MLS
Omar Gonzalez interview: FC Dallas homecoming for MLS Cup winner
He cut his teeth alongside David Beckham and Landon Donovan at LA Galaxy. Now, in the twilight of his career, Gonzalez returns to where it all began.
After 15 years as a professional, Omar Gonzalez is finally back where it all started. The three-time MLS Cup winner has signed for hometown team FC Dallas and is looking for the perfect end to his stellar career.
As a young defender he starred for the all-conquering LA Galaxy team of Landon Donovan and David Beckham. There was a four-year spell in Mexico, where he helped Pachuca to a historic CONCACAF Champions League triumph. He has represented his nation, racking up more than 50 caps and steering USMNT to the 2014 World Cup.
In fact, one of the only things left for him to do was turn out for his hometown team. Now aged 35, he will finally get the opportunity to represent the city where he was born and raised. As FC Dallas gear up for the 2024 season, Omar Gonzalez spoke to AS USA about his surprise return to the place where he first fell in love with the game.
“It was nothing that I really had planned. I always thought that I might go back to the Galaxy, to end it there, where I started my career. But when this opportunity came up to play at Dallas it just made so much sense, it felt right.”
“I just kept thinking about it and it seemed like the perfect fit for me, for my family, at this point in my life and my career. I’m extremely excited to come home and to really go full circle. To be close to family was the main driving factor, but also to play for Nico [Estevez] and to play with this team. To represent the city of Dallas.”
He brings a wealth of experience to FC Dallas and will be leaned on to show the younger players what is required to make it to the top. He remembers well his own first steps in the professional game, when he was the one with everything to learn.
A Galaxy of stars
After an impressive college career with the Maryland Terrapins, Gonzalez was drafted as the third overall pick in the 2009 MLS SuperDraft. He joined a very ambitious LA Galaxy who were about to embark on an era-defining spell on MLS dominance.
Despite his inexperience Gonzalez took little time in establishing himself as a regular starter in the heart of defence. The team topped the Western Conference in his first season in MLS and the young center back was named MLS Rookie of the Year. He had exceeded all expectations in his debut season but those around him made sure to keep his feet on the ground.
“As a young player I was coming into a Galaxy team with stars and veteran players. It was special for me because I just needed to be a sponge, to take in as much information as possible. But I was a punk as well, I got into it with older players and they set me straight. There were really good learning moments for me throughout my rookie year.”
“I was playing with World Cup veterans, obviously David Beckham and [Landon] Donovan but you also had Greg Berhalter, Eddie Lewis, Tony Sanneh, Dema Kovalenko, Todd Dunivant, Mike Magee... the list goes on. It was just insane to be a 20-year-old immersed in this locker room of men.”
“The training sessions were intense. You had the older guys fighting against each other, they might have been older but they were into it. They loved training, getting better every day, and really pushing us forward. In my time with the Galaxy the trainings were harder than the games.”
Tough love
Those early years at LA Galaxy have clearly had a profound impact on Gonzalez. He was raised in a locker room culture that demanded success above all else. It was a challenging start to his professional career but is something that he now looks back on fondly.
As he joins Dallas in the twilight of his career he has the opportunity to pass that experience on to the next generation. What Beckham and Donovan were to him, he can be for Dallas’ cadre of exciting young players. But it doesn’t necessarily work like that.
When he signed for New England Revolution in 2021, reuniting with former Galaxy head coach Bruce Arena, Gonzalez sought to dish out a little of the treatment that he faced as a young player. It did not, he now concedes, go well.
“At my last club I went in very gung-ho with the young guys and they weren’t very receptive. Sometimes they think they know it all and we bumped heads.”
“Time’s are different, right? When I got straightened out it was proper - getting yelled at and them really getting after me. You just can’t do that today, you have to go about it the right way.”
But those experiences won’t discourage Gonzalez from helping the young players in Dallas, albeit with a different approach. With the likes of Bernard Kamungo, Alan Velasco and Dante Sealy there is no shortage of talent to work with; if Gonzalez can help them realise their full potential his arrival could be a game-changer for FC Dallas.
“This time around I’ve learned a lot and I’ll go in a more organic way. I’ll take my time and play well first and then when the moments appear I’ll try to talk to someone on the side and impart some wisdom. I’m looking forward to those moments.”
Hometown glory
Although the start of the season is less than a week away there are plenty of questions surrounding this FC Dallas side. How will club-record signing Petar Musa fit in? Will the new 5-3-2 formation get the best out of this squad? How will those talented young players develop in the first team?
Until we’ve seen the new-look team on the field it’s impossible to know what to expect from Dallas this year. But the signings of Gonzalez and Musa hint at a team with real ambitions for the season ahead, a club focused on silverware after years of long-term targets. But for Gonzalez, now approaching the end of his glittering career, this season is also a chance for him to make memories in the place were he first fell in love with the game.
“My personal goals are, first off, to enjoy it. To enjoy the football, bringing it every single day, because I don’t know how many years I’ve got left… I want to make the people around me better, I want to be that experienced player that people can lean on and make my teammates better.”
If he can do that, Dallas could be a force to be reckoned with in 2024. MLS is a different league to the one in which Gonzalez first cut his teeth as a professional. The quality is higher, the games are faster and the locker room is a different place for young players. But for a winner like Gonzalez, the targets remain the same.
“From what I’ve seen in this preseason we’re a very good team. In every position we’re pretty deep and there’s a lot of quality in the way that Nico wants to play. This is his third year now and the group is really playing the way he wants to. They’ve had the time to adapt. Now’s it’s time to really go after it.”
“I want to bring it every day so that when my opportunity comes I’m a value add to this group. So that I can win games and win trophies.”
You can follow every game of the 2024 MLS season on AppleTV with the MLS Season Pass.