Brimstone Cup preview with MLS Season Pass analyst Jaime Macias

The weekend is quickly approaching. The home opener for FC Dallas is finally on the horizon for us all at Toyota Stadium.

As we get closer to Saturday’s Brimstone Cup match, I was able to sit down with MLS Season Pass Spanish language match analyst Jaime Macias to all things FC Dallas, MLS Season Pass and more.

BDS: Welcome Jaime, thank you for taking the time today.

Macias: Anytime, anytime. I love doing previews. It gives me deeper thoughts on the matches.

BDS: Correct me if I am wrong, is this your second or third season with MLS Season Pass?

Macias: This is my third. I started working with MLS back in 2021. When the Season Pass position opened, I quickly moved to it.

BDS: Since you’ve been with MLS Season Pass from the beginning, what excites you about this season specifically compared to the previous two?

Macias: I think that because of the format of how the league is distributed today, it can be watched worldwide, and have been been watched worldwide for the last two years, right? So, you can transition to a deeper explanation of the different games and the different teams and different players. More than what you were doing at the beginning. The audience has a bigger knowledge of everything around MLS, their teams, their rules, their competitive, how competitive the league is. The players are around, the coaches, the styles, the different teams around it. So, I think that the more the years go by, you can get deeper in what in the stories you are telling, because people are more engaged, and know more about the league.

BDS: How many times have you been able to come to Dallas for games through this season pass?

Macias: I've called Dallas a couple of times. But, this will be my first Dallas trip. I'm missing three stadiums, three MLS stadiums. Well, four with San Diego this year, Dallas, Houston and Vancouver. I've been in all the other ones. So, yeah, I'm excited because you, you know, you it's a long season, and sometimes you gotta put yourself with different objectives and visiting all of them.

BDS: I’ll tell you, you're coming in at a very odd time, since the stadium is going to be under construction for the next, I think, two and a half seasons. I think is what we're looking at. The whole east end will be tarped off on Saturday with different ads and big banner that reads something like “the new home of Toyota stadium”. So it’s going to look drastically different for a little while. But, you know, we're in a weird way, used to it because we had the South End construction a few years back.

Macias: It's always cool to see how things are developing and how things are going, especially in stadiums, right? They have become from, from a place where people just sit comfortably to watch a game to a whole entertainment venue on how everything has evolved, not only in the league but worldwide, and what is expected of a stadium when you attend to again. So if they are reviewing it's a sign of progress.

BDS: Exactly. Okay, let’s get to Dallas and Chicago. They have a long history, dating back to 1998. This is a fan rivalry between the two clubs, but they haven't faced each other in three seasons, and I believe this is the first game in Frisco since 2018. So, it's been a few years, given that history, would you rather see MLS kind of protect these kind of old school rivalries and have them meet once a year. Or are you fine with how the scheduling has been for matches like this?

Macias: I think that the pure expansion of the leagues has created more local rivals, right? And it's very hard to preserve faraway rivalries when the local rivalries are growing, growing so much. And I don't know if you can relate with that, with having Austin and Houston, two teams that came after Dallas, but one that came recently, and you have all this Texas rivalry, right? So, one of the things that myself, coming from South America, we are used to the inner city or interstate rivalries, something that it's very unusual here in the US, at least on the professional sports level, it's more college sport rivalry, right? When you have two or three colleges from the same area, from the same state, from the first thing, from the same city. So, I'm more on terms of, like the local rivalries, because if you are, if you're a rival, it's 500 kilometers away. The next day, when you go to work or to school, you're not gonna face a fan from the other team if you beat them, to have like this conversation, it's gonna happen in the distance, right? And I think that's one of the cool things of the local rivalry. I think that the bigger the league grows, the more the rivalries are local, and I really like those types of rivalry.

BDS: All right, as far as like this weekend goes. Last last week, Dallas was in Colorado. They gave up three goals, but they came back and got a draw out of that game. What do you think Dallas needs to do differently this weekend as they return home after being on the road for the first two weeks?

Macias: I think that as every start of the season, as every time you have a new coach, especially a coach that is having his first professional experience as at this level, right, even in minutes, that's what you need to understand, what the plan that you will develop through the preseason, through the trainings, through the sessions, how it's working on the field, and the only time, the only thing that is going to give you that those conclusions, it's the minutes, the minute you play.

I think that Dallas, for this season, did great in terms of bringing players that are on moment of their career that they can just show up and perform, it's not like a long term investment. When you bring young players, and you know that it's not this year, it's going to be in a couple of years, and they're going to peak. I think that the signings that Dallas did for this season, with [Lucho] Acosta, with [Anderson] Julio, with [Shaq] Moore and who was in the previous World Cup with the US. They're very important signings on that.

It should connect everything pretty quickly. It's not bad four points, with two games being played away also. So, I think it's looking better than last season.

BDS: If you told anybody else down here that we'd get four points in the first two games, we'd probably be like, “yeah, we'll take it.” Especially after beating rival like Houston in the first game. I mean, that's that's always a bonus.

Both Chicago and Dallas, they've seem to have their attacks kind of in order, but defensively, they're both kind of leaking in goals. Do you think this is going to be another kind of wild scoring game between these two clubs? Or do you think both, Eric Quill and Greg Berhalter are going to find a way to kind of settle their teams down in this third game of the season, and we'll see maybe more of a defensive battle?

Macias: I think that Dallas has more to settle on their defensive side. Like, I think that one of the things that happened when when you start the season, and the thing that a player lose the most during the off season is time and distance, time and distance, time and distance. You see a lot of mistakes on a certain place, on set pieces, because the team are not that connected on distance, right? And when the team is long, when the distance between players are not accurate, you give chances away.

And that's something that with the minutes, it's going to come back. And I think that the balance is going to be there because there were certain minutes of a very solid defensive team in both games, not the full 90 minutes, and that means that it's there and it's coming.

The other thing is that because of the characteristics of their players, especially Julio, they need to play a certain distance from the from the opposition goal. So indirectly, to fit this new offensive line, they're going to need to play a little bit closer to each other. I think that's going to make the team improve defensively.

BDS: Both teams have a couple more key players like you've been talking about Acosta and [Petar] Musa for Dallas and Chicago has a couple of DPs as well. Outside of those big names, who's one player from each team you're you are particularly wanting to see this weekend?

Macias: I like Brian Gutierrez. I think he's a very good player. He's a very, very good player, and he’s 21 now, I thought he would have moved to a team that is fighting for trophies or prior to Europe sooner, but, you know, the window is still open for that for the summer. But I think he's one of the best players.

I'm the other player that, for me, it's very interested in Chicago. I mean, it's kind of a question why Chicago is always bringing promoting great goalkeepers. It's Chris Brady. I think he had been, probably, he was the best Chicago player last season, and he was key in the in the at the beginning of the season, right?

Apart from the from the obvious, Acosta, I think that Julio may find more minutes in Dallas than with RSL. Sometimes, when you get box in that great player coming from the bench, you become that. I think that the minutes he had this first two games, he could give something different, especially with Acosta of playing behind him.

BDS: You already kind of touched on a guy in my next question for you, as a former keeper, what do you make of this weekend's goalkeeper matchup? We're big fans of Maarten Paes here in Dallas, you said, you know Chris Brady is a great up and coming keeper. Which guy do you think is really like the X-factor in this match?

Macias: Paes is more finished product. Brady looks very good. He also had mistakes last season. I don't think he's there yet, but it's always exciting when you see a player grow through a season, especially coming from that position.

I think that Maarten Paes has been consistently one of the top goalkeepers in MLS since his arrival to to the team. And the thing with goalkeeping is that sometimes consistent goalkeepers are the better the better ones, but you don't have enough highlights of them. And I think that Paes has been one of one of those.

Thanks again to Macias for taking the time to help discuss Saturday’s game.