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 the World Cup on TV.
FCD in Game 2
- Deedson (Haiti) – This is likely the next-to-last time we’ll see Deedson’s name until FCD is back in action in July. Haiti lost 3-0 to Brazil, are sitting bottom of Group C, and are eliminated from contention for the knockout stage. As for Deedson himself, he came in in the 62nd minute, and while he looked useful at times, the game was already 3-0 at that point, and there really isn’t anyone that’s gonna single-handedly reverse that sort of deficit against Brazil. Let’s see what he does against Morocco before he returns to Frisco.
- Johannson (Sweden) – Another DNP. Well, at least he didn’t have to travel far for the team’s training site. Sweden lost 5-1 to the Dutch, but they got that 5-1 win against Tunisia in the first game, so they’re still very much in contention for a knockout spot when they face Japan at Jerryworld.
- Musa (Croatia) – He started again, and after scoring a meaningful goal against England when the game was very much in doubt, that shouldn’t have been unexpected. Sadly, he was not as productive against Panama and was subbed off at half. The Panamanians were determined to give Croatia little opportunity to do anything on the attacking end and were constantly hitting Croatia on the counter and spending a lot of the first half in Croatia’s half. It’s not great when your striker keeps having to come back for the ball and his heat map looks like this:
Ignorant Take of the Week
For those of you who don’t know, Schlereth played for the Denver Broncos back in the ’90s, has a radio show on the local Denver sports-talk station, and does color commentary on NFL games on Fox that Fox only shows because they’re contractually obligated to show them. (He’s probably done a lot of Arizona Cardinals games, in other words.)
Game of the Round
Croatia vs. Ghana at Philadelphia Stadium (FS1 and Universo, June 27 at 6:00)
This was a real coin-flip choice for me between this game and the Japan-Sweden game from Group F. After all, both games are similarly consequential:
- Both Croatia and Sweden are in third place in their respective groups and are trying to make it into the knockout stage.
- Both Croatia and Sweden are sitting pretty nicely for being one of the third-place teams to make it into the knockouts, since they each have a win in their pockets.
- Both Croatia and Sweden are playing the teams sitting in second in their groups, Ghana and Japan, so both can play their way into finishing second with a win, and if results go their way in the other simultaneous matches, they can finish top of the group.
And let’s face it, I’ve got material for both Croatia and Sweden’s opponents. With Japan, I can mock all the weeaboos running around (To be fair, Japan isn’t responsible for them, but they’re also not discouraging them either) and the fact that their fans have adopted the role of the World Cup’s custodial staff to the point that some Japanese women are saying, “Hey, y’all aren’t doing that at home.”
As I said last week, Japan’s become pretty good in soccer over the past few decades, and as an Eintracht Frankfurt fan, I’m rooting for Ritsu Doan. But I’m doing bits here, not actual analysis, so their players are gonna get mostly forgotten.
As for Ghana, I never thought 30 years ago that I’d have reasons to build up resentments against a random English-speaking West African nation. But I have reasons: 2006. 2010. Freddy Adu and the shenanigans that boned the Dallas Burn and had him ending up in Washington. (We did beat them in the first game of the group stage in 2014, but that feels to me a lot like how FCD has historically done well against the Colorado Rapids at every time other than the playoffs.)
I would want our boy Petar to score a hat trick on them and for Croatia to beat them down, even if they weren’t Ghana. (And if Panama were to keep England from winning at the same time and allow Croatia to finish top of the group, that would be even nicer.) But since they are Ghana, well, there’s gonna be zero part of me that would feel slightly bad about seeing crying Ghanaian fans in the stands, especially since they’re already on four points and it would take some confluence of craziness for them to not make it as one of the top third-place teams.
Either game is gonna be a good one to watch. And since they’re on two separate days, you can watch both! So why did I pick the Croatia-Ghana game as the Game of the Round? It’s pretty simple. We, as FCD fans, can feel pretty confident that Petar Musa is gonna see the field against Ghana. He’s already started the first two games and scored in one.
Meanwhile, Sweden coach Graham Potter has pretty much established that the only way that Herman Johannson is seeing the field against Japan or against is if a bunch of players have some bad Whataburgers the day before and are out because of food poisoning. So… they have FCD representation in theory only, except to have Herman show them all sights and sounds of Collin County.
But we’ll still be rooting for both nations. And we’ll be rooting for Haiti to be huge spoilers and make Morocco a bit anxious for the next few days.