Is FC Dallas MLS’ Best?
By Curry Goff
In the world of sports, there is no shortage of bold claims. Whether it’s debating the best player in a particular sport or arguing over which is the greatest sports franchise of all time, there always seems to be a multitude of overly-hyped, near-sighted opinions.
This is because when it comes to sports, we all have short-term memory loss – well, either that or an inability to let history play its course. We jump to conclusions about who’s the best of all time; after all, if we’re experiencing it as the best, it has to be the best ever. We forget numerous other times when something was equally as great for the sake of staking our claim in what we believe to be the best thing since Michael Jordan/Tiger Woods/(insert great sports franchise of choice here).
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That’s why when I see rankings labeling FC Dallas as the best team in the league, I have to shy away from getting too excited. I’ve seen too many times how a vein of form can be fleeting and a goal on one end of the pitch can suddenly hit the back of the net on the other.
Again, maybe this is the Dallas fan in me. I wanted to hope against hope that my Dallas Cowboys would win the Super Bowl, but recent woes and heartbreaks have told me better. I wanted to hope against hope that my Texas Rangers would win the World Series (any of the two years they went), but time and history proved me wrong.
As a Dallas sports fan, I’ve found it’s best to live in the moment, taking each win for what it is without making any bold claims. Unfortunately, that’s what makes soccer, and any other sport for that matter, so interesting. We’re drawn to the power rankings so that our feelings of superiority can be validated. We’re drawn in to those conversations because they make for good back-and-forth banter, and who doesn’t love that?
Of course it felt good to see FC Dallas in first place in a number of rankings after both weeks two and three. More importantly than focusing on that, however, is the fact that after three games, FC Dallas is first in the most objective of all sports calculators: the standings.
Three wins out of three games is the perfect start; it can’t get any better. There is no other team in the league that has taken all available points from their opening set of games. Their +5 goal differential is top of the league, and quite frankly, their form has been terrific.
Buoyed by the strong play of veteran forward Blas Perez, this young FC Dallas team has been nothing but impressive in their opening three matches. It hasn’t been perfect, but it’s been enough to win each and every time.
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While all this sounds super optimistic and it gets the people going, for once, as Dallas fans, let’s live in the moment.
I guarantee that if you asked Oscar Pareja in a news conference how he felt that his team is positioned after three games, he’d give you an optimistic, yet reserved response. He’d tell you the importance of the individual performances in each game and the value of earning nine points out of nine after three matches.
He wouldn’t tell you that FC Dallas is the best team in the league. He’d let the table at the end of the year speak to that point. If you asked him today about where FC Dallas stands in the power rankings, he’d tell you that he wasn’t concerned with that. He’d tell you his main concern is Seattle, who, despite being sixth in the standings after two games, can compete with any team on any given night.
As an FC Dallas fan base, let’s do the same thing; let’s be encouraged by what this team has done and stay focused on its goal – to be the best team in the league at the end of the season, not just at the end of week three.