Dallas…hold on, but, true story, I’m looking at the graphic line-up for the first time (sorry, people on twitter; I just checked the names, not where they lined up), and now where I saw specific players totally makes sense, for all that, continuing, Dallas didn’t just play back-ups; they played first-year players and a freakin’ 17-year-old kid, Paxton Pomykal. And that’s the thing: KC played veterans, plus a couple guys who, by broad consensus, rate in MLS – e.g. Benny Feilhaber, Dom Dwyer, Roger Espinoza, Matt Besler, etc. Now re-read paragraph 2. And Pomykal? He looked just fine. Even cleaned Benny's clock around the 43rd. So, yeah. Fuck off, old people. Look, even if you think I’m crediting Dallas too much, it’s remarkable that the equivalent of a Dallas B-side played KC to a draw at home.

OK, moving on to talking points now…