It was a slip of the tongue from young forward Ricardo Pepi, but his comment illustrates the mood around FC Dallas as the team comes back from the international break with Saturday’s match against Minnesota United.
“That break was very beneficial to us. I felt like the team needed that two or three days off and then we were back to work,” Pepi said. “I feel like the team is doing way better than we were before. I think we’re prepared for Saturday’s game and ready to kick off the season.”
The season, of course, already has kicked off, but FC Dallas hasn’t started strong. The club has just one win in seven matches and currently sits at the bottom of the Western Conference.
So, for FCD, the mentality is to leave that start in the past. It’s time to move forward. What’s done is done.
“I think the rest was much-needed, just so guys can take the pressure off their shoulders, enjoy family, get some perspective,” head coach Luchi Gonzalez said. “We came together at the end of the first week of the break and built toward our next steps and worked. And I think it showed in this last week.”
Training has had an increased intensity, players said, thanks to a few new additions. Midfielder Facundo Quignon joined the team from Argentina, while defender Justin Che is back from a loan spell with Bayern Munich and Brandon Servania is returning from a similar situation in Austria. Jesus Ferreira is back in full training after missing the start of the season with a shoulder injury.
“Those guys are in the competition,” Gonzalez said. “I can’t say who exactly is cleared or released or how that is going to play out in terms of the roster and the lineup leading up to Saturday, but I can tell you the decisions are going to be very difficult, and that’s a good challenge to have.”
Having too many quality players is a good problem to have, but that hasn’t necessarily been the case for Gonzalez this season. The team’s finishing has been a weak point, but with Ferreira injured, the coaching staff felt continuing to work with forward Franco Jara as a starter was the only option. Now, they may be able to experiment more in the attack.
Many had expected Che to be as good as gone, following the same path to Bayern that Chris Richards paved in the past and moving to the German giants without playing for the first team. Yet, for now, it appears the 17-year-old defender will be available to Gonzalez for the rest of the year.
FCD may not need a complete overhaul, but the extra pieces and the fresh start can help the team start to fine-tune some of the good things it showed in earlier matches that didn’t lead to victories.
“We’ve had, for me, good ideas and good intentions with the ball and even without the ball, the press, the intensity,” Gonzalez said. “We’ve been on the front foot, for me, at the start of every game we’ve played, showing urgency and wanting to win, but the points haven’t come.”
That’s not to say they won’t, and it’s not too late for FCD. The team has still played less than a quarter of the season, and the schedule is intentionally backloaded to allow MLS teams to get more fans in stadiums as the pandemic weakens.
While Saturday isn’t the season opener, FCD knows it is a chance to show its home fans, in the first match at full capacity at Toyota Stadium, it’s turning the corner.
“We all know that we’re very close to reaching our potential. I think we’re very close to being there and being able to win games,” Pepi said. “We need to stay calm and keep working hard and then at some point it’s going to turn around and we’re going to be doing great.”
If that happens, the players won’t be the only ones who will hardly remember the difficult start to the year. It will be far from supporters’ minds as well if FCD is making preparations for the playoffs.
The Dallas Morning News partners with The Striker Texas to bring coverage of FC Dallas and other notable Texas soccer stories to dallasnews.com. Find more soccer coverage at thestrikertexas.com.
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