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
Saturday
East #4 Orlando City vs. East #7 New York Red Bulls (MLS Season Pass, 6:30)
This is potentially gonna be the more heartwarming final, simply because neither of these teams have ever won MLS Cup, and frankly, neither of them has won a whole lot else:
- Orlando City – 2022 Lamar Hunt US Open Cup
- New York Red Bulls – 2013, 2015, and 2018 Supporters Shield
With respect to the latter, this has been something of an amusing surprise. In fact, if you were to tell 1996 Me that the MetroStars would be completing 29 seasons, having had one name change, one MLS Cup final appearance, but zero MLS Cup titles, my responses would’ve been (in no particular order):
- “29 seasons? Sweet!”
- “Hey, do we have flying cars?”
- “They renamed to Cosmos, didn’t they?”
- “No friggin’ way. They haven’t won a single title?”
And yet, here we are. And the fact that we’re here, still talking about them at this point would’ve been a big surprise when the brackets were set on Decision Day. Like I said, a real heartwarming story about everyone’s favorite Cinderellas, the Little Ol’ New York Red Bulls.
I might even root for them if it weren’t for their opponents, who are led by our favorite Colombian, Óscar Pareja. Would I be bummed if he ends up leading a team not named “FC Dallas” to an MLS Cup title? Sure. But those are mixed feelings for next week. For this week, we’re gonna be riding with the Florida team that we didn’t expect to be playing in this game.
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: Orlando
West #2 LA Galaxy vs. West #4 Seattle Sounders (MLS Season Pass, 9:00)
In contrast to the East final, the West final is between two nauseatingly successful teams who have won more trophies than you can count. And since life is occasionally not fair, the winner of this game will host the MLS Cup final next week, which means that there’s much-higher-than-zero chance than the league’s biggest game will be played on the league’s worst field in front of the league’s most entitled fans.
Gross.
But it’s a bit of an upset that the West final is being contested between these two teams. The Gals stunk last year, they’d stunk for a few years now, and the best minds at Major League Soccer Soccer dot com didn’t have high expectations for them this year:
Now, other smaller teams who wear green and just hired a Valencia B legend as their head coach might do something like fire up the laminator and lean into some “nobody believed in us” nonsense, but not the Galaxy. They just went out in the offseason and signed quality players like John Nelson… and Gabriel Pec and Joseph Paintsil and almost went wire-to-wire on top of the Western Conference. They’ve got the #2 next to their name because they faded a bit in the second half of the season and were pipped on Decision Day by LAFC.
But if there’s a time of year to get your act together and start road-grading opponents, it’s this time of year. And after beating Colorado 5-0 and 4-1 in the first round, and then Minnesota 6-2 last week, they’re not only playing their best soccer of the season, but some of the best soccer I’ve seen in this league ever. They’re clearly playing the best, most dynamic, fun-to-watch soccer of any of the four teams left.
So of course, this pretty much guarantees that Seattle will win.
Jefe the Hater’s rooting pick: LA