Kyle Martino can see it now. The packed stands. The ball zipping around the field. The players, chasing it here and there, passing and moving. For most, it will be a familiar scene from any match. For Martino and the Atletico Dallas ownership group, it’s the actualization of something bigger.
This is a different approach.
Soon, there will be two professional soccer clubs that carry Dallas in their name. One, FC Dallas, is a legacy brand, an MLS club with 18 playoff appearances, 2 U.S. Open Cups, and countless USMNT talents to come through their ranks. Atletico Dallas don’t exist as a fully functioning soccer club yet. But they have a badge, a brand, and an idea.
This is a USL club that represents a different part of the same area. FC Dallas play in the sparkling suburbs, nearly 40 miles from the city.
Atletico Dallas, meanwhile, forges its identity in the streets. Their team, they hope, will be packed full of locals, kids that grew up on blacktops and searing sun, shuffled into a first team of adoring fans. A massive metropolitan area, they insist, needs a second team that represents the core of the city.
“We’re trying to create a community asset that’s going to last for 100 years, and that begins in the street, in the communities and areas that might be underserved,” co-owner Matt Valentine told GOAL. “They definitely don’t have organized elite club-level soccer in the US market as it exists today.”
It’s a simple principle, really. FC Dallas have a niche. They are a founding MLS club that operates out of a high-quality facility in a different county. Suburbia suits them. Theirs is a talent factory amid townhouses.
Atletico Dallas are set to operate from Dallas County, a metropolitan area of 2.8 million people, more densely populated and more diverse. They may border each other, but this is a different area that caters to perhaps a different kind of footballer. Valentine, Martino, and the team’s management want supporters to follow both. There is room for two badges.
And, for them, it starts in the city.