It's Going Down In Dallas

We're back! After a multiple-week holiday excursion to Puerto Rico^[1], the Soccer Eagle is back (feeling slightly hungover and little chubbier) and very ready to fly high above the world of American soccer.

The first newsletter of 2026 focuses on a unique soccer situation brewing in Dallas, Texas.

With the launch of Atlético Dallas come 2027, Dallas will be home to two men's professional soccer outfits nominally vying for the attention of the soccer fans from all over the Metroplex. While we have a few cities with multiple professional outfits (Los Angeles, "New York" if you're talking about "market", and who could forget Chattanooga^[2]), there isn't another major American city with a situation like what we'll soon have in Dallas.

It's a open question whether or not Atlético's arrival puts real pressure on the Frisco-based Major League Soccer club. FC Dallas isn't exactly the exemplar MLS brand when it comes to in-market popularity so it's possible nothing Atlético does will impact FCD all that much. FC Dallas is an organization of questionable ambition beyond developing talent (and even that area isn't bearing as much fruit these days^[3]), at least relative to its MLS peers.

Years after the MLS 3.0 got underway, FC Dallas is finally in the process of upgrading its very MLS 2.0 stadium. While putting a roof on Toyota Stadium is a good and necessary, it won't do much to change the club's perception as a rampant underachiever who plays its games in the hinterlands. At the risk of generalizing, FC Dallas appears content to be what it is: a semi-competitive, budget-minded professional soccer team that focuses on (and takes pride in) its academy. As long as parity and a big playoff field are central pillars of Major League Soccer's competitive picture, FCD (owned as it is by a family with bigger sports interest) can putter along unbothered forever.

If the biggest soccer club in the market isn't maximizing the potential for soccer support, then it seems inevitable someone else will take that as an opportunity to make their own thing work. Atlético Dallas isn't so much challenging FC Dallas as it is sliding into a massive gap the MLS club left for it.

Atlético Dallas originally planneed to play in Garland, a suburb of Dallas about 30 minutes from downtown and about the same drive from Frisco to the northwest. The plan was to build a 10,000-seat stadium and soccer complex in partnership with the city of Garland.

But a chance to play in the historic Cotton Bowl (once home to the Dallas Burn, now FC Dallas) was too good to pass up. Moving to a massive football stadium has its drawbacks (namely, that it's a massive football stadium) and at least one distinct advantage—it puts the club smack in the middle of Dallas itself.

I've had multiple conversations with the people behind Atlético Dallas as part of our focus on USL and its expansion efforts for Morning Kickaround^[4]. FC Dallas only came up when I asked about that club and the dynamic of entering a market with an existing MLS team. At least outwardly, Atlético doesn't act like FC Dallas's existence has anything to do with their potential success.

Atlético wants to build an edgy, street soccer brand around its professional soccer effort and believes it can connect to the Latino soccer community in Dallas (hence, the club's name). Kyle Martino is involved as an investor and the club is making his Street FC pickup platform a part of its push into North Texas soccer culture. It's hard to know how much of a dent Aletico has made 14 months from putting a team on the field, but there's no denying their creativity in chasing a fanbase.

Look at his rendering of a headquarters/bar/beer garden/soccer court the organization is planning for the Expo Park area of Dallas, just a few blocks from the Cotton Bowl:

Maybe I'm a sucker for a rendering, but that's cool.

To be perfectly clear, Atlético has a lot of boxes to check before we can say they're "competing" with FC Dallas, be it for fans, attention, or any other quantifiable soccer commodity in and around Dallas. Right now the club is little more than a logo, a social media presence, a bunch of cool ideas. Plans for an academy, a training center, and a socccer-specific permananent home are still far in the future. There is a no coach and there are no players.

Still, with the coming changes to USL, Atlético Dallas—by virtue of stadium, market size, etc.—will be front-and-center in the bid to remake the American professional men's soccer landscape. USL (rightly) says that its first division won't be directly competing with MLS, but that won't stop people from pushing the idea of competition. Those places where USL and MLS share a community will be most in the spotlight.

It's probably not a stretch to say tha Dallas might even provide the blueprint for future USL clubs launching in the shadow of MLS teams.