The Leagues Cup is here. On Saturday night in Missouri, FC Dallas will begin its run in this year’s tournament when they take on Western Conference rival St. Louis CITY SC.

While some fans and folks around Major League Soccer may not like the idea of the Leagues Cup tournament. For FC Dallas interim manager Peter Luccin, he expects his team to be at their best as they shoot for a championship to add to the club’s trophy case at Toyota Stadium.

“It’s a beautiful opportunity, a beautiful challenge for us to build it into a tournament,” said Luccin during his Leagues Cup press conference on Friday. “That is a tournament very important for us.

“That's why we are traveling and going to play with a full roster. I will say full roster, but available players. We're going to go with the full lineup for the best lineup that we we can. And we are very exciting about that first game and looking forward to play tomorrow.”

After a busy few weeks in league play that saw FC Dallas play multiple weeks of Saturday-Wednesday-Saturday type of schedules, the club was able to enjoy a break this week to help prepare for St. Louis. FC Dallas captain Paul Arriola believes that extra time to prepare will help the team on Saturday.

“Yeah, I think it's been a really good week, obviously, we pushed hard, like we typically do on a Wednesday to get the load that we needed,” said Arriola.

FC Dallas does enter the tournament with a few injuries to key players like Jesus Ferreira, Patrickson Delgado, Alan Velasco and Geovane Jesus. As things kick off in St. Louis tomorrow, Arriola feels the team has confidence.

“You know, we haven't talked about injuries. We haven't made that an excuse to not to not feel like we can't pick up as a result or win any type of game,” said Arriola. “We have a lot of confidence in that. We have a lot of confidence in one another and we're just here to prove to ourselves and prove to the fans in the club that that we can win this thing and starts tomorrow.”

Luccin updated his club’s injury situation, which should sound promising to fans.

“Those injured players like (Jesus) Ferreira is about to come back with the team next week,” explained Luccin. “I think he's going to do a partial practice with us. (Alan) Velasco, I think that we need to wait one more week. (Geovanne) Jesus, I think that's going to be going to take longer, maybe three, three weeks before he's coming back with us.”

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