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
So, uh, yeah. Vancouver is pretty good. That game was a nice throwback to the Nico Estévez era: 1-0 loss, utter impotence going forward, bad set piece defending. We even got a little bit of time with a three-man backline for good measure! The only thing that was missing was the utter reluctance to play anyone below the age of 25.
That was an excruciating watch. I love me some Logan Farrington, but it’s never a good sign when I’m sitting there in the second half, noting to myself that I was seeing way more of him on the ball than either of the two big-money men at the numbers 9 and 10. On the infrequent occasion that either of them got the ball, somebody or multiple somebodies wearing a white shirt was usually all over them. And if those multiple somebodies weren’t doing that, they were winning 50/50s, getting to second balls, and cutting off passing lanes.
The recurring theme for this week’s column turned out to be “coaches who were fired for no apparent reason or retained for no apparent reason,” but that ain’t the case here. I liked Vanni Sartini, but it was quite apparent that the Whitecaps are a well-organized and well-coached team, or at least well-coached enough to understand that beating FC Dallas in 2025 is gonna be predicated on making life miserable for Lucho Acosta.
EL SUPERCLÁSICO DEL SIGLO (de la semana)
Philadelphia Union vs. St. Louis City (Apple TV+ free game, 6:30)
Sometimes, a coach gets fired and it’s plainly obvious why. This is something that we FCD fans are familiar with in the post-Pareja era. Luchi Gonzalez got fired because the team was on its way to one of the two or three worst seasons in club history, even with Ricardo Pepi at striker and Jesús Ferreira behind him, feeding him. Nico Estévez was likewise guiding the team to a historically bad finish.
But sometimes, it’s a bit more of a headscratcher, at least if you’re going on little things like “team performance.” Back in 2006, FCD finished top of the Western Conference with its best finish ever up to that point, with the second-best record in the league. But… they ran into the Rapids in the Western Conference semis, went out on penalties after the second leg, and that was that. Colin Clarke, who had taken over late in the worst season in club history in 2003 and steadily improved them in 2004, 2005, and 2006, got the axe.
Maybe the Hunt brothers didn’t like the Rapids’ stealing their lunch money two straight years. Maybe Clarke destroyed the bathroom one too many times at the team offices after having Tex-Mex for lunch. Maybe the Hunts thought that they could “do better” than the guy who had built the team from one of the worst in league history to one of the best in the league a few years later. So they promoted Clarke’s assistant for the 2007 season and he was gone not even halfway through the 2008 season. Worst coaching decision in club history.
That brings me to these two teams. Both of them canned their bosses last season. Why? I don’t know. Jim Curtin had been in charge of the Union for 11 seasons, and this snippet from the AP story about his firing sums up his record:
Under Curtin, the Union won the 2020 Supporters’ Shield and made the 2022 MLS Cup final. They were also three-time US Open Cup finalists and twice reached the Concacaf Champions Cup semifinals.
Yeah, they missed the playoffs for the first time in seven years, but I dunno, he seems like he knows what he’s doing. Then again, I’m just writing dumb jokes here, so what do I know?
His replacement for 2025 is Bradley Carnell, whose track record isn’t as long but goes something like this:
- 2023: Led St. Louis City to the top of the Western Conference in the team’s expansion season.
- 2024: Fired on July 1 after a nine-game winless run.
Again, I’m just the comic relief at this here website, but I’m generally of the opinion of that if you do that well over 34 games in a season, you’re probably not a complete dummy. At least, you’ve earned a little leeway for a season, maybe even two. (Or three, if your name is Schellas Hyndman and you’re working for FC Dallas.)
The good news for Carnell is that he wasn’t out of work for long, and he’s thriving at the Union so far. St. Louis City are likewise thriving under Olof Mellberg. As for Jim Curtin, he’s currently getting paid to not coach, which ain’t a bad gig until the right one comes along.
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Draw, just because it’ll push both teams a teeny tiny bit closer to being dumb again.
Little Brother Game of the Week
Seattle Sounders vs. Houston Dynamo (Apple TV+ free game, 9:30)
At the other end of the “firing coaches” spectrum are Brian Schmetzer and Ben Olsen. The Sounders have had a grand total of two coaches in their 16 years of MLS history, Schmetzer and the late Sigi Schmid. They haven’t fired a coach yet. And why would they? They’ve only missed the playoffs once, in 2022, and that also happened to be the year they won the CONCACAF Champions League.
Mind you, there was some grumbling last season when Seattle got off to its traditional slow start, but this is kind of why I have slightly less respect for Sounders fans than some others. This is y’all’s team and you haven’t figured out the pattern by this point? Hell, even I have figured it out and I’m not the brightest guy in the world:
- The Sounders started off the season slowly due to injury or a deep run in continental competition or because everyone’s bummed out by the weather in the Northwest
- Schmetzer makes a tactical tweak or gets a player back fit or the Sounders make a mildly interesting player acquisition.
- The Sounders get hotter than fire, make the playoffs, and make a deep run
So Brian Schmetzer’s seat remains so cool, you’d swear he was sitting on a block of ice.
Ben Olsen, on the other hand, managed to last 11 seasons in DC, despite having the worst points-per-game of any coach with more than 10 years of experience:
Anyway, when you’re a coach, I guess it pays to be a club legend. It’s too bad for him that they don’t have the same fond memories in Houston, where one point in four games is a ticket to your next job opportunity.
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Seattle. BTW, I’m genuinely bummed for Paul Arriola’s injury. He’s not one of ours anymore, but he was nothing but a pro while he was in Frisco.
“Let’s Pretend to Care about the Eastern Conference” Game of the Week
Columbus Crew vs. New York City FC (MLS Season Pass, 6:30)
I’ll be straight with y’all: I had to look up who the head coach of NYCFC is. To be quite honest, does it really matter that much? Look, everything about this club feels very ephemeral. They don’t really have a stadium… yet. Their owners obviously have higher priorities in the soccer world — note the multple here. Their fanbase is founded on the idea that riding the PATH to Harrison is a fate worse than death. I’m not even sure that the MLS Cup that they won in 2021 is all that real. After all, it was at the tail end of that whole pandemic period where everything seemed like a hallucination.
By the way, that coach’s name is Pascal Jansen, who was hired after NYCFC fired Nick Cushing for the unforgivable sin of finishing sixth in the East, upsetting FC Cincinnati in the first round, and falling to the Red Bulls in the Eastern Conference semis.
“You make his firing sound kind of dumb, Dustin.”
I guess? In any case, they’re taking on a club that feels very real, due to the whole “been in the league 30 years” thing, the “built not just one, but two stadiums” thing, and the “won MLS Cup two years ago” thing. Plus, Diego Rossi and Darlington Nagbe are very real. And Wilfried Nancy is very real.
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Columbus, because I like to keep it real in this column.
Sickos Game of the Week
Colorado Rapids vs. Portland Timbers (MLS Season Pass, 8:30)
Every other season, if I had put Colorado vs. Portland as the Sickos Game of the Week, everyone’s first thought would’ve been “Portland might be a bit better than usual and Colorado is terrible as usual.”
Well, surprise, surprise, surprise.
Did you know that Colorado is currently undefeated? Did you know that they were a playoff team last season? Did you know that they had 50 points last season? Of course you did. This column is read by only the most savvy connoisseurs of MLS, who know that the Kroenkes diverted a little attention away from the LA Rams, Arsenal, the Denver Nuggets, and the Colorado Avalanche to actually improve the Rapids. (It would be nice if they could fix the video board in the north end of Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, but alas.)
Mind you, Portland’s presence in this game shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise. As I discussed last week, Portland has spent most of the last several years being just above or just below the playoff line. And now, they’re below it. Of course, only by two points, but it’s still March. Drawing at home last weekend against the barely-ambulatory Galaxy ain’t exactly gonna change hearts and minds.
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Draw, because it would be an amusing way for Colorado to stay undefeated and it would give us the comedy of Phil Neville telling everyone that it was a good road point against a tough opponent, which is both true and completely unsatisfying to any Timbers fan.
Good Guys Game of the Week
Real Salt Lake vs. FC Dallas (Apple TV+ free game, 8:30)
It’ll be good for FC Dallas to hit the road.
If you had told me a month ago that four games in, FCD would have four points from their first two games on the road, I would’ve been very ecstatic about that. But now, after those two road games and two home games, those are all of FCD’s points this season.
What, are you kidding me? Is the pressure of playing in front of 11,000 people bunched on the south and west sides of the stadium too much to handle? Are the sponsors’ logos on those tarps on the east side too distracting? Do the tarps bring back bad memories of the 2020 season?
Whatever. I don’t care. Home cooking ain’t agreeing with the team, so maybe they should hit the road.
Fortunately for them, they’ll be facing a team that decided to dump Anderson Julio and Chicho Arango, who accounted for 40% of their goals last season, without replacing them sufficiently, and will be without Diego Luna, who’s off watching the USA national team lose to Panama from the bench of said national team. And the walking motivational poster Pablo Mastroeni is still their coach.
So what I’m saying is that FCD has a real shot to bolster their bolstering road warrior mentality. Of course, I also said that they had a real shot to take down Vancouver last weekend. This time, though, I mean it.