Led by coach Peter Luccin and star players Bernard Komungo and Omar Gonzalez, this American dream team is gearing up to blaze stadiums.
The Final Boss
Goalkeeper Maarten Paes, 26, has been rock solid in net this season and has been invited to his first MLS All-Star game. A U.S. permanent resident, Paes was born and raised in the Netherlands and has recently become a citizen of Indonesia, where his grandmother was born. With the Dutch national team currently having Euro success with Bart Verbruggen, another young goalkeeper, Indonesia presents an alternate route for Paes to play in a World Cup.
The Defenders
Sam Junqua, Sebastien Ibeagha and Nkosi Tafari make up the core of the defense in front of Maarten Paes. Junqua is a California kid who was a four-year starter for the University of California Bears in Berkeley. Tafari hails from the other coast; he was born in Manhattan and played college ball at the University of Connecticut. Born in Nigeria, Ibeagha spent most of his pre-adult years in the Houston area. On corner kicks, you can see all three creep forward, with Ibeagha and Tafari especially looking to use their height to put goals in the net. Off the field, Ibeagha and Tafari are also the fashion standard bearers for the team. Ibeagha was ranked as one of the top-dressed MLS players by the MLS Players Association. Junqua is a little more chill, fostering animals in his spare time.
The Connecters
Playing between the offensive and defensive ends of the field requires a player to have both skill sets and to be able to switch from one to the other at the drop of a hat. It also requires lots and lots of running. Manning the middle in Frisco are Patrickson Delgado, brought in recently from the Ecuadorian Serie A league, and Spaniard Asier Illarramendi, who played most of his career in the Spanish La Liga, including a two-year stint with super club Real Madrid. Canadian Liam Frasier is another recent acquisition, and a regular for Canada’s men’s national team. Filling out the crew is Sebastian Lletget. Both of his parents are from Argentina, and Lletget was born and raised in San Francisco. In 2022, Lletget announced his engagement to singer and actress Becky G, but the two keep any current relationship private. Of more importance to soccer fans, Lletget is a U.S. National Team veteran, with over 30 caps for the club.The club's Midfield has suffered a number of injuries, so we may get a chance to see some of FC Dallas’s young talent thrown into the mix. Frasier and Delgado are sitting out a few weeks with what are hopefully minor injuries, but American Paxton Pomykal from Lewisville and rising Argentine star Alan Velasco will miss most of the season. This is especially disappointing for Velasco, who had a real shot of playing his way on to the Argentine national team for the 2026 World Cup.
The Strikers
It’s extremely difficult to score goals in soccer, full stop. The ability to finish in and around the box takes courage, skill, athleticism and an intense focus to get one in the net no matter what it takes. Any player with a reputation as a goal scorer will get the undivided attention of the other team’s best defenders — usually, big strong players who will grab and hold and get in your business in any way possible, and that’s before you even send one toward a waiting goalkeeper.For 2024, FC Dallas has gotten bigger inside, picking up 6-foot-2 player Logan Farrington with the third pick in the 2024 MLS Super Draft, and spending over $10 million on Croatian Petar Musa (who's the same height). In his final year of college at Oregon State, Farrington was the Pac-12 Player of the Year, Pac-12 Offensive Player of the Year, All-Pac 12 First Team, All-Region Team and First Team All-American. Not a bad way to finish school. Now, working his way into the pro game, he already has a couple of goals and assists on his resume.
Before arriving in Dallas, Musa played in the Czech First League, the German Bundesliga, and the Portuguese Primeira Liga. If his game were basketball, Musa would probably be down in the paint under the basket, fighting for rebounds and scoring on putbacks. In soccer, he’ll give as much as he takes, with one thing on his mind: scoring goals. Halfway through the season, he has already scored 13 goals, and his scoring pace has accelerated under new coach Peter Luccin. He has a chance to score 20 goals this year, an outstanding benchmark for an MLS striker.
The Veterans
Alongside the newcomers are veterans Paul Arriola and Jesús Ferreira. Both have played for the U.S. national team. Arriola has 43 appearances, including two Gold Cup championships. Ferreira has fewer, but more recent appearances, having played with the team on its most recent World Cup run. Three fun facts: In 2022 Ferreira and Arriola each scored double-digit goals for the team, 18 and 10, respectively, the first time two Americans had done that since Wilt Dempsey was playing up in Seattle. Arriola can grow a pretty decent mustache, although we think it is reserved for the playoffs. While playing for the national team, Ferreira scored so many goals against Caribbean teams that he picked up the nickname “Pirate of the Caribbean.”Ferreria was born in Colombia and came to Dallas with his father when he was 10. David Ferreria, his dad, was a terrific player who signed with FC Dallas in the later part of his career. Jesus got into the Dallas academy system and has turned into one of its best graduates. When a serious injury derailed his father’s MLS career, David Ferreria decided to move back to Colombia. Jesus stayed and got his U.S. citizenship in 2019.
There is another possible father-son combination brewing here as well. Head coach Peter Luccin has two kids in the FC Dallas academy system. A soccer nomad for much of his early life, this is the longest time Luccin has ever spent in one place. Like Omar Gonzalez, he never really lived in his hometown as an adult, but Dallas (and a wife and kids and a job he loves) seems to have settled him down. At least for now. You’ll hear some cities described as “a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there." Dallas has always taken the opposite approach: “Not much of a place to visit, but a good place to settle.”
