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
It was the end of the road for FC Dallas in 2024, and it ended the same way that it started: With a 2-1 win at home over a team that didn’t make the playoffs. But what happened between those two games is the reason FC Dallas will not be appearing in this column until 2025.
You’ll find much better analysis of what went wrong and what FCD needs to do this offseason elsewhere on the site, but I will leave you with my thought: I don’t trust this technical staff. People can blame ownership and I’m not averse to that sort of thinking, but I flat-out don’t trust this technical staff.
Twice in the last four years, this team has failed to make the playoffs. They’ve fired head coaches in those seasons. They were flirting with the worst record in club history before those coaches were fired in those seasons. These weren’t the same situations as when Schellas Hyndman had non-playoff seasons in four out of his six years. Those teams weren’t good, but they weren’t flirting with the wrong sort of history.
And they weren’t in the same situations as when Óscar Pareja missed the playoffs in 2017 on a last-second stoppage time goal scored in San Jose after racking up 60 points two previous seasons and being on top of the league in July that season.
No, this current run has been built by a technical staff that twice hired the wrong coach, failed to support those coaches adequately during their times here, and occasionally, sabotaged them with misguided personnel moves. Should I trust them to do the right things this offseason? Why would I?
Sunday
West #1 Los Angeles FC vs. West #8 Vancouver Whitecaps (FS1 and Apple TV+ free game, 8:45)
I’m doing four games that I think are worth watching, and well, you wouldn’t think that a 1-8 matchup would be in the mix, but this one is. Why?
- I’m slightly in the bag for Vanni Sartini. Not as a coach, mind you, but as a spectacle.
- The way that Vancouver ended up in this game.
For those of you who aren’t aware, Vancouver was the higher seed for their wild-card game against Portland. But the game did not take place at BC Place – which was being used for a monster truck rally – so the game was held in Portland. This provoked Portland head coach to utter the following words:
That was quickly refuted by Vancouver, who won 5-0 at Providence Park. Some would say that that was a direct statement from God that they, in fact, do not own any Timbers merch, but Vanni Sartini had a different take:
You gotta love our favorite Italian socialist coach, who has already gotten suspended for a “be a shame if the ref ended up face down in False Creek” statement and has told us that he’s not a fan of Batman because he’s a billionaire.
(By the way, it’s not a terribly hot take to point out that Bruce Wayne has the kind of dough to materially improve the lives of Gotham City residents, but instead, puts on a costume to beat the tar out of crooks every night.)
In a league where too many players and coaches can be blander than English food, Sartini is a breath of fresh air and I am unabashedly rooting for him and the Whitecaps in the playoffs. It’s just too bad that they fell off badly in the second half of the season from being in line to have home-field advantage in the first round to having to play in the wild-card game and then facing the LA Fightin’ Inferiority Complexes, who managed to snake the #1 seed on Decision Day.
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Vancouver
Monday
East #3 FC Cincinnati vs. East #6 New York City FC (FS1 and Apple TV+ free game, 5:45)
Why are six out of the eight games for this round of the playoffs on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, while during the entire season, almost all games were on Saturday night? See that “FS1” right there? That’s why.
It doesn’t take a media insider to tell you that Fox and FS1 have other obligations this time of year. They paid a ton of money for the Big 10 and Big 12 football and well, those conferences play games on Friday night and all day Saturday. Perfectly understandable. But wasn’t one of the big selling points of the Apple deal that teams would have a consistent, predictable, more fan-friendly schedule?
Just askin’. But since FCD isn’t in the playoffs this year, I guess it’s someone else’s problem.
The first of the games which will be FS1’s counterprogramming to Monday Night Football is Ohio’s Second Team against New York’s First Team. These two teams have seen a bit of success over the past few years. Cincy won the Supporters Shield last year, which everyone forgot because it wasn’t Messi who won it, and NYCFC won the MLS Cup in 2021.
The latter would be a great surprise to many folks who saw the ticker-tape parade for the New York Liberty, who won the WNBA title for the first time in their 28-year history, heard that it was the first ticker-tape parade since the New York Giants got one in 2012, and concluded that nothing much happened in the intervening 12 years.
But here’s the kicker. NYCFC didn’t want a ticker-tape parade:

What else would you expect from the club that gave us this championship banner?
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Cincy
West #4 Seattle Sounders vs. West #5 Houston Dynamo (FS1 and Apple TV+ free game, 7:50)
Let’s come back to the Vancouver-Portland wild-card game. Vanni Sartini wasn’t the only Cascadia coach to have a few bon mots in the aftermath. Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer also got his shots in:
That was savage, Brian. But given that the Sounders are hosting this game, it’s also slightly ballsy? Yeah, I know, it doesn’t take much to predict that you won’t get beat at home by five goals, especially when you’re top four in the Western Conference.
In 29 years, I can only think of two times where FC Dallas got beat by five goals at home, in a friendly against Chivas in 1997, when they lost 5-0, and a league game against LA in 1998, when they lost 8-1. Maybe there have been other similar home losses, but I can’t think of them offhand.
So Schmetzer’s likely on safe ground here. But this is not the first time that he’s thrown shade. This was him in 2019 after the Sounders dispatched the Supporters Shield winners LAFC, led by Bob Bradley, in the Western Conference Final:
As a hater, I can only salute a coach who’ll talk his shit when he can. Not quite in Vanni Sartini’s league, but we see you, Schmetz.
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Seattle.
Tuesday
East #2 Columbus Crew vs. East #7 New York Red Bulls
Normally, whenever we talk about the Crew, we lavish praise on them in no small amounts. They made a great coaching hire in Wilfried Nancy. They have made one great signing after another for designated players, between Darlington Nagbe, Cucho Hernández, and Diego Rossi. They’ve won two MLS Cups in the last four years, and they’ve got a sparkling new stadium filled to the rafters week in and week out.
But as we all know that’s a recent development since they were sold by Anthony Precourt in the wake of Precourt’s attempt to move the team to Austin. We all know that story and we all know that Precourt got an expansion team in Austin instead. And while I had no plans to even mention Little Brother Green until 2025, since they, as is their custom, did not make the playoffs, they could not help but insert themselves at the last minute:
You know, there’s nothing I can say about this hire that would be funnier than it is on its own.
But back to Precourt’s former team, who are the sporting equivalent of the dowdy person who gets dumped by their significant other, only to get in shape, dress better, maybe take up an interesting hobby or learn some new skills and transform into The World’s Most Interesting and Attractive Person.
In the last year, the Crew won MLS Cup, were a team-wide case of food poisoning away from winning the CONCACAF Champions Cup, and won Leagues Cup. FIFA had one wild-card slot left in the Club World Cup, so of course if there’s any MLS team that deserves it, it has to be Columbus, right?
Wrong:
Now, some would say that “qualified” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, but I would point out that Inter Miami qualified through the well-known means of “having a player on their roster whom everyone worldwide would like to see.” But sadly, Infantino is apparently unaware bestowing this sort of honor on an MLS team has cursed them, so if Inter Miami crash out of the playoffs embarrassingly or through what the soccer experts refer to as “some crazy bullshit,” you’ll know why.
One fewer thing for the Crew to worry about, I guess.
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Columbus.