A Study In Recent FC Dallas Goal Scoring
As FC Dallas adjusts their roster and preseason nears, let's examine whether the club is scoring enough to support their championship aspirations.
In doing some late night Substack reading, I came across this post from Absolute Unit. In a nutshell, it delves into the idea of how important options are to scoring in soccer. It’s a great post, albeit dense, and worth your time. I’ve linked it below:
The initial thought I had on this relating to FC Dallas was wondering how their offense worked or didn’t in this context. Do they have enough options, do those options do enough etc.
Thanks for reading Toros Talk! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
While that’s a question worth exploring in a few months, it brought rise to a much simpler question: Does FC Dallas score enough? And what even is enough?
To the latter, one can argue there is no answer because you theoretically can never have enough goals. The next time media or supporters complain that a squad is scoring too much will be the first. Even if there’s no ceiling there is a floor, and I wanted to find out what it was and if the Toros are reaching it.
Since Eric Quill has said his aspirations are to win championships, let’s operate under the idea that Dallas needs to be scoring enough goals to lift MLS Cup. With that in mind I researched the Goals For of every MLS Cup winner since 2011, the first year the league played its current 34 game regular season format. The 2020 Covid shortened season is excluded.
Rounding up, since the move to 34 games MLS champions have scored 59 goals on average. The last three straight seasons, and five of the last seven, have required a good bit more. Now that we know the target, let’s check in how FC Dallas the franchise has compared during that same tenure.
Those aren’t inspiring results, but they are stark: Dallas is under-performing by roughly ten goals a season over the last decade plus when compared to the championship average. Even with individual years exceeding the champ’s total (2013, 2015, 2016, 2019) the scoring hasn’t lined up overall.
The past is the past, there’s nothing to be done about that. Now is the time to look towards the future, and how Dallas can reverse this trend. Let’s start with last year’s squad, which scored the most goals (54) since 2019 and second most since 2014. Here’s how their goals broke down across the 2024 roster.
16 different players scored goals last season, which is also the number of goals leading scorer Petar Musa bagged in his initial season. If there was any doubt the money spent on the Croatian was well spent, taking him off that chart makes it look feeble.
Even so, the squad was five goals away from hitting the average. Five more goals may seem a trivial number, but consider the following: There are four games last year that Dallas lost nil-nil. They are:
- 4/6/24 vs Austin
- 4/13/24 vs Sporting KC
- 9/7/24 vs Vancouver
- 10/6/24 vs Portland
Turn those four draws to 1-nil wins and it adds eight points to the team’s final total. Meanwhile there were three 1-1 draws last year:
- 5/18/24 vs Houston
- 6/8/24 vs Minnesota
- 7/20/24 vs New England
Adding a goal to any single result earns Dallas one more win and two more points. That makes Dallas’ final point total 51, shifts their goal differential to +2, and puts them safely in the playoffs proper. It might mean we’re talking about full time head coach Peter Luccin, not new coach Eric Quill. Every goal matters because every point matters.
Now let’s take the next step: using last year’s goals to road map for next year. Players not under contract with Dallas currently are not on this chart, players that Dallas has acquired are with a couple of exceptions. Jesús Ferreira isn’t on the chart, nor is Leo Chu. While their trade is almost at the finish line, it felt most right to leave off the outgoing but hold off on adding the inbound. It ends up being a marginal decision: Chu scored one goal last year for Seattle. For more details on this soon to be completed deal, check out my post from New Year’s Eve:
Sam Hale
Paul Arriola is on the list, as his trade rumors have stalled out. Pedrinho is not; there was no reasonable way to upscale his goals from MLS Next Pro to MLS proper so I left him off as a matter of fairness. All that stated, here’s what it looks like:
It’s not pretty. Dallas drops six goals from last year and eleven below the champion’s average. Even if they played some of the league’s best defense, they’re still short a decent amount of goals to consider themselves title contenders. Meanwhile all of that is contingent on everyone staying at their exact same goal scoring levels, which isn’t a reliable ask.
Solutions to this problem are twofold. The first is improvement within the squad. There’s reason to believe that will be the case. If Arriola remains in Dallas, his return to a more advanced return consistently should result in an uptick. Year two of Logan Farrington should equal more goals, but that could be capped by playing time. Quill getting creative with the Big Dog’s minutes would help in unlocking more goals. Alan Velasco making his full fledged return to the squad will see him score more. If it doesn’t, there’s bigger issues that you’ll be reading about in these digital pages.
Even with all that, it behooves Dallas to add another consistent scorer especially if Arriola is traded away. Should Chu end up in Frisco he might turn the thing around, but expectations should remain low after his disappointing Seattle tenure. Another ten goal or thereabouts scorer like Julio but on the left would be perfect. With all of Dallas’ GAM, buying that player in league feels plausible. If it isn’t, that player should walk through the World Cup Way doors on January 31st. The resources are there, investing them is what matters now.
If Dallas truly intends to enter a second new era over the last three years, they’ll need to reverse this decade plus trend of underwhelming scoring. As a league MLS continues to trend towards more offense, not less. Dallas has a chance to join the party, even if it’s better late than never.
Thanks for reading Toros Talk! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.