I’m Dustin “El Jefe” Christmann, and I am an FC Dallas fanatic from Day One of the Dallas Burn. I’m also a hater. I used to yell mean, hateful things from the stands at the Cotton Bowl and Toyota Stadium, but now, I’m sharing my id with you to help guide you, my fellow FCD fans, in your enjoyment of Major Soccer on TV.
Musical accompaniment
Last week
Last week, FC Dallas went to St. Louis and got out with a 1-1 draw. Normally, that would promote one of two reactions:
- “Good road point.”
- “FC Dallas has been great on the road this season. St. Louis is below them in the standings; they should’ve gotten more.”
Either one of those reactions is valid. But add into the mix:
- Michael Collodi — already the backup goalkeeper — got himself sent off in the 16th minute
- St. Louis proceeded to take more than 40 shots in the game,
- The 3rd string keeper, Jacob Jackson, for whom FCD traded a 2026 SuperDraft 3rd round pick a few weeks back to be the emergency backup, turned away all but one of those shots and made some spectacular saves.
At that point, the reaction should turn to abject amusement, especially when you consider that Jackson was named MLS Player of the Week and, in doing so, was FCD’s first Player of the Week of the season. Yes, the team that has Petar Musa with 14 goals already and that had Lucho Acosta for several months had to wait for the emergency backup keeper to stand on his head to get a player named MLS Player of the Week.
At this point, I don’t even care about sneaking into the playoffs. I just want FCD to make other teams’ fans as mad as I’m sure they made the St. Louis fans.
EL SUPERCLÁSICO DEL SIGLO (de la semana)
Vancouver Whitecaps vs. Philadelphia Union (MLS Season Pass, 8:35)
Neither of these teams is sneaking into the playoffs. In fact, Philly is leading the Supporters Shield race and has already clinched a playoff spot. I was actually surprised that Vancouver hasn’t already clinched, but they’re in third place in the West at the moment, thanks to a month-long skid between mid-June and mid-July, but they’ve since righted the ship, only losing once in the six games since then.
And they went on that hot streak without having to sell a $5 million midfielder.
But seriously, both these teams have something in common with each other and with FCD in that they’re being led by first-year head coaches. The similarities with FCD disappear in that they’re both led by competent technical staffs.
Also, unlike FCD, both of the firings of the previous coaches were slightly more surprising than FCD’s firing of Nico Estévez. After all, both Vanni Sartini and Jim Curtin were by far the most successful coaches in their respective clubs’ histories. (MLS histories, of course. I neither know nor care if the NASL Whitecaps had a really great coach back in 19-dickety.)
But again, really great technical staffs, so unlike most coach firings that fail to improve the teams’ fortunes on the field in the least, Jesper Sørensen and Bradley Carnell have guided to dramatic improvements over 2024’s “eighth in the West and 12th in the East,” all while developing promising young players.
I wonder if anyone could take any lessons from them.
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Philly
“Let’s Pretend to Care About the Eastern Conference” Game of the Week
Charlotte FC vs. Inter Miami (MLS Season Pass, 6:30)
(2025 Lionel Messi content counter: 15)
I was gonna write about the Cincy-Nashville game for this slot, but this one is more fun.
If you had told me back in February that Charlotte and Miami would be playing in September and that one of them would be 3rd and one of them would be in 6th, my first reaction would’ve been “Wow, Miami’s only in 3rd? Mascherano is gonna get the axe for sure.”
It’s actually Charlotte in 3rd and Miami is down in 6th, only two points ahead of the play-in slots. Granted, Miami’s got two to four games in hand over the rest of the Eastern Conference, so they can theoretically finish much higher. But “games in hand” are rat poison. They make you think that you’re actually better off than you actually are, but the problem is that you have to play those games. And while three games in hand can turn into nine points, they can also turn into zero.
And as frankly ordinary as Inter Miami has been this season, do you think that those games in hand will turn into a big number? And when your competition is getting to play five or six games in the time that your thirtysomething-heavy team is playing nine, how do you think that’s gonna go?
Speaking of Miami’s thirtysomethings, every week that I write about them, I have to play a fun party game known as “Is Lionel Messi Playing This Week?” For one thing, there’s his age and the fact that soccer is a young person’s game. And he’s been on the shelf once or twice this season.
But this week, there’s the additional factor that the game is at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, the home of the Carolina Panthers… which has a plastic field… which had a grass field for three decades but was converted to turf right before a professional soccer team started playing there a few years ago. (No, that still doesn’t make sense to me.) And having been informed by Thierry Henry’s time with the Red Bulls, during which he stubbornly refused to play in any stadium with a plastic field, I had real doubts as to whether Messi would play.
Good news for all of you starhumpers and ticket scalpers: He will play.
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: CLT FC, just because I want to hear Javier Mascherano or Jorge Mas blame the field for the loss.
Sickos Game of the Week
CF Montréal vs. St. Louis City (MLS Season Pass, 6:30)
Good news for all the St. Louis fans still annoyed about last Saturday night! Your team gets to play Montréal this week. There are only two teams in MLS that have already been eliminated from the playoffs so far, and Montréal is one of them. Amazingly, the Galaxy is not the other one, despite still having the fewest points in the league. Thank you, Western Conference, for being kinda down this season and keeping all of our craptacular teams in the hunt.
Incidentally, that’s why there’s not a Little Brother Game of the Week this week. FCD is playing the green one, and do you really want to read about the crappy orange one playing a pretty meh Colorado team, which is actually in a playoff spot? Probably not.
But back to this game. After the Toasted Ravioli Boyz did their best Imperial Stormtrooper impression last week, hitting Jacob Jackson, the fans in row 10, the players warming up behind the goals, and everything else last week but the back of the net, they get to get right against Montréal, who have only won twice at home this season, who have Dante Sealy as their leading scorer, and as previously stated, are out of the playoffs with more than a month left in the season.
Wait. Does this make Montréal the Ewoks in this analogy? I don’t know, but it gives me enough of an excuse to share this with you:
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Montréal. And frankly, this analogy allows us to have Dante Sealy be Wicket and imagine the Montréal ultras singing the Yub Nub song.
Good Guys Game of the Week
FC Dallas vs. Austin FC (Apple TV+ free game, 7:30)
Remember what I wrote above about wanting to make opposing fans mad from here on out? Oh yeah, baby. Let’s do that this week.
Mind you, folks are gonna call this a rivalry game, and I guess that it is. I’m not gonna lie. I’ve got them with equal billing with Little Brother Orange in a weekly slot of this column. How am I gonna say that I don’t care more about beating them than other teams, even if it’s less than the aforementioned orange team?
And it’s a little spicier this week because it’s the return of Nico Estévez, known soccer terrorist. And that part is especially annoying because he’s got Little Brother Green almost in the playoffs at 41 points while FCD is sitting in 12th, 10 points back. For a year and a half, before he was shown the door last year, he made you hate yourself for watching FC Dallas, win, lose, or draw, and now he’s on the cusp of making the playoffs? Shoot me now.
And the worst part of it is this: He fell ass-backward into it. Brandon Vazquez tore his ACL on July 8, in Little Brother Green’s US Open Cup quarterfinal in San Jose. Until that point, they were 7-8-5 for 1.30 PPG. They had scored more than one goal a grand total of three times in 20 league matches. Since then, they’re 4-1-3 for 1.88 PPG.
Of course, points are points whether they come through luck or cleverness. But we still see you, Nico. We see the coach who presided over soccer that makes your eyes bleed, the coach who tried to make us care about the xG after losses, the coach who seemed to prefer “what Pep does” to what actually worked, and the coach who pissed away the very best thing that this club does. You can cruise on a fortuitous injury absence and a fortuitously soft portion schedule, but we know what you and your club are.
And it’s time for your fortunes to change.