FC Dallas’ schedule for the 2025 season officially released on Thursday. Let’s look at a handful of notable takeaways from the schedule.
Starting off on the road…with the Texas Derby
Dallas will start the season away from home for the first time since 2017 and, for the first time since 2010, Dallas and Houston will start their season with a Texas Derby match with it being the first time they’ve ever kicked off their season with that matchup in Houston. It isn’t the only rivalry game on the docket for the first weekend of MLS, Portland and Vancouver will play on Sunday, but Dallas and Houston should be the premier game on the first Saturday of the season, especially since both Miami and LAFC play earlier in that day. Also of note is that Eric Quill will coach his first game for FCD back in his hometown and it is entirely possible Jimmy Maurer will be in goal for Houston after signing as a free agent earlier this week. Storylines galore!
Also like 2017, Dallas will spend the second week of the season on the road as well, making the usually unfortunate trip to Colorado to take on the Rapids, who Dallas haven’t beaten in Commerce City since 2014. Tough start to the season.
Brimstone Cup is back!
No team has gone longer without playing a game at Toyota Stadium than the Chicago Fire, who haven’t visited Frisco since 2018. That will change as they come to town on March 8th for Dallas’ first game at home and their first game of the renovation era with a reduced capacity. It also marks the return of Brimstone Cup, which hasn’t been played since 2022 and hadn’t been played since 2019 before that, Chicago have held the trophy since that 2019 game in Bridgeview.
For those who do not know, the Brimstone Cup is the oldest rivalry that was born in MLS and was started by Fire and Dallas Burn supporters back in the late 90s after a series of highly contentious and competitive games between the two. In recent years, other rivalries have obviously surpassed Brimstone Cup and lessened its notoriety and the fact that teams from opposite conferences don’t play each other every year has not helped matters. Dallas will have a chance to bring the cup back home in their first home game of the season, would be a great way to start things off for Eric Quill at home.
Eastern Conference opposition: some new, some old
With the current format of conferences, Dallas will play six eastern conference teams, three at home, three away. After their first home game against Chicago on March 8th, they’ll head to Atlanta on April 5th to play in Atlanta for the first time since 2020. They then get to experience the madness of an Inter Miami game with Messi in Fort Lauderdale on April 26th. Dallas just played in Miami in 2023 but that was pre-Messi and was obviously a very, very different team. At the end of May, Dallas will play their final away eastern conference game by heading to Cincinnati for the first time to finally play FC Cincinnati at TQL Stadium. They’ll then travel back home to host Philadelphia, a team that MLS seems to love to match up with Dallas (do they think the Dallas/Philly NFL rivalry extends to MLS?) on the final day of May. Finally, they’ll host NYCFC on July 25th to close out their slate of cross conference games. Pretty tough slate! Of the 6 matchups, only Chicago and Philadelphia missed out on the playoffs in 2024. For those keeping score (probably just me), after 2025, Dallas will only have Charlotte left to travel to (and they will still have not yet played a league game), the Red Bulls will become the team they’ve gone the longest without hosting, and Montreal will be the team they’ve gone the longest without traveling to with both of those matchups last occurring in 2019.
Back to back to back
On three different occasions, Dallas will play either three home or three away games in a row. Luckily for FCD, they do the three home games in a row twice. Their first of these is the away trip, which starts off on April 19th with a trip up to Minnesota to play the Loons, then heads down to Miami the following weekend to face off against Messi & Pals and then finishes up with Dallas’ inaugural trip out west to play San Diego FC…