Why the early Leagues Cup exit actually wasn’t great for FC Dallas
Why the early Leagues Cup exit actually wasn’t great for FC Dallas
Yesterday we touched on the positives under Peter Luccin, but now we gotta hit those negatives.
I believe most of you know that I’m a glass-half-full kind of person. This applies to FC Dallas and my coverage of the club. Sometimes, it’s easy to fall into that mindset, but other times, like many moments this season, it’s challenging to stay positive.
Well, today won’t be a positive day. After writing up a bunch of positives yesterday about how the club has progressed under Peter Luccin, I felt I needed to balance things out a bit. After all, the team had a rather unpleasant exit in this year’s Leagues Cup tournament.
Since we’ve had a bit of time to reflect on that, I’m starting to think that while I really do believe there were true positives of being outed from the tournament so early, the drawbacks could come back to haunt FC Dallas in their pursuit of a playoff spot this year.
Let’s dive into those not-so-positive items that could cause FC Dallas to miss out on the playoffs this year when the league resumes play next weekend.
Road play is still pretty awful
The one significant drawback for FC Dallas, regardless of the head coach, has been their road performance this season. In league play, they have managed to secure zero wins. However, there was a glimmer of hope in a road victory in the US Open Cup tournament against Tampa Bay. On that particular night, Maarten Paes displayed remarkable skill and determination, essentially standing on his head for 75 minutes to secure a 2-1 win.
If you glance at the schedule, FC Dallas has only four more home games, while the other five come on the road in D.C., Vancouver, Salt Lake, San Jose, and Portland.
On paper, two of those should be wins (D.C. and San Jose). But we’ve said that there were plenty of ‘on paper’ road games this season that should have been wins. Nico Estevez’s last game in charge in Minnesota comes to mind, so do either of the two Sporting KC games in early July. Hell, the last league game in New England should have been an easier win with the amount of injuries and players unavailable that the Revs were dealing with.
The Leagues Cup loss in St. Louis taught us that this group still has a ways to go for figuring out how to get wins away from home this season. Had they managed to get out of the group stage and into the Knockout Round, we would have seen them go on the road at least by the Round of 161.
If FC Dallas wants to be in the playoffs, they have to find some way to get at least one victory away from home.
Additional games could have helped Ferreira/Velasco
While I am all for getting Jesus Ferreira and Alan Velasco back, potentially for next week, I would have loved to have seen them compete in this tournament a little bit as a way to get their fitness levels back to where the club needs them to be for the final nine games of the regular season.
It is hard to replicate true game environments in training and that also comes to player fitness too.
The missed opportunity to play in even three potential Knockout Round games in the Leagues Cup means that players like Ferreira and Velasco will have to wait a bit longer to regain their top form.
A new form wasn’t realized
The example of how this tournament can propel a club into the final stretch of the regular season is quite evident. Consider teams like San Jose, Austin FC, Philadelphia Union, St. Louis City SC, and New York City SC. All of those teams were struggling before the tournament, yet they have either emerged with a newfound sense of their capabilities or are still vying for a title.
For FC Dallas, dropping out at the group stage prevented any new strategies that Peter Luccin could have developed and implemented in this competition from coming to fruition.
Now, it will be a mad sprint to the finish line for the club. Eight weeks. Nine games. FC Dallas has three points standing between them in 11th place and the playoff line that Minnesota is currently holding. While I do think the extra rest was needed, you can’t help but think ‘what if’ a little bit with the missed opportunities, too.
This was all based on the rankings and the assumption that they would have played Club America in the second game of the Knockout Round like St. Louis did last night in LA.