FC Dallas natives and their journey through European football. Is MLS a fertile ground for finding the stars of tomorrow?

FC Dallas, Bayern Munich’s partner club in the American MLS, has sent several promising talents to Europe in recent years. How have they done so far? Is MLS proving to be a fertile ground for finding the stars of tomorrow? And what mistakes are American footballers making after their move to our side of the big pond?

FC Dallas, a founding member of the MLS and, among other things, the 2016 US Open Cup winner or the MLS Cup finalist of the 10/11 season, partnered with FC Bayern Munich in 2018.

This has opened up the opportunity for Dallas players to travel to Munich occasionally to train and, if they impress, earn a guest spot or even a permanent transfer. However, in less than 5 years of cooperation, only one player, central defender Chris Richards, has moved permanently to Bavaria.

Richards was the first Dallas player to head to Germany for an experience. He didn’t travel alone, but was accompanied by Thomas Roberts, a year younger than him. And while Roberts, himself a U.S. youth international, failed to impress enough and returned to Texas, Richards was bought by Bayern for their U19s.

Roberts also returned to Europe when he went on loan to Austrian side SK Austria Klagenfurt last season. However, he only played about 200 minutes there and didn’t even kick for Dallas upon his return, and will be a free agent as of January 1, 2023 at age 21.

The story of his former teammate went the other way. Richards made his way to the FC Bayern first team and broke into the lineup at right-back. When the limited minutes in the first team and the level at which the second team played were not enough, he went on loan to Hoffenheim, where his former Bayern ‘B’ team coach, Sebastian Hoeneß, took him under his wing.

Eighteen months on loan and 34 games in the blue and white jersey alongside Pavel Kadeřábek later, and offers of a permanent transfer were coming to Munich’s Säbener Straße.

So Richards moved to South London this summer, where he was approached by Patrick Vieira’s Sporting Project at Crystal Palace. An injury suffered by the young American defender in the Premier League, which cost him the World Cup, among other things, proved a stop to that for the time being. However, he will be able to continue his well-paced development in the spring season.

His summer transfer was a testament to all parties involved. Bayern Munich made almost 100% profit, Crystal Palace got a good and proven player for reasonable money, Richards took the next step in his career and FC Dallas didn’t come up empty either, with €2.8 million heading into their coffers thanks to a future sale clause.

Both clubs were looking to replicate that success with Justin Che. The defensive all-rounder, initially considered more of a right-back but who also features regularly in the centre of the defensive line, impressed at the experienced Munich and earned a six-month loan spell at the U19 German champion.

In the summer that followed, everyone expected an announcement on the completion of the permanent transfer. However, negotiations between the partner clubs became complicated and Bayern did not accede to FC Dallas’ demands.

Thus, Che didn’t get to Europe until the following January, when Hoffenheim, who wanted to bypass Bayern this time and borrow a player directly from Texas, came with an offer of a year and a half-long loan. However, Che only hit 39 minutes in the Bundesliga and has been lined up in the second team for the current campaign.

While he’s featured fairly regularly in the Regionalliga Südwest for TSG 1899 Hoffenheim II, it’s certainly not what the now 19-year-old American with German roots envisioned when he signed his contract. His development has stagnated and there will probably be no interest from either side to activate the buyout clause in his contract.

Che will be hoping that he can find a better engagement after his unwise first transfer, although in his case fortunately only on loan, where he can shake off all doubts, just like Ricardo Pepi did in the autumn.

Pepi is another Dallas player who was offered to Bayern Munich. But he didn’t go there as a guest because Bayern didn’t see at the time what kind of sporting project they could put in front of Pepi and what kind of personal development plan they could offer him.

So a battle was fought for the young striker, which, it seemed, was already won by Wolfsburg. But Augsburg came in at the last moment and put money on the table that no one else was willing to match.

So Pepi moved to Bavaria after all. His first six months there certainly didn’t go to plan though, as he only hit about 500 minutes across 12 games, and so in the summer, without a single goal to his name, he went on loan to the Eredivisie, where he was offered a chance by FC Groningen. The club that gave the world Arjen Robben.

In the Netherlands, Pepi caught on, scoring six goals and creating two more in the nine games he managed in their colours in the autumn. This gave his agent the opportunity to send out the message to the world that his client would definitely not be returning to Augsburg.

Just as Fabrizio Romano’s prediction that Pepi would be one of the young talents of the USMNT, the United States Men’s National Team, at the World Cup in Qatar didn’t pan out, it’s not entirely certain that his claim that Pepi will change clubs again this summer will work out either.

After all, FC Augsburg cost a full 16 million euros and they will be hard pressed to find a buyer to ensure a return on their investment. Moreover, Bayern Munich’s Bavarian rivals changed coach in the summer.

They are now led by 38-year-old Enrico Maassen, formerly the coach of BVB’s second team, who has brought with him from Westphalia a much more attractive style of football than Augsburg have shown so far. So there are still quite a few variables at play, and despite the acknowledged transfer guru here, I dare say it’s not impossible that we’ll be watching Pepi next year in the jersey of his current owner.

However, Pepi wasn’t the first player to transfer on the Dallas, Augsburg route. Back in the summer of 2019, Ecuadorian international, Carlos Gruezo, made the move. The defensive midfielder currently representing his country at the World Cup is neither a Benjamite nor an FC Dallas offspring.

He used MLS as a springboard to restart his career after a failed transfer from Ecuador’s Barcelona SC Guayaquil to Germany’s VfB Stuttgart. Several successful seasons overseas later and Gruezo is a steady mainstay of the team playing in Germany’s top competition.

From Dallas, another youngster is headed to our side of the ocean. Central midfielder Tanner Tessmann has been playing for Italian side Venezia, currently the penultimate team in Serie B, since last season. It is the opening up of Italian soccer to American money that may attract more and more promising MLS club mainstays to the Apennine Peninsula, although Tessmann’s story is not full of success.

Last season’s last Serie A team, this year they are playing for salvation in the second league, and Tessmann himself, at 21, has hit only a third of the available minutes so far.

Dante Sealy, a 19-year-old winger, and Bryan Reynolds, a 21-year-old flanker, are doing better. Both are still FC Dallas tribal players. Sealy is a guest at U21 Dutch side PSV, while Reynolds is in neighboring Belgium for first division side KVC Westerlo.

Both are picking up plenty of minutes at a level more in line with their current status, but we may read about both of them being linked with more familiar clubs in the future due to their potential.

After all, they didn’t make the identical mistake as some of their predecessors who aimed too high at too early an age. The marketing potential of the US market is building increased interest in players from overseas. This in turn must have an impact on expectations, which we see unfulfilled in several examples.

As far as the FC Dallas and FC Bayern Munich merger is concerned, it looks outdated on the surface and there is speculation that through some infertility, but also complications in mutual negotiations, the Bavarian big club is starting to look around the region for another partner.

Sources: FC Dallas, FC Bayern Munich, Transfermarkt, Fabrizio Romano