FC Dallas Back To Their Brilliant Best
By Curry Goff
Two of the many truisms in sports are that seasons are long and hard times will come. Teams get burned out and experience lulls in the middle of their campaigns. Players struggle to find form and fans struggle to find faith.
Such is the world of sports.
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FC Dallas’ season has been no exception to the rule. Their blistering pace to the season was bound to come to an end in some form or fashion, and early form seemed to indicate it would be a gradual stop rather than the screeching one FCD experienced.
A month and a half road trip proved terribly, terribly costly for FC Dallas, earning only two points for their troubles and returning to Frisco in a dire state.
As we’ve already discussed, this happens to every team. It comes in different shapes and sizes, but every team has challenges and obstacles that they have to overcome in order to prove their worth. For FC Dallas, that obstacle just happened to be a 6-game winless streak…not exactly the hiccup you would prefer.
Thankfully for FC Dallas and its fans, the reaction to that obstacle from Oscar Pareja’s men has been fierce, such that they are right back in the mix of the hotly contested Western Conference.
Three convincing wins in as many games have seen FCD pull level with both Seattle and Vancouver on 32 points at the top of the conference table. If you would have told me three weeks ago that we would be equal in points with the conference leaders, I would have told you that the FC Dallas from early in the year would be back!
Truth is, while the results are there and the points are a delight to see, the form FC Dallas has been in over the last few games has been completely different than what we saw in the wonderful stretch FCD had at the beginning of the year.
Early in the season, the opportunistic Blas Perez was rescuing FC Dallas from otherwise lackluster play. Don’t get me wrong; the offense was great at the beginning of the year, but what we’ve seen over the last three weeks has been a much better representation of the beautiful game.
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With Blas out on international duty with the Panamanian National Team, the delightful duo of Mauro Diaz and Fabian Castillo have been unstoppable. If Blas is the quintessential finisher, Castillo and Diaz are the perfect picture of how teamwork can surpass any individual skill.
No one has ever doubted Castillo’s abilities. He’s almost always number one in dribbles, and his pace is tantalizingly prolific. The only aspect of his game that has ever come into question is his finishing touch, the coolness to slot home his amazing runs, or the ability to know when to pass to the open man.
Diaz has been a bit of the same. You know that he has the skills to distribute the ball with grace and precision, but he never quite materialized into everything we thought he could be.
The last three games have shown how, when the two of them work in tandem, they can create a masterpiece of attacking soccer of the highest quality. Castillo has transformed into the intelligent maestro we knew he could become and Diaz has actualized his amazing potential as an incredibly adept distributor of the ball.
FC Dallas is back, y’all. Castillo and Diaz are out to prove just how good this team actually is!
(We haven’t even talked about the defense getting better. More to come.)