Twenty-one days off. Then several weeks of inner-squad scrimmages until the players were sick of the sight of each other. Then a trip to Northern California where San Jose showed up looking for a fight
FC Dallas restarts its MLS campaign next Wednesday in Portland after two months of mostly nothing, and manager Eric Quill sounded like a man who liked what he saw in the meantime.
“I have a bought-in team, man,” Quill told Big D Soccer in a one-on-one interview this week. “I love this group. They train so hard, and they love each other like brothers.
“Comparing to when I took the job last year, where we are culturally is night and day,” he said. “That’s what I’m really proud of, and that’s what I know wins a lot of games. Maybe we don’t have the quality on some nights, but we’re going to be in every game, and we’re going to win a lot of games because we care deeply and we fight for each other.”
That’s a coach talking about a fourth-place side in the middle of a break, so take the temperature accordingly. But the specifics underneath it are worth you time because Quill did not spend this interview reciting platitudes. He named names, discussed what has worked well over the last two months, and told us who’s gaining his trust more.
The break that wasn’t really a break
The club handed the squad a full three weeks off immediately after their last game, a 2-1 win on the road in Colorado. They then reconvened for what amounts to a second preseason in 2026. Inner squad scrimmages carried them for a stretch, but Quill admitted they wore out of that fast. So the club flew west last week for two real opponents: Oakland Roots of the USL Championship and then the San Jose Earthquakes.
The San Jose game mattered more.
“They wanted a piece of us from the last time we were there, in a bad way,” Quill said. “There were a lot of fights in this game. Our guys stood up to everything they wanted to do physically to us, and we gave it right back tenfold.”
The setting didn’t do anybody favors: a 10am kickoff on a hard surface at San Jose’s training facility, with tackles flying throughout. Quill’s read was that his team was the brighter of the two on the day.
The result was 1-1 through 90 minutes, but the two clubs played an extra 30, and Dallas won that period 1-0. Call it 2-1 or call it 1-1 depending on your accounting. The bright side of this is that FC Dallas is still showing their quality against one of the better teams in the Western Conference.
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Two players who moved up the pecking order
If you are looking for a guy further down the roster to emerge as a potential breakthrough player in the second half of the season, Quill has a couple of suggestions.
Without being prompted, Quill volunteered that both Caleb Swann and Josh Torquato have been standouts for him during the last two months. Not the coach-speak standard “have looked good” either, we’re talking trust earned. And with a compressed second-half schedule requiring consistent rotation, Quill said flatly that both will play more in the back half of the season than they did in the front.
For Swann, that is more minutes. For Torquato, that means earning his first FCD minutes of 2026.
That’s not a coach being nice. That’s a coach telling you his rotation plan.
The bigger tactical note may be that Sam Sarver is going to likely play more up top than on the wing in the second half of the season.
Dallas used Sarver at right back and on the right of the midfield four this season. In May, Sarver had three goals off the bench, two that were game-winners. Quill has been playing him up top in a front two and thinks that is where Sarver truly belongs in his lineup. In the scrimmage against San Jose, Sarver had a goal and an assist.
“He’s just a handful with his pace,” Quill said. “Knows how to get behind. I think you’re going to see him more up front.”
The bodies coming back
Bernard Kamungo is fully fit. Quill said he’s be comfortable playing him 90 minutes right now if the game demanded it. Not bad for a guy that missed most of April and all of May.
Anderson Julio is further behind. He’s been out since March, and the club is deliberately taking him slow. He got 20 minutes against Oakland, which Quill characterized honestly as labored, saying the endurance isn’t there yet. The plan is to get him 20-to-30 minutes on Wednesday night against Orlando.
With the transfer window opening on Monday, seeing both Kamungo and Julio back feels like the classic “new signings from within the roster” that FC Dallas has been known to proclaim in previous summer transfer windows. Quill didn’t hedge.
“It does feel like a new signing,” he said. “Bernie especially.”
One guy that every FC Dallas fan will be curious about returning to the team in Petar Musa. He’s coming off World Cup duty with Croatia and got additional rest after they were eliminated from the tournament. He hasn’t been with the team yet, but is expected to join training this week.
Quill said the team will evaluate his fitness from scratch when he arrives. Next week’s game in Portland may come too soon, but Quill’s goal is to turn him around quickly.
In the meantime, Dallas has a forward group that Quill describes as a thick pecking order: Musa, Logan Farrington, Nick Simmons, Sarver, Kamungo, Ricky Louis, and Julio when he’s finally fit. Quill’s point is that you have to fight to get on the field now, which wasn’t as true earlier in the season.
“Everybody’s capable of being a starter,” Quill said. “We’re getting deeper.”
Wednesday’s game against Orlando isn’t exactly a friendly
Yes, on paper and in promotions it is a friendly. But when Dallas takes on Orlando City Wednesday night at North Texas’s new stadium in Mansfield, Quill wants the word “friendly” not to be used.
“There is no such thing as a friendly,” Quill said. “If a guy doesn’t perform Wednesday and wants to treat it like a friendly and just exist out there, and the guy that comes in for him wants to treat it like it’s a World Cup final, he takes his job.”
He went further, saying he has no allegiance to any individual, only to the club, and that he’s demonstrated repeatedly this season that a player can be out of a matchday squad one week and starting the next based purely on how he trains.
Whether you buy that philosophy or not, his squad appears to.
The road ahead is brutal…very brutal
The Burn come out of the World Cup break with what Quill believes is the hardest schedule in MLS. A stretch that starts on the road and stays there until the end of August. He’s not treating that as a death sentence; the club has already proven it can travel and pick up points. He also pointed to an early-season loss against LAFC as proof that Dallas can also hang with anyone in the top tier of the league.
But he’s honest about the psychology of the restart to the season.
A win at Portland next Wednesday and his team walks into San Diego next weekend feeling like a group that finished May. Lose it, and the alarm bells begin ringing and some may push the panic button. Quill was direct about the stakes of that opener, as it sets the tone for the rest of the road stretch that doesn’t offer any soft landings.
Quill’s answer is rotation. He said the compressed calendar means all-hands-on-deck, that Dallas will need to protect players from injury, and that the contribution of the full roster is going to matter more than at any point this year.
The interesting part is that he thinks this group can actually do that now.
“I have trust in everyone,” Quill said of his squad. “I don’t know if I would have said that last year.”
Quill also spoke with Big D Soccer about the summer transfer window — and what he said may surprise you. That conversation, plus what the Daniel acquisition means for Jonathan Sirois and Michael Collodi, is coming out later this week to our paid subscribers. Subscribe today to read that.
