Three Storylines to Watch in 2026 for FC Dallas
With the 2026 MLS season right around the corner and preseason wrapped up, let’s look at a few big storylines to follow over the course of the 2026 FC Dallas season.
1) The Strange Schedule
In what will be MLS’s final full spring-to-fall schedule, FC Dallas probably has the strangest schedule in the league. Everyone across the league will deal with an extended break in May, June, and July for the World Cup, but FC Dallas will do so in tandem with a period away from Toyota Stadium as renovations wrap up on the east side before everything flips in the back half of the season.
Dallas will play 9 of their first 13 games at home before playing 9 straight games on the road, two before the World Cup break, and then 7 straight coming out of the break. They’ll then play 8 of their final 12 back at home, with fans seated on a renovated east side as work begins on the west-side renovations.
This will be a unique season across the league, but especially bizarre for Dallas. They will really need to stack up some points in that pre-World Cup part of the season because that road stretch could potentially be brutal for the Burn.
2) Only One DP?
Unless something changes drastically, Dallas is going to go through the first half of the season with Petar Musa as the only Designated Player on the roster. Despite rumblings and some open talk about wanting to acquire another DP attacking piece, Dallas elected to sign Joaquin Valiente in that space. This player looks more like a punt on a potential bargain buy than a guaranteed hit in MLS.
The front office has mostly committed to bringing in a player in the summer window and has pointed to the challenges of the winter transfer window in acquiring quality players. There’s some truth to this: MLS as a whole hasn’t seen a lot of big signings this winter. With the schedule change and the World Cup looming, it seems a number of teams are holding off or are unable to make any really significant moves to acquire players from overseas.
Musa is a top-quality striker in MLS, and Dallas does have some quality around him. Herman Johansson should provide a lot from his wingback spot, Logan Farrington looks to have taken another step forward, and Christian Cappis is fully integrated into the team. But if Valiente isn’t a hit and Patrickson Delgado isn’t able to take another step in his career, there are some real questions about what this team will look like going forward. They’ve established a solid floor; this will almost surely not be an outright bad team, but it is hard to see where they make any big improvements in 2025.
3) How Does the Team Take the Next Step?
So, how does the team take their next step, and what does it look like? Quill has committed to sticking with the 3-5-2 this season, and it looks to have at least some long-term thought behind it as North Texas SC appears to be rolling out the same shape and general tactic. Quill isn’t overly concerned about having a lot of possession, but it is tough to imagine this team competing for any hardware if they can’t even average 40% of possession.
This may end up being the team just trying to collect as many points as possible in the spring before the World Cup and then identify their missing piece and go out and spend some money to acquire that piece as a DP to push the team into contention. But it seems just as likely that a team could come in with an undeniable offer for Musa in the summer, especially if he shows out for Croatia at the World Cup. Then Dallas would basically be starting from square one and needing to acquire two DPs.
This is probably the biggest thing to watch this season. The back half of 2025 was so positive, but looking back now, I don’t see the progression fans had hoped for.
What are you going to be watching for as the 2026 season unfolds?
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