Article by Matt Lichtenstadter
I’ve used these column inches to rave about FC Dallas, their youth system, manager Oscar Pareja, and their general approach to constructing a team in the wilds of Major League Soccer. They were so adept at all of this and more, that they became the gold standard in the league for what so many want to see MLS clubs become: competitive and smart while developing a fertile ground for talent in North Texas.
But something has gone terribly wrong recently. Since July 22, their last win, they’ve been outscored 23-8 and have gone from first in the West and a contender for the Shield to in serious danger of missing the playoffs almost overnight. What are the problems here, what went wrong, and can FC Dallas do anything to fix it? Or, is this halcyon era for a rising club in the league suddenly over?
Major League Soccer’s system is such that good teams and talented teams frequently miss the playoffs for one reason or another. That is not new. But for a team that was a contender for the best team in the league all year, I said as much even when Toronto FC was tearing the league to shreds, this kind of collapse is shocking. A 4-1 loss to almost entirely inept Minnesota United is seemingly the nail in their coffin. This was a team that was a fluke stoppage time goal against Pachuca away from taking them to extra time in CCL, and could have easily beaten them. And now, they’re a discordant mess.
Matt Hedges being in and out of the lineup certainly hasn’t helped, and Walker Zimmerman has been unusually poor without him of late. Maxi Urruti had done enough to score goals and lead the line for FC Dallas in the first part of the season, but when the goals dried up, the lack of good investment in this area has come to the forefront. Cristian Colman has not lived up to his DP tag with only four goals on the season, and none recently. Of their summer signings, only Roland Lamah has really hit, but then his form has been poor of late as well. And Mauro Diaz, who was for a time the best playmaker in the league, has never quite recaptured his form after his torn Achilles tendon.
Then there is the unrest in the dressing room because of transfer rumors. Both Urruti and Michael Barrios were linked with moves away earlier in the month, but were not sold. Since the stories from the club and players were wildly different, there are concerns about dressing room disharmony that Oscar Pareja has not been able to remedy. With poor transfer business piling up over the past few seasons, old standouts not able to recapture old glory and disharmony growing, the FC Dallas pyramid has crumbled.
It seems very evident that FC Dallas will look entirely different next season. A whole host of players could be sent out the door, many who were huge contributors for quite a time. And with doubts about Pareja and technical director Fernando Clavijo’s ability to adequately replace them, those concerns could get even bigger come the future. This team still has a chance to make the postseason in the less than stellar West with five games to play, four of them against teams that will not make the postseason themselves, including two against listless Colorado. But even if they find their way into the postseason, they will not be favorites; they may struggle get past their first game.
What has happened in Frisco seemed inconceivable just two months ago, but here we are, with the Hoops winless in 10, a mess of disharmony, bad soccer and stalled momentum. All of the promise from a Supporter’s Shield and US Open Cup triumph last year has gone away, to be replaced with huge questions about the future of a club that so many have lauded so consistently for the past few years.
Many will see the collapse of the LA Galaxy as the year’s biggest surprise. To me, and others, it will be how FC Dallas went from Supporter’s Shield contender to out of the playoffs in two to three months, and how the end of a glorious era for one of the great stories in this league came so suddenly, and so starkly.
