2020 Season Preview: FC Dallas

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2020 Season Preview: FC Dallas

For FC Dallas and their fans, the 2020 season feels like sophomore year in college. You’ve settled in to your new digs, figured out how to get the best class schedule, have your core group of friends, and you know the best spots to get a cheap slice of pizza at 1 a.m. After turning over a good chunk of the roster from 2018 and installing a new coach in Luchi Gonzalez, just about everything was new in 2019. For 2020 Luchi’s still running the show, and aside from the departure of Dominque Badji, the roster is mostly intact from the end of 2019 as this team heads into Gonzalez’ sophomore year in charge. The club and the fans know what to expect for the upcoming season.

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FC Dallas: Postseason Preview

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FC Dallas: Postseason Preview

2019 Review

FC Dallas were expected by many to miss the playoffs in 2019. Following a disappointing early playoff exit in 2018 Dallas came into the season with a new coach and one of the youngest teams in the league. That mostly suggested it should have been a rebuilding year. It wasn’t, though. Luchi Gonzalez got the team playing attractive-ish, solid soccer right out of the gate. They lost just two of their first nine games. The season after that was a little more uneven, but on the whole Gonzalez managed to develop the team’s youth while implementing a fun, possession-oriented, high-pressing style of soccer that has, aside from in front of goal, been pretty effective.

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Hiding Behind Possession: FC Dallas' Youth Experiment

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For years, FC Dallas has been lauded for having one of -- if not the best, Academy programs in the United States. Dallas has signed the most Homegrown players in the league history (25), with no slowing down in sight. Despite having such a prolific Academy, it wasn’t until recent years that the club started taking full advantage of this system. And when former Academy Director Luchi Gonzalez took over as the head coach,  it was finally the go-time for the entire “Play Your Kids” movement. Part of that was by design; who else would know the former Academy players better than Luchi? Part of it was also timing; most of the Academy graduates had spent a significant amount of their formative soccer development years in the Dallas Academy and were ready to make the jump. With Gonzalez at the reign, it only made sense to usher in a youth movement.

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