DC will be going to their 5th MLS Cup on Sunday. 96, 97, 98, 99 with 3 championships. Sure its been a few years but the fans never lost the feeling that an MLS Cup is their birthright. And still, 55% of the time there is an MLS Cup - DC is in it. And this year they're doing with our 1st round draft choice. LA has been to 4 MLS Cups. Chicago has been 3 times in their 7 years. San Jose has been twice and won it twice. I don't know if I have a point - I was just thinking about this over the weekend as KC booked their 2nd trip to the Final. I read one DC fans asking if anyone else cried tears of joy after the game Saturday. How lucky they are. We have never even been to the MLS Cup. We've been to 2 Conference Championships, I believe. 1999 was the closest we got. Since then we've not seriously mounted a threat. Sure we have the 1997 Open Cup, but its a tournament played in the deep, dark vaccuum of space. I didn't see even one game of it this year. How far away are we from going to the MLS Cup? Yes - miracles happen (see the almost Revs) but really. How far away are we? I don't feel we're close - no matter how much I want to believe my own lies. Will we become the Chicago Cubs of MLS or the Red Sox before this season and never see MLS Cup Glory? Live an entire lifetime and never get the chance to cry for the glory of our team? I don't know. Luckily I'm only 36 and have a few years left in me, God willing.
Frankly, I don't know how much being a MetroStars fan would be that much worse. True, we have that Open Cup back in '97, but that was seven years ago. For most of our history, we've pretty much been comparable to the MetroStars. Worse, even. When was the last time we won a playoff series? Five years ago.
I am with Terp, I consider myself blessed I have a D1 soccer team to watch play. Would I love a Cup? or course. But it won't kill me if it doesn't happen. I am still a Texas Rangers and Newcastle United fan after all.
Dude. Really. The Metrostars. At least we've had an Open Cup. All they've had is summer camp cup from La Managa, during which they were so successful a Norweigan team promptly stepped in and stole their most promising draft pick. Lothar frickin Maatheus. Sasha Curcic. OZ. Bora. Stillano. Sackevitch. (sp? their current GM) IIRC, their first goal in team history was an own-goal. They will play on turf forever.
Well of course being an FC fan is better than having no team at all. Far better. So much so that its not even a comparison. I thought about the Metrostars comparison - but heck, even though I think their GM is a buffoon and Greg Elliott and FC is clearly a superior organization, the Metros get to splash out $400,000 or $1 million dollars on players they think will help the team. Course it doesn't work out for them, but that's cuz they make bad decisions. We won't even get the chance to bring in an impact player that may cost that much. Even if MLS greenlighted it, I think HSG would never approve it. So the Metros can dream of their next player allocation and we just hope our pick or allocation doesn't get pulled away from us to serve the greater good or HSG cheaps out and passes on the whole damn thing. I guess I was just thinking how cool it would be to have FC going to the MLS Cup and how far away that feels right now.
Seriously, if you're looking at this team's history right now, its greatest moment has nothing to do with anything on the field. It's probably when we got free money to build our own stadium.
Do you have your own stadium? Yes? Do you have the crappiest GM on the face of the planet? No. Is DC your biggest Rival? No What happened is your FO made the biggest mistake in MLS history with sucklake. But I also figure if you can get the mojo back at Frisco, you'll be fine. WHen we're still in Giants stadium and drawing 5K every game, get back to me on this. At least you guys are getting better off the field. Metrostars - making every other MLS team feel better about themselves since 1996
Not here to rub salt in wounds... You guys at least have a pretty proud history to build on. And now, after a couple of lean years, you're starting over with a (pretty cool) new logo and freaking SSS! You guys get a stadium, we get home plate. Seriously, Chris (that's your name, NorthsideRovers, right?) it's a little early to get this defeatist. I've seen Dallas look damn good in the past. I'm only 37, and I have NO DOUBT I'll live to see you guys hoist the cup someday...hopefully in a rebuilding year for United.
Since the last time we advanced in the playoffs: 2000: Mediocre team that crashed out of the playoffs in the first round 2001: Mediocre team that crashed out of the playoffs in the first round 2002: Third-best team in the league... that crashed out of the playoffs in the first round 2003: Worst team in the league 2004: Mediocre-to-bad team that didn't make the playoffs. Here's how long it's been since we did anything in the playoffs: Bill Clinton had more than one full year left in his administration. The playoffs were still best-of-three. The shootout was still in use. The clock still counted down. "Soccer specific stadiums" in MLS still meant Columbus Crew Stadium and Lockhart Stadium. The financing for the Home Depot Center was still a year or two away. I could go on, but you probably get my drift. The Burn was in their fourth year of their existence then, and now they've completed their ninth season. More than half of this team's existence has taken place since the last time we actually did anything in the playoffs. At what point do we stop defining ourselves by what happened years ago, from 1996 to 1999, and start defining ourselves by what's happening in the here and now, or at least in recent history?
That's true IF you define yourself by results and results only. You are clearly are a "Win at all costs" kind of guy. Please don't take that as some kind of judgement on my part as it is not. Some people have stated they care about other things... someone said that they didn't want a bunch of jerks and were willing to suffer a bit to get a team they could be proud of in terms other than just results. And as I said before, I define my enjoyment of FCD by the their existance at all. Maybe you have higher standards than I do, but I live in a town where I have a MLS team and in a time where we have MLS. Those two facts alone are all I ever wnated. I have won the soccer lottery by the presence of a team to follow. Any thing else is grazy in my little soccer world. Like Hoops... Hoops Baby, Hoops!
That's all very well and good, but what happens when that day comes when having a professional soccer team goes from being "That's great and as long as they stick around, I'm happy" to merely being a fact of life, sort of like having an NBA team or an MLB team or an NFL team. What happens when the team's existence has been long enough and that they've entrenched themselves firmly enough in the community that their continued existence is commonplace? I don't know that that day is coming any time soon, but with the new stadium, that day is definitely on the horizon now and is moving closer.
I don't know. It's a good question, but I can't predict how I will react or think then. But for now I am content. But each to his own right?
I think the bad days are over, a youth movement is on, new digs, optimism all around, and I fully expect them to at least make the playoffs. One step at a time.
Sorry if this is a little off topic but man, reading this thread, I can't imagine how it must be for fans of bad teams in foreign countries. I mean, as bad as Dallas have been, they could, conceivably, win MLS Cup next year with some luck. But, damn. Imagine being a fan of like Blackburn or any Scottish team aside from the big two. Knowing your team has almost zero chance of winning it in like the next ten years. Knowing that the big teams have superior talent at every position. I mean Eddie J and O'brien could probably start on any team in MLS, but whotf does Dunfermlin have that could even sit on Celtic's bench? (They might have somebody, but you get my point.) Man, I salute those fans, but I don't know how they put up with it year after year. I hope MLS always has parity. Maybe not the extreme parity that it has now, but at least NFL-type parity where teams can rebuild in a few years. I'd hate to see MLS turn out like foreign leagues, even if DCU was one of the big dogs. It just wouldn't be the same.
I asked Jeffries about this issue after his first year...I mentioned that the Burn were one of the few teams that had not even MADE MLS cup, let alone won it. He said it does have some weight to it. Before I go to far, who suffered more for their years out of the playoffs, the Burn fans who have never been to MLS cup, or Dick Cheese fans have won it a couple times, then watched Wrongagain and the salary cap take their team to then-unknown depths? Something to think about... But to be honest I look at DC being in the final and Revs almost making it, and I become less depressed. Neither team is that much better than anyone else in the league, FC Dallas included. Had the Burn gotten 10 extra goals from Kreis and Nhleko (combined), they would have been better contenders. That's not much. Of course, if Clarke and Elliott screw up the draft, allocations, and discoveries this year, THEN HSG and we have serious fighting to do.
Oh North, I knew that eventually you would pull out a nice and comfortable barstool alongside the rest of us. What is it that we are drinking? We'll let you in on this round, but the next one is on you. The drink is called "doom and gloom". Actually, it is a heart warming drink. You can still retain hope. But you are freed by the realization that the current direction will never get it done. Cheers. Here's hoping that the HSG occupation ends in our lifetime.
I think the reason we as Dallas fans feel so jaded about this whole situation is that fact that we have never received anything from any one. Being a league opperated team for years meant when it came to allocations we got nothing. Lets see, Alvarez and Sanchez were good, Sanchez lasted what a year? Alvarez a little longer, but never was a player that could put a team on his shoulders really. Then we get Sutter, who played all of 3 games or so. Yet the ownere of the team has never gone out of their way to get players for this team. We had to draft Kreis, Dodd, EJ. Discovered O'Brein. Yet just about every other team has just had people given to them by the league. Oh I am sorry we got Deering, no wait he was a second level allocation to basically say well here have this guy he has played on the national team once. The fact that we were not important to the league to be made good in the first 5 or 6 years is what ticks me off, and now that most of the original players are gone from MLS; the teams that lost their marquee players were given others to help them out, we were never given anything. Kind of sucks, but oh well you still gotta love em.