FRISCO - They know they’re being written off. They know the fans are beyond frustrated. They know they need to figure it out - and quick.
Despite their now 10-game winless run, the mood remains positive inside the FC Dallas locker room.
“What can I tell you is that this is the hardest moment I have ever had as a coach in my six years. And this is the moment that I believe the most in the group that I have,” Oscar Pareja said as the team heads into a near do-or-die double-match week. “My players, our players, I see them in the morning, I see them working. I see them worrying about this situation. I see them pushing and trying to overcome…we have to take it and carry it and find our answers, but what I see from these guys is heart.”
Currently in eighth place and one point out of the playoff line, the path is still there for the club to turn it around. But it has to start now. As Dallas tries, from a very unfamiliar position, to make the postseason for a fourth straight year under Pareja, the playoffs begin Wednesday.
“[These are] two tough games, two must-win games for us and we need the points,” Victor Ulloa said. “We’re in a tough stretch and we know that, but we still have hope. We’re still alive and we keep believing. If we stop believing in ourselves, then nobody else will. The guys know that and we’re ready to face this Wednesday game as a playoff game.”
“Every game is going to be treated like a final starting on Wednesday,” Kellyn Acosta said. “We’re taking it game by game, but the motive is still the same. We need to get back to our winning ways and we need to do what we can to find a way to win.”
Finding that way to win, in Pareja’s mind, will come by forgetting the last two and a half months and by taking the pressure on himself, letting his players do what they know how to do.
“I said to the boys, ‘How about if we take the pressure off? How about if we play and enjoy the game? I’ll take the responsibility, as a leader to any result. You guys go and do what you love the most and do it with the responsibility that the game asks you to, and do it with all the heart that you always put, but how about if we take that and let's be ourselves…you guys go and play soccer.’”
