FC Dallas players Bryan Reynolds, Thomas Roberts, Ricardo Pepi, and North Texas SC midfielder David Rodriguez all got to spend some time training with FC Bayern Munich during the offseason. For Bryan Reynolds – and Thomas Roberts too – this wasn’t the first trip out to the Bavarian giants.
“It was my second time going so I kind of had a feeling how it was going to be but I was training with the seventeens [last time] but this time I got to train with the second team which was an awesome experience and I’m grateful for that,” Reynolds told 3rd Degree. “I just took away the speed of play and what it takes to be over there. I’m going to try to implement their ways and implement the European way.”
The Bayern Munich and FC Dallas partnership has been questioned with some wondering when a player from Bayern Munich will be sent FC Dallas’ way.
While questions of a player being received by Dallas will continue to be asked, for the young FC Dallas players, this serves as a learning experience to help and grow their game. The knowledge learned can be applied back in Dallas to help bring some of the European styles of play and mentality back to the MLS.
“I think it’s the mentality,” Reynolds replied when asked about the difference between MLS and Germany. “The Americans are physical enough to be over there and technical enough but it’s just the speed of play and the mentality. Everyone’s focused and I feel like that’s the main difference.”
While FC Dallas may lose some of its products to Bayern Munich as was the case with Chris Richards, FC Dallas is a club that puts the best interest of its players first and is a development club.
In the short term, these training stints will serve to not only develop the youth at FC Dallas but also the coaching through this partnership which can be brought back to Dallas with the idea of using the learned knowledge to bring success to FC Dallas.
