The FCD Fan’s Guide to Hatewatching Matchday 29

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, even when it’s not the most visually appealing game. A gift from Maxime Crépeau to Petar Musa, a set-piece goal from goal-scoring machine Lalas Abubakar, and go home 2-0 winners. The rest of the game? Hardly a visually appealing tour-de-force, but they kept Portland off the board and created a new folk hero in surprise starter Michael Collodi. Personally, I think he should stick with the headband, even it is just gonna be temporary.

But it was a classic Fortress Frisco game. It was hotter than Hades. The crowd was kinda smallish — partially due to construction, partially due to the team’s uninspiring play during the season. An opponent rolled in with a good record and a reasonable expectation of taking a point or three. And then, 90 minutes later, somehow, they’re heading home with zero.

Sometimes, the opponent would wilt in the conditions. Sometimes, FCD would find another gear. And sometimes, FCD wouldn’t look all that great, but “some stuff happened.” Under Óscar Pareja, they had all these kinds of games, and they feasted at home. This year, they haven’t and will be finishing the season with wins in fewer than half of their home games. But maybe the fact that they found a way to win instead of a way to lose is a sign of hope for the future.

EL SUPERCLÁSICO DEL SIGLO (de la semana)

Minnesota United vs. Seattle Sounders (FS1 and Apple TV+ free game, 7:30)

This game can often be unpredictable. There are sayings in many languages about the unpredictability of the game. But often, there are things about this game that are extremely predictable:

• A story will appear in the media about how some thirtysomething European star will be on his way to play in New York or LA or Miami for one last payday.
• During the Women’s World Cup, some hack writer will write something about how the US women’s team could beat the US men’s team.
• During the World Cup, some hack writer will write his thoughts about rule changes to “improve the game.”
• During the World Cup, some hack writer will speculate how unbelievably good the US men’s team would be “if our best athletes played soccer.” (Strangely, those hacks never address the fact that the greatest player of our generation is 5’7″ or wonder if Lebron can actually do with his feet what that 5’7″ player can do with his.)

It’s almost as predictable as every episode of The A-Team in which our heroes would be trapped in some jam about 40 minutes into the episode, only to discover that they happened to be located someplace in which there were a lot of things lying around that they could use to construct some contraption to get them out of the jam and roll up the villains of the week.

In MLS, we have the Seattle Sounders’ Second Half of the Regular Season. Every year, the Sounders will start off the season slowly or badly or somesuch, and you think to yourself, “Oh, this year will be the year that they miss the playoffs and crash and burn.” And to be fair, they did once, amusingly, in the season that they won the CONCACAF Champions League.

But no, midseason something happens. They sign a player, Brian Schmetzer makes a tactical adjustment, things start to click on the training ground, they change the coffee at the team offices, whatever. And the rest of the season they turn into the Seattle Sounders Death Machine. Honestly, I respect it.

I said all that to point out that after running up a 7-6-5 record in their first 18 games, they are now undefeated in their last seven league games, was the only team out of 36 to win all three Leagues Cup Phase One games in 90 minutes, and pounded the Galaxy into a smooth paste 4-0 last weekend in Carson. Heck, Jesús Ferreira scored three times during that streak.

But two of those goals were against Little Brother Green and against Kansas City, so don’t get too excited.

Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Draw.

Little Brother Game of the Week

Vancouver Whitecaps vs. Houston Dynamo (Apple TV+ free game, Sunday at 8:00)

Even if FCD wasn’t playing Little Brother Green this week, I was still gonna pick this game for this slot, no matter what. Why? Because of Thomas Müller.

No, this is not because I’m some Müller fanboy. No, it’s not because I’m some sort of Bayern Munich fanboy. (Eintracht Frankfurt is my Bundesliga club.) It’s not because I’m a German-American dual national. It’s because he came to MLS and landed in… Vancouver.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Vancouver. It’s one of my favorite cities on Earth. On Bluesky the other day, somebody asked the question of which five cities would you pick to each have a home, and Vancouver was one of my top five. It’s just that we never hear it as one of the Usual Suspects whenever some superstar wants to make a big move to MLS. It’s always New York or LA or lately, Miami. (Case in point: Son Heung-min’s move to LAFC) Even if Bastian Schweinsteiger’s move to Chicago a few years ago didn’t fall into the Usual Suspects move, it’s still Chicago.

But this is literally the first time I’ve heard of any legitimate superstar coming to MLS and landing in Vancouver, and as a fan of a team in one of MLS’ less-discussed markets, I am glad to see it. And I’d like to Müller start his North American adventure in the best way possible, by wearing out Little Brother Orange.

Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Vancouver.

“Let’s Pretend to Care About the Eastern Conference” Game of the Week

New York Red Bulls vs. Philadelphia Union (MLS Season Pass, 6:30)

Normally, a game between the current Supporters’ Shield leaders and a team that is just under the playoff line wouldn’t normally be interesting enough for most folks. Nor would it normally end up in this column.

Thankfully, Mother Nature intervened to help make it interesting. You see, these two teams were scheduled to play their Lamar Hunt US Open Cup quarterfinal game on July 9 in Chester, but that had to be postponed to this past Wednesday night due to inclement weather. Heck, the rescheduled game kicked off two hours late on Wednesday night due to even more inclement weather.

And when it did kick off, it was a spicy affair. There were 36 fouls and six yellow cards, one of which caused Red Bulls head coach Sandro Schwarz to yank right back Kyle Duncan in the 36th minute because Duncan had already gotten booked in the 23rd minute and was playing like he wanted to get his second pretty quickly. The Red Bulls took the lead twice, at 1-0 and 2-1, but the Union came back both times and got their first lead in the 89th minute to advance. If you want, here’s US Soccer’s highlight package:

Now, you have that sort of spicy game between two nearby rivals midweek, and you put them on the field together on Saturday in the opposite stadium? Frankly, that sounds like it’ll be prime “these two teams just don’t like each other” viewing material.

Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Draw.

Sickos Game of the Week

CF Montréal vs. DC United (Apple TV+ free game, 6:30)

These two teams aren’t the worst two teams in Major League Soccer, but that’s frankly only due to the fact that they’ve each played one more game and each racked up one more win than the Galaxy. And frankly, the Galaxy has shown levels of competence lately that one would expect from the defending MLS Cup champs. They had gone 2-1-1 in league play in July and had gone undefeated in Leagues Cup Phase One, advancing to the quarterfinals, before the Sounders pounded them at home last weekend.

Neither of these two teams has had any such stretch of competence or watchability. Montréal has been bad in league play all season long, racking up a grand total of four wins in 26 games. They were bounced from the Canadian Championship by the Canadian Premier League side Forge FC, who I learned is from Hamilton, ON after a quick Wikipedia search. They went winless in Leagues Cup play.

Meanwhile, DC United has likewise won only four times this season, and not at all since May 31. They are currently on a nine-game winless streak, which would be a nine-game losing streak were it not for a gripping 0-0 draw at home against fellow strugglebus riders Atlanta on July 5.

Both teams have fired their head coaches already this season, and both teams are awful. To put it in terms that we FCD fans can understand, our club’s zenith for awfulness was 2003, in which they racked up 23 points in 30 games. Both of these teams, if they continue at the pace that they’re on, would manage 24 points in 34 games.

Apple TV is showing this game as a freebie to their subscribers who don’t subscribe to MLS Season Pass, which seems like the opposite of a great promotion.

Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Draw, which will actually be an improvement on both teams’ pace thus far this season.

Good Guys Game of the Week

Austin FC vs. FC Dallas (MLS Season Pass, 7:30)

This column is known far and wide for positivity and sunshine-pumping, but I’ll mention two uncomfortable items here:

1. Copa Tejas exists.
2. Copa Tejas might be the only thing that FC Dallas can win this year.

Look, FCD is out of the Open Cup, they weren’t even invited to Leagues Cup, El Capitán was relinquished without much resistance, they’re not quite mathematically eliminated for the Supporters Shield, but they’re close, and as for MLS Cup? It’s theoretically possible, but if you have any great expectations for it, you haven’t been an FCD fan for very long. (What can I say? 2010 and 2016 broke me.)

So let’s put aside all that discomfort and just focus on beating Little Brother Green for the love of the game.

There is no quicker way to piss off a fanbase in sports than to call them a little brother. Trust me, as an alumnus of the University of Texas at Austin, I have learned this well over the years by seeing the reactions of our agricultural cousins 100 miles to the east by referring to them as such. (I tried it once with that school out in Lubbock, but referring to them as little brothers kinda made me feel uncomfortable, like I was actually acknowledging them as some sort of family. Ew.)

(Ed note: Texas A&M is ten years older than UT.)

And people say, “Hey, why do you refer to that team as a Little Brother when they’ve got a brand-new stadium and lots of fans? They’ve got a lot of presence and mindshare locally. They’ve managed to bullshit their way out of being dragged for having a suburban stadium. They’ve even got Matthew McConaughey.”

And those are very good points. But beyond the fact that FC Dallas was winning silverware years before those green-and-black-clad doofuses discovered soccer, there’s another fundamental reason. They get FCD’s hand-me-downs. In fact, there has only been one season in that team’s sorry existence — their inaugural season of 2021 — where they did not have at least one former FC Dallas player on their roster:

• 2022 – Maxi Urruti
• 2023 – Matt Hedges and Maxi Urruti
• 2024 – Matt Hedges and Jáder Obrian
• 2025 – Jáder Obrian

And to up their little brother game, they added one more hand-me-down this season:

In case you’re wondering, the number of players or coaches headed the other direction? Zero.

So yes, you clowns are little brothers, and Big Brother’s coming to town on Saturday night to clean you bozos out.