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
Winning is fun! Road wins are fun! Derby wins are fun! Otherwise, the game was the soccer version of this meme:
EL SUPERCLÁSICO DEL SIGLO (de la mañana)
Real Salt Lake vs. Seattle Sounders (MLS Season Pass, 3:30)
“Say Dustin, didn’t RSL get tuned up 4-0 by San Jose last week?”
Shhhhhhhhhhh… Look, there just aren’t that many bangers on the slate this week. Here are the other possibilities:
- San Diego vs. St. Louis – I put San Diego in this slot last week, St. Louis was junk last season, and I don’t want to deplete my Anchorman Memes Strategic Reserve so quickly.
- Vancouver vs. LA Galaxy – Honestly, when the ‘Caps ran Vanni Sartini after last season, they killed a good 47% of my material about them, and the Gals don’t deserve to be in this slot after they got dog-walked at home by an expansion team in their first-ever game.
Besides, both these teams were pretty good last year, and you’d think they’ll be pretty good this year. It’s not like Real Salt Lake traded the player responsible for contributions on almost half of their goals from last season to the Earthquakes for a bag of magic beans, right?
And Seattle, I have no idea what they did in the offseason, but they sometimes acquire good players in the offseason, rather than during the summer transfer window. But since this is the “dumb jokes” section of 3rd Degree, it’s not like I’m gonna look up whether they actually did acquire some good players.
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Seattle.
Little Brother Game of the Week
Houston Dynamo vs. Inter Miami (Apple TV+ free game, Sunday at 6:00)
(2025 Lionel Messi content counter: 1)
This week’s edition of SUNDAY… NIGHT… SOCCER (a.k.a. Sunday Night with Taylor Twellman) is from Shell Energy Stadium where Little Brother Orange, fresh off of giving Petar Musa a freebie and making Anderson Julio run half the field 75 minutes into the game, hosts Lionel and the Fightin’ Messis. And they were just that last week against NYCFC:
And since Little Brother Orange usually has plenty of great seats available for their games, expect the stands to be full of people clad in Inter Miami and Barcelona shirts with the #10 on them. (Not too many PSG shirts with #30, however. Nobody cares about Ligue 1.) And El Batallon might actually show up for this game!
I’m not saying that Inter Miami is gonna get a warm reception in Bayou City, but I’m not NOT saying it.
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Miami, and I’ll feel good about it. Try not to give out any freebies, Orange. Lord knows that the greatest player of our generation doesn’t need ’em.
“Let’s Pretend to Care about the Eastern Conference” Game of the Week
New York Red Bulls vs. Nashville SC (MLS Season Pass, 6:30)
We live in an ever-changing world, and sometimes not for the better. Indulge me in an Old Man Dustin moment as I tell you about what Sports Illustrated used to be, namely the pinnacle of sports journalism in America. 50 times a year, they’d put out a glossy magazine full of some of the greatest sports journalism and photography of the last half-century. They wouldn’t just give you the scores, they’d give you long-form stories about players and coaches and whatever written by some truly great writers.
And if you subscribed for a year, they’d give you a football phone!
Anyway, several years back, Sports Illustrated was sold to some private equity weasels, who ran the magazine into the ground and decided to put “the brand” on everything they could think of, including a sportsbook.
This past offseason, they also paid to put their name on the Red Bulls’ stadium:
Like I said, change ain’t always for the better. I don’t really have a lot to say about this game, but I thank the Red Bulls for giving me the opportunity to talk about the football phone.
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Nashville. Their stadium’s naming rights were bought by Geodis. I don’t even know what a Geodis is.
Sickos Game of the Week
Chicago Fire vs. DC United (MLS Season Pass, 7:30)
Speaking of stadiums, this game will be taking place at Historic Soldier Field on Chicago’s lakefront. Now, I’ve said it many times, but the Fire’s move from their own place out in Bridgeview back to Soldier Field seemed like it was 1000% unnecessary, but all sorts of Chicagoans tell me that it’s way better to be at Soldier Field, so I’ll defer to them on this.
What is undeniable and you can take this as a stone-cold lock: The field will be a cow pasture. I mean, the Bears just got done doing their football-like things two months ago, Chicago ain’t exactly a great place to grow grass, what with it being a subarctic climate during the winter, Soldier Field ain’t set up to keep a great grass surface during all seasons, and maybe the City of Chicago ain’t doing a great job maintaining the field.
And this is one of MLS’ more underrated traditions. Allow me to present to you a screenshot from the Fire’s 1999 home opener at Soldier Field against the Dallas Burn:
Even in standard definition potatovision from the turn of the century, you can see how parts of the field are a little bare, parts have had the grass replaced, and if I gave a different screenshot, you’d see that it wasn’t an even grass field but had a lot of individual clumps of grass. And the punchline? This game was on APRIL 10. And the passage of time hasn’t improved the situation. The field will be terrible tomorrow on March 1.
It’s a rather fitting environment for a matchup between two teams who were last good back when Eminem was at the beginning of stardom. Now he’s a grandfather.
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: DC. They’ve got their own field issues, but at least it’s because they share their place with a UFL team, an NWSL team, and I’m sure a pro quidditch team and a pro ultimate frisbee team.
Good Guys Game of the Week
Colorado Rapids vs. FC Dallas (MLS Season Pass, 8:30)
As most of y’all know, I live in Colorado and once a year, I make the trek to the shadows of the Suncor oil refinery in Commerce City, to Dick’s Sporting Goods Park. Among The Dick’s other neighbors in Commerce City are
- a US Postal Service distribution center
- a couple of truck stops
- some Commerce City city buildings
- the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge
The latter sounds really cool until you see the “Arsenal” part of the name and you learn this wildlife refuge used to be the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, which is where the Army used to manufacture chemical weapons and which was… well, I’ll let Wikipedia do the talking for me:
The Rocky Mountain Arsenal (RMA) was built in 1942 to manufacture chemical weapons. A portion of the site was leased to private industry in 1946 for petroleum production and agricultural and industrial chemical manufacturing.[1] When the American chemical weapons program was shut down after the Vietnam War,[2] the RMA served as a site for dismantling and disposing of these weapons.[1] The Shell Oil Company also used a portion of the site in the 1980s to produce pesticides.[2] The RMA was closed in 1985, and in 1987 environmental testing revealed that the site was extremely polluted. The RMA was listed on the National Priorities List, a list of hazardous waste sites in the United States eligible for long-term remedial action (cleanup) financed under the federal Superfund program run by the Environmental Protection Agency.[1]
In 1986, while environmental testing was continuing, a winter communal roost of bald eagles, then an endangered species, was discovered at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal.[3] Additional investigation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) discovered that the RMA was home more than 330 species of wildlife. With the arsenal not fit for human habitation, pressure quickly built to have it turned into a wildlife refuge.[4] Congress enacted the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge Act on September 25, 1992, and the legislation was signed into law by President George H. W. Bush on October 9. The law stipulated that a majority of the RMA site would become a national wildlife refuge under the jurisdiction of the Fish and Wildlife Service once the environmental restoration is completed. The Act also provided that, to the extent possible, the RMA was to be managed as a wildlife refuge in the interim.[5]
But it looks pretty now:
But Dick’s Sporting Goods Park honors its roots as part of a toxic waste site by being a place where I don’t want to spend too much time. The lovely people of Centennial 38 do their part by throwing a fabulous tailgate every home game, but two facts remain:
- The Kroenke family is letting the place go to seed, unlike their local sporting venue in downtown Denver, Ball Arena, home to the Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche.
- The place has been a house of horrors for FC Dallas.
No more on #2. Time to go two-for-two away from Toyota Stadium in 2025.