Throughout the pre-season we were tracking who would make the roster with our 30 tickets to March 19 segment. Guys like Bruno Martins, Bim Ogunyemi and more had brief cups of coffee in Frisco and now they're gone. With one game under our belts, we can take a final look at who made the roster, the depth chart and what kind of changes could possibly be made 

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One of the biggest assets available to SBN bloggers is that we have blogs for every team and along those same lines, bloggers from each team who know their squad much more in-depth than I could. With that in mind, we have a feature here before each game where I share 3 questions with the blogger of the rival team FCD faces. To see my answers to Tweed's 3 questions click here. 

Tweed Thornton of Hot Time in Old Town answers my three questions

1. What have Chicago's pre-season results been like?  Has the new team gelled well in their games?

The number one frustration in the Chicago Fire's pre-season games were players racking up red cards.  Some of that was players who weren't use to playing with each other making ill-advised moves to cover at the last second, some of it was an over-eagerness to impress the coach with wide open position battles going on, and some of it was the grittiness that lives in any Chicago sports team.  It was hard to see the team gel offensively working with ten men 2/3rds of the time but I have come away very impressed with the defense.  

Carlos de los Cobos is dedicated to running a 3-5-2 this year and Cory Gibbs, Josip Mikulic, and Jalil Anibabagot almost exclusive starting time as the back 3 this pre-season.  It should be noted that the defensive trio were not the ones getting the red cards and formation as a unit has gone well.  Goaltender Sean Johnson seems very comfortable controlling the defense in front of him as Johnson is the Fire veteran of the group.  The midfield projects to start Gonzalo Segares, Marco Pappa, Baggio Husidic, Logan Pause, and Patrick Nyarko.  With all of the massive changes to the Fire in the past 3 months, it is remarkable that they might roll out a midfield made up of players who were with the team at the start of the 2009 season.  Up top the Uruguayan duo of Diego Chaves and Gaston Puerari should start.  Chaves and Puerari were actually teammates together with the Montevideo Wanderers just recently.  While the cards have made it hard to see how much the team is ready to gel top to bottom you can see how side to side there is some familiarity.  I'm not worried about the all-new defensive set so we'll see if the sets that have gelled will start working together as a team.

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Some more good news out of Frisco today as the team has finally announced their local TV deal. 

Some notes:

-12 regular season games on FSN Southwest including Saturday's home opener

-7 games on FSN Southwest Plus

-6 games on TXA21, home of the Mavericks, Stars and Rangers.

-2 games on FSC

-All FC Dallas games will be broadcast in spanish on 1270AM "La Voz del Pueblo" 

I absolutely love that FCD will be on TXA21 this season. This just lends more credibility to the FC Dallas brand name in the metroplex to have it on the same station at the Rangers, Stars and Mavericks. 

 

“FOX Sports Southwest continues to be a great partner for us and we’re excited to join the TXA21 lineup that already includes the Dallas Mavericks, Dallas Stars and Texas Rangers,” said FC Dallas President and CEO Doug Quinn. “As the sister station of CBS11, TXA21 gives even more people in the Metroplex the opportunity to watch FC Dallas games in high definition.”

 

Full press release and broadcast schedule after the jump

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The hype is growing in anticipation and I've got some great news on this Wednesday afternoon. I'm hearing from sources that ticket sales for Saturday night are going at a very brisk pace and things are coming close to a sell out. As always, the cheaper options on the east side and endline are the first to go and those options probably aren't going to be available at the gate on Saturday. 

Because I love all who read Big D Soccer, I've gotten a link from Kevin Lindstrom, FCD ticket rep and supporter since '96, to get tickets for Saturday night at nice discounts. As a quick search will show you, there's not a lot left here and I know they're going to make a big push in these next 48 hours.

Click this link, password is "FCD" to get tickets at a pretty sweet discount from box office prices and print them from home. 

Meanwhile, yesterday was media day out at Pizza Hut Park and WFAA Channel 8 sent George Riba out there. 

There's tons of power rankings out from all the major MLS news sources. MLSSoccer.com has FCD fourth, SBI has FCD fourth, WVHooligan has FCD fifth. 

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2010 was obviously the best season in MLS history for FC Dallas. They made MLS Cup for the first time and set a league record for unbeaten streak. However, as Schellas Hyndman will tell you, that success can be detrimental to next season as it creates expectations.

So what should the realistic expectations of FC Dallas fans be? What makes 2011 a successful season? 

I've had a number of people ask me, "so what do you think is going to happen this season?" Well here's my take on the season of both FC Dallas and MLS.

FC Dallas

Dallas will give up fewer than 25 goals this year, leading the league in goals against. An MLS goalkeeper of the year candidate with a backup who is no slouch himself. Then, you've got these options for your back 4: Jackson, Loyd, Shea, John, Ihemelu, Benitez. Five players who have spent time with their national teams. 

That's the deepest defensive rotation in the league and you've still got Daniel Hernandez, Eric Alexander and Andrew Jacobson in the midfield to muddle things up. The defense is going to be very very good.

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I'm pretty sure everyone will remember this one. Jeff Cunningham dropped four goals on Kansas City in the game that would ignite Dallas to nearly making a miraculous run to the playoffs. This was kind of the game that turned everything around for Dallas and gave them the confidence to go on and challenge the rest of the season. 

I felt bad for Kansas City by the end of the game but they'd get us back a few weeks later. 

08/01/2009 Kansas City Wizards at FC Dallas (via mls)

The reward for going to a reserve game on a Sunday morning? Five minutes of exclusive chatting with Schellas Hyndman. Understandably he didn't seem to be in a huge mood for talking given this afternoon is probably the first time off they've had in weeks, but there's some pretty interesting stuff in here, enjoy.

Through the third pre-season with the team now, how do you feel this time compared to previous years?

Obviously much more relaxed and much more aware of where we are and where we need to go. Before you were just kind of off the cuff trying to do things, right now it's a better idea of where we are and where we need to improve. Our areas we're lacking focus on.

Today against Central Arkansas was something like your fifth shutout in the row of the pre-season, you've got to be happy about that.

Yeah, I think it's great. We got a chance to use different players. I don't know how many people recognize it but today for that last 25 minutes we had six academy players on the field. That's a lot of young players to have on the field at one time. I was really pleased with our three central midfielders, Warshaw, Jacobson and Guarda. I kept them in the game for the whole time and I thought they looked very well.

Then what you do is you fill in the other pieces, Jack Coleman, Michael Ambrose, they came in and really did well for us.

Keep Reading for more on Brek Shea moving to center back, when will Fabian Castillo get here and more

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