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
As always, we start this section with a meme:
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: FCD rolls into Seattle, full of hope that they might be able to break out of the funk that they’ve got at Lumen Field. The Sounders jump on them early because apparently, everyone’s body clocks are still on Central Time, and it’s actually 9:00 or 9:30 for them. FCD wakes up and puts up a valiant fight and gets a goal back, but the Sounders proceed to just sit on them for the rest of the game and get the three points.
I actually thought about starting with a GIF of David Byrne doing the “Same as it ever was” hand motions from the video for Talking Heads’ class “Once in a Lifetime,” but I do want this column to be accessible to people born after 1985.
But otherwise, it really was the same as it ever was. I guess that this time, there was slightly less hope going in because of the absences of Musa and Farrington due to knocks that they had picked up the week before, but yeah. A couple of notes:
- I’m not sure what the statute of limitations is on not celebrating too much when you score on your former team, but I guess that Jesús Ferreira was still in it. It was bound to happen eventually, but these are the things that get you “beloved former player” status.
- As someone who’s heard all sorts of local announcing teams while watching this team over the last 30 years, I’m pretty used to some homer calls from the local yokels announcing on the opposing team’s local broadcast. And with the Apple deal, every game was gonna be a national broadcast, so hopefully you wouldn’t get the same sort of homer calls.
I was apparently wrong about that last week. I looked up the play-by-play announcer, Evan Weston, and I was shocked — SHOCKED — that he was not previously the Sounders local play-by-play announcer. In fact, he was the radio voice of Orlando City. But man, he did a great job hyping the Seattle Sounders as a shining light of what MLS should be and in fact, a shining example to the youth of the world, and casting FC Dallas as mere supporting characters.
As I said, I’ve heard some real homers on the mic over the years, but even I was taken aback. Or maybe it was my general frustration with FCD’s usual toothlessness at Lumen Field.
EL SUPERCLÁSICO DEL SIGLO (de la semana)
San Diego FC vs. Los Angeles FC (Apple TV, 8:30)
“Say, aren’t San Diego down in 11th? Why are they in this spot?”
First of all, let me express my utter amazement at that fact. Over the last year or so, I had gotten used to seeing them in the top four or five in the West and gotten used to writing all sorts of plaudits about Mikey Varas and side-eyeing FC Dallas for getting rid of him and paying soccer terrorist Nico Estévez real American money to be their coach and to make their fans hate soccer for two and a half seasons.
But no, they’re down in 11th, largely on the back of five straight losses and an eight-game winless streak that started when they came to Frisco, blew a 3-1 lead, and walked out with a 3-3 draw. Of course, collecting a red card in four out of the last six games didn’t help with that, although amusingly, none of those red cards had a major role in the outcome — in three of those games, they collected the red card after all the scoring had concluded and in the fourth, they were already losing to San Jose 1-0 and walked out with a 3-0 loss.
So why is this game in this slot? First, it’s early, and with a win, they’re back in a playoff slot, so let’s not act like they’re in any danger of contending for a Wooden Spoon. Second, (exhales deeply) this game is the WALMART 💥 SATURDAY 💥 SHOWDOWN 💥💥💥, so apparently, the league also thought that they’d be higher in the standings when they made this a promoted game.
Third, it’s that very underrated LA-San Diego rivalry. They’re just a three-hour drive apart, depending on traffic on I-5. There’s a real civic rivalry between the two — OK, mostly from the San Diego side, but still. The Padres and the Dodgers fans don’t like each other, with a higher security presence when those two teams play.
Which brings me to this game. The last time LAFC came to Snapdragon Stadium, this happened:
Now, of course, I don’t want this to happen again with any teams, in any stadium. This is sports, the toy department of life. You win, you lose, you go on with your real life.
Just sayin’, there’s gonna be more spice to this game than say, New England-Charlotte.
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Draw. Let no one go home too happy.
Little Brother Game of the Week
Houston Dynamo vs. Colorado Rapids (Apple TV, 7:30)
I’ve lived in Houston, and I live in Colorado, and I can say without a shadow of doubt that you can hardly find two places that are more different from each other geographically than Houston and Colorado. One is a year-round steam bath, the other is dry as a bone. One is a few feet above the Gulf of Mexico, the other is known for being a mile high and home to a big chunk of the Rocky Mountains.
But what the places do have in common is that they were both sites of Lamar Hunt US Open Cup matches midweek between their local MLS teams and USL Championship teams: Little Brother Orange took on Louisville City at Shell Energy Stadium, and the Rapids welcomed the Colorado Springs Switchbacks to Commerce City.
And amusingly, both teams struggled with their lower-division opposition. Little Brother Orange looked as if they were gonna get knocked out, down 1-0, until Erik Sviatchenko scored in the depths of second-half stoppage time to send it to extra time. Ezequiel Ponce scored in the 101st minute, and the little brothers advanced. Meanwhile, the Switchbacks took the Rapids all the way to penalties before succumbing.
As an FCD fan who cares very much about the Open Cup and whose team is not in the Open Cup for the first time ever — HEY CLARK AND DAN, YOUR OLD MAN’S NAME IS ON THE DING-DANG COMPETITION, MAYBE PULL SOME STRINGS — I have to content myself with the schadenfreude of seeing teams I don’t like getting bumped out. Louisville and Colorado Springs did the trick on Little Brother Green and SKC in the last round, but sadly, Louisville wasn’t quite able to close the deal on Little Brother Orange in this round, to my considerable chagrin.
Instead, I have to content myself with watching these two clown teams engage in a rockfight on Saturday night with the knowledge that both of them will be advancing farther in the Open Cup than FCD, who’ll be playing in the goofy-ass Leagues Cup.
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Draw.
Sickos Game of the Week
Sporting Kansas City vs. Seattle Sounders (Apple TV and Fox, 1:30)
Doesn’t the FCC have rules against showing this on broadcast TV? I mean, they’re gettin’ all hot ‘n’ bothered about the jokes that late-night talk show hosts are telling, so surely they have rules about snuff films, right?
Yes, for whatever reason, this game was chosen to be on Fox. Not Fox Sports 1, not any of their other 40 cable channels, but the Fox that most people in America can get with a rabbit ears antenna. I get why they chose it. Seattle’s been good for most of their almost 20 years in the league, and SKC was pretty good for most of the last 15 years, so sure, go for it.
The problem is that “most of the last 15 years” timeframe for SKC’s being good, while technically correct, papers over a lot, like the fact that they’ve been terrible most of the last five. While this eventually got the human embodiment of the 😡 emoji, Peter Vermes, fired, his successor, Raphael Wicky, doesn’t appear to be doing too much better.
Your 2026 Sporting Kansas City is on pace to become one of the worst teams in league history. It’s not just that they’re losing a lot; they’re losing badly. They haven’t scored since April 11, when they were beaten 3-1 at Sporting Park by San Jose. Since then?
- April 14: Lost 3-0 in Colorado Springs to the Switchbacks in US Open Cup play.
- April 17: Lost 3-0 in Vancouver to the Whitecaps
- April 25: Lost 5-0 in Chicago to the Fire
In fact, they had a 1-0 lead over San Jose in the 27th minute in that game on April 11, meaning that they’ve gone 333 scoreless minutes in all competitions while conceding 14 straight goals.
And a national broadcast TV audience is gonna see this team up against the Sounders, who might have some idea about how to play soccer. (Not to get all Evan Weston on y’all.) At least the viewers at home will get to see some scoring, albeit all by the road team.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer team.
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Seattle. Hopefully, Jesús shows off some cellys that he didn’t use last week.
Good Guys Game of the Week
New York Red Bulls vs. FC Dallas (Apple TV, 6:30)
For all the caterwauling last week about FCD’s record at Lumen Field, it is in fact not the worst away venue for FCD.
On May 24, 2006, Carlos Ruiz scored in the 87th minute to lift FC Dallas to a 2-1 victory over the newly rebranded New York Red Bulls in front of 52,425 at Giants Stadium, which was the first half of a doubleheader that featured Ecuador vs. Colombia in the nightcap. It was the last time that FC Dallas won away to the Red Bulls.
It was also three years before Red Bull Arena opened, so a little simple deductive reasoning will tell you that FCD has never won at the stadium now known as Sports Illustrated Stadium. Since it opened in 2009, FCD has played there nine times and racked up five losses and four draws, including last year’s loss in penalties in the Round of 16 of the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup.
Worse still, FCD has not beaten the Red Bulls, home or away, since March 11, 2012, a 2-1 win featuring goals from Zach Loyd and Ricardo Villar for FC Dallas and Kenny Cooper, Jr. — yes, THAT Kenny Cooper, Jr. — for the Red Bulls.
FCD’s terrible record against the Red Bulls — FOR MORE THAN HALF THE HISTORY OF BOTH TEAMS — is something that kind of flies under the radar when it comes to discussion of FCD’s bogey teams. It’s probably due to the fact that they’ve been in separate conferences, and since the league has gotten bigger, they don’t even face each other every year.
Or maybe it’s because they are on their way to become New York’s Second Team, along with the Mets, the Jets, the Nets, the Islanders, and the Devils. They’re easily overshadowed by their more successful neighbor. They’ll be the little brothers to the New York branch of City Football Group, especially next year, when they open their new stadium.
Maybe somebody should’ve paid Peppe Pinton for the “New York Cosmos” name back in the mid ’90s when there were still lots of people around who remember when they were a big deal in the ’70s. It might’ve helped.