The FCD Fan’s Guide to Hatewatching Matchday 7

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 League Soccer on TV.

Musical accompaniment

Last week

Thank God it was a bye week. I usually don’t get geeked for international breaks, or whatever passes for international breaks in this league, but at least it gave us fans a week-long break from watching the steady procession of players onto the injury list. It also gave us a week-long break from watching Jesús Ferreira attempt to play every position on the field with the exception of “forward.” And it gave us a week-long break from feeling Cristian Colmán deja vu creep in while we were watching Petar Musa.

So yeah, things are going great for the Team Formerly Known as the Dallas Burn.

EL SUPERCLÁSICO DEL SIGLO (de la semana)

Vancouver Whitecaps vs. Portland Timbers (MLS Season Pass, 9:30)

MLS isn’t promoting it as such, but between this game and the Little Brother Green-FCD game that we’ll talk about later, this is Fat-Free Rivalry Week. Yeah, they’ve got a rivalry-like flavor, but they just don’t hit the way the real thing does. Portland wants to play Seattle and Dallas wants to play Houston.

But both these teams appear to be good at soccer, with Vancouver 3rd and Portland 4th in the West, so it’s in this slot, and I can say with certainty that this game will count towards the Cascadia Cup. This is more than I can say for a certain local rivalry trophy.

Now some people might suggest that both these teams are paper tigers who have built their win-loss records thus far on the backs of chump teams like Charlotte, Colorado, San Jose, and Dallas, but personally, I’m going to enjoy watching two teams who look as if they actually played together before.

Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Vancouver. Aside from Portland’s attempts to answer the question “What if you transformed a barrel of toxic waste into a Major League Soccer team,” you gotta love a team coached by a guy with the guts to rightly say that Batman is a trash superhero.

Little Brother Game of the Week

Houston Dynamo vs. San Jose Earthquakes (MLS Season Pass, 7:30)

Little Brother Green is playing FCD this week, so Little Brother Orange gets to fill this slot. And for a couple of seasons, after the Earthquakes came back in 2008, this was a kinda-sorta rivalry because the 2005 Earthquakes won the Supporters Shield and then proceeded to move to Houston right after the season.

But it was really kind of one-sided since the Quakes fans cared way more about the games against the Dynamo than the Dynamo fans cared about those games. But maybe there are still some Quakes fans who are still pissed off about how a really good Quakes team was ripped away from you and sent to Houston to win back-to-back MLS Cups.

And to that segment of Quakes fans, I offer the following insight in the spirit of furthering self-care:

You are due for a colonoscopy. Colon cancer is a particularly brutal form of cancer and people our age have to be vigilant.

Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: San Jose, of course.

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

Orlando City vs. New York Red Bulls (MLS Season Pass, 6:30)

While we’re on the subject of “team coached by former FC Dallas head coaches,” we come to Orlando City. Papi led them to more points last season than both the 2015 and 2016 FC Dallas teams that won a Supporters Shield and lost out on another one due to a tiebreaker. And OCSC added Nicolas Lodeiro in the offseason, so a lot of people tipped them to make even more noise this season.

The Red Bulls, on the other hand, have been a safe pick to finish anywhere between sixth and eighth since Jesse Marsch left. In the offseason, their big move was to hire Sandro Schwarz, who has never spent more than two seasons in any previous gig and has usually not left of his volition.

So you’ll never guess which team just took Inter Miami out to the woodshed to the tune of 4-0 and which team just got its first win of the season last week against Little Brother Green. I love this stupid league.

Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Orlando, as per usual.

Sickos Game of the Week

LA Galaxy vs. Seattle Sounders (MLS Season Pass, 9:30)

I’m going to reenact a conversation between Present Me and Three Months Ago Me:

Present Me: I’m gonna have Gals-Sounders as the Sickos game on Matchday 7.

Three Months Ago Me: Oh, so the Gals are winless and in last place this year and the Sounders are bestriding the Western Conference like a colossus of yore again this year, right?

Present Me: Actually, the other way around.

Three Months Ago Me: Wut

Actually, I lied to Three-Months-Ago me. LA’s actually in second place, but I didn’t want to blow the poor guy’s mind by telling him that Minnesota’s currently in first place with an Erik ten Hag assistant as their new head coach and with Emanuel Reynoso having played only 30 minutes in four games.

But that still doesn’t change the fact that LA’s good this year. Scratch that, maybe not good, but at least they’re fun to watch, fluid, and act like a team that knows what they want to do going forward. And they’re undefeated in five games so far, even if three of those games were draws. Imagine that. They hired a good coach who had skins on the wall and let him build his team.

Now, you can sell me that Seattle’s doing their traditional “let’s play possum for the first half of the season” act and I’m making a mistake by putting them in this slot, but at the moment, they’re looking a lot of FCD: A team that had terrific defense and a tepid attack last season has gotten worse on defense and not any better in the attack.

Oh, a Seattle team that’s gotten worse on defense is playing an LA team with dynamic attacking players who are scoring a lot of goals? And it’s at Dignity Health Sports Park?

Well, the good news for Seattle is that the Gals are still giving up a lot of goals, so maybe Jordan Morris will once again start looking like the guy who’s managed to fool people into thinking that he belongs on the national team.

Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Galaxy. Look, I don’t like picking anything but draws in Western Conference games, but FCD needs all the help they can get, and that means Seattle staying in the dirt.

Good Guys Game of the Week

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

The absolute funniest thing about this past offseason was when FCD let Jáder Obrian walk… and people acted like Little Brother Green went to the $5.99 CD bin at Walmart and found a gem. (Kids, ask your Gen X parents to explain that reference.)

Sure, the Little Brother Green front office has been selling that nonsense, but they’ve been doing the Herculean task of selling Anthony Precourt as a non-garbage owner for several years now, so getting people to ignore three years of Obrian’s occasional competence surrounded by a sea of buffoonery wasn’t too big an ask. And it’s worked so far. Just look at this!

Anyway, this is gonna be our first opportunity to find out if Obrian is committed to killing FCD dead the way that Fafà Picault and Michael Barrios have been. We’ll truly know by the number of offsides he has committed by the end of the game.

Oh yeah, this game also counts for the Copa Tejas, which will excite the three people outside of Travis and Williamson counties who give a rip about it. Or maybe it doesn’t. After last year’s fiasco, who can know for sure?

Here’s my idea: Just let Little Brother Green keep it permanently. Or assign some other arbitrary metric for winning it that only they can meet, like “number of neckbeards in the stands who have ever ordered vegan chile con queso.” Either way, I don’t care. There are two teams that I want FCD to beat like a drum, and both of them have a better record against FCD than “two wins in the history of ever.”

Don’t make it three. Treat them like the slumpbusters that they are.