FC Dallas and the birth of MLS 3.0

FC Dallas is one step away from the MLS Cup after recording the most points in the league’s ultra-competitive Western Conference in 2015. The team faces Portland in a two-leg tie with the right to represent the West in MLS Cup 2015 on the line. If Dallas advances and Columbus beats New York in the Eastern Conference final, Frisco will play host to MLS Cup 2015.

For much of its twenty year existence, FC Dallas has been the butt of jokes among MLS fans. The original MLS club, formerly known as the Dallas Burn, has had a rocky history and at times tepid fan support. Behind the goal-scoring exploits of Jason Kreis and Dante Washington, the club won the 1997 US Open Cup and made the playoffs the first seven years of MLS play. However, a league title was elusive and the team lacked a clear identity at a time when other MLS sides were developing a clear style of play and philosophy. Yet in 2015, FC Dallas has gone from a club largely left behind in the “MLS 2.0 era” of 2005-2014 to the trail blazers of the emerging “MLS 3.0 era.”

From the inception of the club, playing at the massive and ancient Cotton Bowl was a prohibitive factor but when Pizza Hut Park (Now Toyota Stadium) opened in 2005, things were supposed to change, just as the MLS 2.0 era began and the league went from shaky foundations to solid footing. At first, the club did adapt to the improved MLS, as FC Dallas had the best Regular Season record in the Western Conference in 2006. But the newly created in-state rival Houston Dynamo ended up lifting the MLS Cup in the club’s first season in Texas, while Dallas crashed out of the playoffs in the first round. It would be a harbinger of things to come as the league became stronger, better supported and more competitive.

The humiliation of Houston’s early success, combined with smallish crowds by MLS standards, poor player personnel decisions (such as signing Brazilian Denilson as the club’s first DP just a month after David Beckham arrived in the US), and a revolving door of front office personnel doomed the club to also-ran status in a growing MLS. Despite reaching the MLS Cup Final in 2010 by improbably eliminating Supporters Shield winner LA Galaxy, losing to Colorado returned Dallas to reality. In a league where clubs were becoming more and more successful in scouting, the club was left behind. Support continued to wane at the suburban Frisco, Texas home of the club while fans across the league began to view FC Dallas as a losing brand.

Before the 2012 season, former US Men’s National Team Player and Colorado Rapids Manager Fernando Clavijo took over as Technical Director of the club. Clavijo left the same job with the NASL’s Fort Lauderdale Strikers to join the club and the changes came quickly. While the team had gotten players like David Ferriera through a unique partnership former club President Michael Hitchcock put in place with Brazilian side Atletico Paranaense, Dallas’ own scouting network and ties to South American needed a reboot and Clavijo did that.

In the early days of MLS, the league’s flagship club DC United’s scouting network south of the border was arguably on rivaled by the Dallas Burn. Manager Dave Dir did an excellent job of integrating Latin American talent in the club’s early days but that connection was burned eventually as other MLS teams caught and surpassed Dallas’ network. Since Clavijo and Director of Soccer Luiz Muzzi left Fort Lauderdale in 2012 to join Dallas, the club has brought an exceptional amount of foreign talent to the club. The most notable signing has been Mauro Diaz, the ex-River Plate player who has excelled in MLS.

Since former Burn superstar Óscar Parreja returned to the club as Head Coach last year, the play of his Colombia compatriot Fabián Castillo who has been with Dallas since 2011 has reached exceptional levels. So good has Castillo been that he’s been called into the Colombian National Team multiple times this year. It is truly a rare feet for an MLS-based player to be called into a top ten national team in the world on a semi-regular basis, but Castillo has become a game changer in a league whose reputation is improving in global soccer circles.

Parreja’s 2014 hiring transitioned FC Dallas’ playing style into an exciting free-flowing attack that incorporated the qualities of homegrown players. FC Dallas has signed an MLS record 13 Homegrown players to the first team, and many have made a quick impact such as Victor Ulloa and Kellyn Acosta. Raised with the playing style of the club and reared in loyalty to the brand, products like Ulloa and Acosta represent a new brand of MLS player. For years the league shuttled journeymen players around, and while that still happens with veterans more and more homegrown players are making a mark thanks to a liberalization of MLS rules for signing academy prospects.

The Dallas area has long been a youth soccer hotbed with the Dallas Cup attracting top international clubs year after year and the Dallas Texans being recognized over the past two decades as one of the best youth club in the United States. FC Dallas was late to getting its feet truly wet in the local youth soccer bonanza but beginning about five years ago, the club made a real effort to identify and develop local players and to allow creative talent to come to the surface. In an era where we see young American raised players often over-coached and neutered, the players coming out of FC Dallas’ system often have a creative spark missing in so many other MLS homegrown players.

As MLS moves from the “2.0 era” of big overaged international signings and of promotion of established lower-division teams to a “3.0 era” of superior scouting and development homegrown talent, FC Dallas is leading the way. The club that was long a subject of ridicule is now showing the rest of MLS how it’s done, and without question the rest of the league is taking notes.