FRISCO — Evaluating a team’s resilience becomes a subjective matter unless it can be demonstrated with concrete evidence and verifiable facts.
That’s the case with FC Dallas, which has the chance to secure a postseason spot if it wins Saturday in Vancouver, the final match of the regular season.
To reach this point, the team had to recover from a dreadful start to the season that included several consecutive home losses and a split with Lucho Acosta, the Argentinian MLS star who was expected to elevate the franchise to another level.
By mid-July, FCD was in 13th place in the Western Conference, and all signs pointed to a second consecutive year of missing the playoffs.
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“Personally, I never doubted that we’d be in a position to reach the postseason,” said FCD forward Bernard Kamungo.
“Midway through the season, things weren’t going well for us, and maybe that’s when some doubts arose about how we’d do this year. But when you’re down, the only thing you think about is how to get to the top, and we did exactly that.”
FCD heads into Saturday’s game against Vancouver, the Western Conference leader, sitting in eighth place.
Under MLS playoff rules, the teams that finish 8th and 9th in each conference square off in a wild-card match, with the winner advancing to the postseason.
FC Dallas, currently sitting on 41 points, still has a mathematical shot at bypassing the wild card altogether and securing direct playoff qualification, but it would require a favorable combination of results that lifts them into seventh place.
However, the margin for error is razor-thin. Dallas could miss both the wild card and the playoffs entirely under the following scenarios:
If FCD loses, and Real Salt Lake (40 points) and Colorado (40 points) either win or draw their matches, and San Jose (38 points) wins.If FCD draws, and both Colorado and Real Salt Lake win.
If teams are tied on points, win total is the first tiebreaker. FCD currently trails both Salt Lake and Colorado.
But a significant reason FCD is still in contention is that the team has rescued 23 points coming from behind, the best record in that category in the league.
“That speaks to the resilience of this team,” said FC Dallas coach Eric Quill.
FC Dallas closed out the regular season in impressive form, posting four wins, four draws, and just two losses over its final 10 matches.
Those two defeats came nearly three months apart. The first was a narrow 3-2 loss to NYCFC on July 25, and the second didn’t arrive until last Saturday, when FCD fell 2-1 to LA Galaxy.
“In the last 10 games, we’ve played really well and improved a lot,” said Ecuadorian midfielder Patrick Delgado. “The team’s hard work, consistency, humility, and resilience are what have carried us forward.”
Quill, in his first season as FCD’s head coach, said the ups and downs of the season helped the group build a never-give-up mentality.
“Yes, of course, we had stretches during the season that didn’t make us happy, but you can’t argue that this team has been resilient from start to finish,” said Quill.
“My players are true warriors.”