{"id":175484,"date":"2026-02-22T14:44:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T14:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/175484\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T14:44:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T14:44:07","slug":"petar-musa-boosts-world-cup-case-with-fc-dallas-brace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/175484\/","title":{"rendered":"Petar Musa boosts World Cup case with FC Dallas brace"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/clubs\/fc-dallas\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">FC Dallas<\/a> striker helped his case on MLS is Back weekend, netting a brace in his team&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/competitions\/mls-regular-season\/2026\/matches\/dalvstor-02-21-2026\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">3-2 victory<\/a> over <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/clubs\/toronto-fc\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Toronto FC<\/a> at Toyota Stadium.<\/p>\n<p>Musa struck in the 9th and 74th minutes to kick off Dallas&#8217; 2026 season, sandwiching a goal from strike partner <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/players\/logan-farrington\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Logan Farrington<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Because of FC Dallas, I was back with the national team last year, and at the moment my full focus is on the club,&#8221; Musa said post-game.<\/p>\n<p>Musa is coming off his most prolific season yet with Dallas, scoring 19 goals across all competitions in 2025. The club-record signing, who arrived ahead of the 2024 campaign from Portuguese powerhouse Benfica, finished sixth in last year&#8217;s Golden Boot presented by Audi race.<\/p>\n<p>More performances like Saturday&#8217;s will only benefit Musa, who returned to Croatia&#8217;s national team last fall for World Cup qualifiers. The Vatreni memorably made the 2018 World Cup final and finished third at the 2022 World Cup.<\/p>\n<p>Musa&#8217;s next chance to impress comes on Feb. 28 when Dallas host <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/clubs\/nashville-sc\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Nashville SC<\/a> (8:30 pm ET | <a href=\"https:\/\/tv.apple.com\/us\/sporting-event\/fc-dallas-vs-nashville-sc\/umc.cse.37byd32fm6u5udn0thuxpdrin?ctx_brand=tvs.sbd.7000%2Ctvs.sbd.4000\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Apple TV<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It\u2019s the home opener, in front of our fans, and I hope they enjoyed the performance,&#8221; said Musa, who tied Blas Perez for the fourth most goals scored in FCD history with 36.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We want to give that love back because they support us. Now we move on to the next game.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The FC Dallas striker helped his case on MLS is Back weekend, netting a brace in his team&#8217;s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,70778,2124,70776,68173,30548,9441],"class_list":{"0":"post-175484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-dallas","9":"tag-dallas-headlines","10":"tag-dallas-news","11":"tag-dalvstor-02-21-2026","12":"tag-fc-dallas","13":"tag-match-reaction","14":"tag-mls-is-back","15":"tag-petar-musa","16":"tag-sendtonews"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}