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
In the last week, those of us in FCD fandom have been treated to the following:
- FCD released an amazing Burn throwback 3rd jersey. (OK, it was before last week’s column, but I’m gonna talk about it again because it truly is 🔥🔥🔥.)
- Wearing those shirts, FCD turned in a classic Fortress Frisco performance while stepping on St. Louis’ necks for most of the game, in front of Jason Kreis, Zarco Rodríguez, Richard Farrer, Mark Dodd, Bevan Rhine, and Andy Swift.
- 27-year-old Petar Musa got two goals and an assist in that win.
- Musa assisted 19-year-old Kaick on the first of FCD’s three goals.
- 17-year-old Josh Torquato, whom nobody outside of Buzz, Eric Quill, and John Gall had heard of before the season, continued to show that the starting left wingback job was not too big for him.
- 22-year-old Sam Sarver scored four goals for North Texas SC on Friday night, then came off the bench in the 81st minute and earned the penalty for FCD’s third. In addition to playing in his second game in 24 hours, he did double duty as FCD’s chief hype man.
- 25-year-old Chris Cappis, whom Quill recommended to FCD in 2018, but who ended up in Denmark and Norway after Little Brother Orange blocked his signing, finally signed with FCD.
- Sarver likewise signed a contract with FCD.
Not quite a triumph for #PlayTheKids, but definitely a triumph for Gen Z, since FCD’s Millennial #10 continues to be sidelined with a bad case of “got crosswise with the head coach.” And after two solid, coherent performances that brought four points in a week for the first time in months, we finally know what kind of Eric Quill’s trying to build, and maybe it’s one that Lucho Acosta isn’t a part of.
EL SUPERCLÁSICO DEL SIGLO (de la semana)
Inter Miami vs. FC Cincinnati (FS1 and Apple TV+ free game, Saturday at 6:15)
(2025 Lionel Messi content counter: 12)
Most years, for whatever reason, the Western Conference is more worth paying attention to, because you’ll have a bunch of solid teams stacked at the top of the conference. Not this year. Nothing against San Diego and Vancouver, but the fact that an expansion team and “Oh yeah, that’s right, Vancouver’s got a team” are at the top with Minnesota right behind them, probably says more about how unremarkable the Usual Suspects out West this year.
But that’s OK. The top of the Eastern Conference has been giving us bangers most weeks this season, between Cincy, Columbus, Miami, and Philly. Most weeks, I’ll be looking for a game for this slot. I’ll see that two of those teams are playing, I’ll say, “Watch this game. These teams are really good,” and call it a day. You don’t need to add steak sauce to a really good steak.
This week, however, we’ve got a little added drama because there is the question of whether or not we’ll see Lionel Messi and Jordi Alba, who decided to play hooky from the All-Star Game. They didn’t just not show up, mind you. They’re Stars with a Capital S, so they had their publicists say, “Nah.”
And let me be clear on something, I don’t blame them one damn bit. If I were in their shoes, I wouldn’t want to be flying to Austin in the middle of the week for the league’s yearly organized grab-ass session. These guys are older than most players in this league, and Father Time is not very forgiving to your body after you pass a certain age. Ask me how I know.
Sadly, the league does not agree with this stance and might theoretically suspend Messi and Alba for this game. I say “theoretically” because if you look at the heading for this game, you’ll notice that it’s not just on MLS Season Pass, it’s not just a free game for Apple TV+ subscribers, it’s on a channel that most cable subscribers get. There’s no way the league’s suspending them. They’ll get hit with a fine that’s roughly the amount of money that Messi spends on air conditioning his place in South Florida over the course of the summertime and call it a day.
Live update right before Dustin hands the column over to Buzz: Apparently, the league decided to suspend Messi and Alba for this game. My flabbers are gasted.
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Cincy
Little Brother Game of the Week
DC United vs. Austin FC (Apple TV+ free game, Saturday at 6:30)
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: “This game is gonna be more disgusting than Hugh Hefner’s bedroom at the Playboy Mansion.” And you’d be right. The truly disgusting thing is that it won’t even be the most disgusting game this week.
I shouldn’t be so hard on Nico Estévez this week. After all, he’s definitely in the Top 10 FC Dallas head coaches of all time and eventually did figure out that Jesús Jiménez was useless as a striker. Besides, he’s now been an All-Star coach, which is almost like being a national team coach if you squint hard enough. That’ll look good on his resumé when he’s inevitably fired when his brand of soccer terrorism finally stops working in central Texas.
But for me, the most amazing story of the All-Star Game wasn’t that the MLS All-Stars beat their counterparts from Mexico. It wasn’t that a team led by Nico Estévez scored multiple goals in a single game, which I guess shows the power of having better offensive talent than Brandon Vazquez and Myrto Uzuni on hand to thwart the boss’ “Did we complete 75 passes before the goal?” tendencies. It was the fact that Dayne St. Clair was voted in as the MLS All-Star keeper.
I guess that I got used to Indonesia being our ace in the hole when it came to any sort of fan voting. Or maybe the league started weighting votes from north of the 49th parallel more heavily than those from Southeast Asia. Whatever. I was shocked. I wasn’t shocked when Estévez named Brad Stuver and Guilherme Biro to the All-Star Game. While Little Brother Green seems to treat scoring more than one goal a game as absolutely libertine, they are good at defense.
But this was absolutely offensive:
Congratulations on having as many goal contributions all season as Petar Musa’s had in the last week, I guess.
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: DC United, who also has a striker who’s at least pumped in more than five goals this season.
“Let’s Pretend to Care About the Eastern Conference” Game of the Week
Columbus Crew vs. Orlando City (MLS Season Pass, Friday at 6:30)
Not present at FCD’s big Burn celebration last week was possibly the single most important player or coach in this club’s history, Óscar Pareja. Of course, his was an excused absence because he was in Foxborough, coaching Orlando City.
And while attending another club’s celebration while your own club is having its own match would be inappropriate under most circumstances, it would’ve been doubly so for Orlando City, which was riding a four-game winless streak and hadn’t won a home game since May. But apparently a visit to the New England Revolution does wonders for a team’s record, since Orlando won and gets to roll into Columbus with some good vibes.
Since we’re at the end of All-Star week, it’s worth pointing out the following:
Little Brother Green had more representation on the All-Star roster, thanks to Nico Estévez’s getting All-Star bonuses for his boys, than either of these two teams, which one would objectively consider better than Little Brother Green. At the very least, they’ve got players who can score more than MLS All-Star Brandon Vázquez. Five of them, by my very quick count, only two of whom were actually All-Stars.
(I watched maybe three minutes of the All-Star Game, but man, it’s giving me plenty of fodder for this week’s column.)
Anyway, watch this game. It should be an actual good game of soccer, unlike the two that we’re about to talk about.
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Orlando. While I’m a Wilfried Nancy fanboy, I will always back Papi first.
Sickos Game of the Week
New England Revolution vs. CF Montréal (MLS Season Pass, Friday at 6:30)
Remember back before I started airing my grievances with this year’s All-Star Game when I was referring to a game that was more disgusting than DC United-Little Brother Green? That’s this one.
Dedicated readers of this column will note that this section has reverted to just “Sickos Game of the Week.” Since the Gals came back from 3-1 down to draw LAFC 3-3 in stoppage time last week in El Tráfico, which is as hilarious an outcome as could be hoped for, they are now sitting at 16 points after 24 games, tying 2013 DC United’s total over 34 games. And while the 2025 LA Galaxy is a terrible team, I have confidence that they’ll be able to get a point in the final 10 games and clear that rather low bar.
(By the way, if you’re a dedicated reader of this column and your name is not Buzz Carrick, who forces himself to read it in his capacity of maintaining a baseline level of quality for 3rd Degree, may I suggest therapy?)
And both these teams are terrible. I’ve talked about the New England Revolution this year, I’ve talked about Caleb Porter, and we’ve had a nice laugh about the latter. But I haven’t talked so much about CF Montréal, which is a shame because they’re the Sickos Club of the Decade. Whatever way that well-run clubs like Columbus and Philadelphia and LAFC choose to run their clubs, Montréal has committed itself to doing the opposite.
They’ve got a soccer-specific stadium in a place that’s accessible by Montréal’s good subway system, right next to Olympic Stadium. But unfortunately, they built it without undersoil heating, so they have to play early season home games in Olympic Stadium, one of the worst stadiums ever built, or when the Big O isn’t available due construction — as is the case now as they’re renovating the roof — they have to play early season games on the road.
They did one of the least necessary rebrandings in North American soccer history, changing from Montreal Impact, a name that had been continuously operating in a variety of soccer leagues from the APSL to MLS since 1993, to CF Montréal in 2021. They managed to screw that up with a ridiculous logo that they had to scrap after two seasons in favor of one that was closer to the original Impact logo.
They had one of the best coaches in American soccer as their head coach — a Frenchman no less! — and he led them to second place in the Eastern Conference in 2022. But because he had the temerity to voice some opinions about how the club should be run from the technical side, the club let him walk. Their foolishness benefited the Crew, since Wilfried Nancy won MLS Cup with the Crew in 2023 and Leagues Cup in 2024, and four points off the Eastern Conference lead in 2025.
They hired as his successor Hernán Lozada — because the perfect man for the job is always a guy that DC United fired after just over a season — and after missing the playoffs in 2023, they “parted ways” with him. They hired as Lozada’s successor’s Laurent Courtois, who was the head coach of Columbus Crew 2. That seems to me to be a tacit admission that they screwed up by letting Nancy go, but he made the playoffs in 2024.
That eighth place finish wasn’t enough to give Courtois’ job security and when he started off winless in five games in 2025, they fired him. If you’ve been reading closely — again, therapy is an option — you likely correctly surmised that all those games were on the road. They’re now sitting last in the East with 15 points after 24 games, and the Montréal supporters, having recently and mostly successfully protested the ridiculous rebrand, now have something new to protest:
For those of you who won’t click through, that’s “It’s already vacation time.” They brought inflatable balls and toys and had themselves a nice day at the beach Stade Saputo. Honestly, I almost want to see them continue to stink because I want to see what they’ll do next.
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Draw, because I don’t want nice things for Caleb Porter, either.
Good Guys Game of the Week
FC Dallas vs. New York City FC (MLS Season Pass, Friday at 7:30)
It might not seem like it, but these two clubs have a lot in common:
- They’re both owned by people who have a lot of money due to oil.
- They both play in suboptimal stadiums with thousands of tarped off seats.
- They both have major stadium construction projects underway.
- Their player acquisitions seem to be driven a little less by the desire to improve the team than the club’s supporters would hope.
- They don’t spend as much on player salaries as one would expect from clubs owned by owners with large amounts of oil wealth.
Since I like to bring more to this column than meanness and hack jokes, here’s a fun fact for y’all on that last point: FC Dallas is actually spending way more on salaries than NYCFC. According to Sportico, FCD is spending $15,583,976 on salaries in 2025. NYCFC, meanwhile, is spending $11,025,972.
That difference is mostly accounted for by FCD’s shelling out $4.3 million in salary in 2025 on Lucho Acosta, a figure that is roughly $2 million more than anyone else on either of the two teams’ rosters. To be fair, however, Acosta is just carrying on the grand FC Dallas tradition of well-paid designated players who have utterly flopped, starting with Denilson back in 2007 and carrying on through Aníbal Chalá and Cristian Colmán. Some might add Franco Jara to that list, but his effort was undeniable, even if the results weren’t. Or one might add Jesús Ferreira, but he tied the club scoring record in 2022, and he was a decent right back.
But Acosta is on his way to capturing the title of Worst FC Dallas Designated Player for two reasons: the aforementioned salary, and his tendency when he receives the ball to reenact this classic moment from The Simpsons:
And while Homer occasionally claimed that he was “S-M-R-T,” he ultimately knew his limitations. Acosta’s play, on the other hand, suggests that he seems to regard his teammates’ shortcomings as the reason for his own foolish actions with the ball. So, because of who he is, the ball gravitates to him, and because of his own shortcomings as a player, the ball doesn’t come out as well as it should.
But enough about Acosta. I’ve spent more space the past few weeks lamenting his play than bashing opponents. And this opponent, a sportswashing operation that plays in predominantly baseball stadiums, is ripe for bashing.
Sadly, one of those items is on its way to going away, since construction is underway on their stadium next door to one of their current homes, the baseball shrine known as Citi Field. One day in the near future, it will open, and I’ll miss their current homes of Yankee Stadium and Citi Field. I’ll miss the soccer field shoehorned into a baseball field to not have deal with a pitcher’s mound. I’ll miss the weird angles from cameras that are well-positioned for baseball games, but not so much for soccer. I’ll miss all the reminders that NYCFC is playing in someone else’s house.
But you know what I’ll miss the most? The banner.