It seems to be staying pretty cool this year later than I expect and Wednesday's FC Dallas training session took place in weather that continued that trend. 75 degrees at the 10 AM'ish start of the session with some overcast skies and a heavy smoke presence for some unknown, to me, reason.

Just to be clear this report is on the Wednesday session and isn't being posted till Thursday... cause reasons.

The usual FC Dallas training field is shut down for overseeding so Wednesday training was on field 4.

With all the injuries and call ups there were four players dressed in North Texas SC gear invited to participate along with one Academy player to help make up the numbers.

Guest Players

Beni Redzic - An Academy U19, he's been training with NTX some since their season started. I've talked about Redzic many times, he's got future pro talent and will probably be an NTX or Homegrown signing sometime in the next year or so.

Mohamed Sesay - Out of Richland College. He's been training with NTX and FCD all spring and summer. International spots are a concern for NTX too and he has no green card, I think that's why he's not signed. He's plenty good enough for NTX or any other USL-1 team for that matter. Heck, at least play for Vaqueros or something.

Eddie Munjoma - SMU defender, usually left back or left midfield. He's a frequent summer invite as part of the FCD potential homegrown program - any player FCD wants to keep on their potential Homegrown list has to come back and get pro training each summer. I talked to Eddie a little after training and he's going to be training with NTX through July he says. Solid player. Glad to see him back.

Andy - Unfortunately I don't know his last name. Former FC Dallas Academy player, he's a '96. So probably still playing in college. Haven't been able to track down who he is.

Update 3:30 pm: Andy Ruiz. Former Guatemala U20. Kicked around with a few German teams and Comunicaciones B team.

Sunny - I didn't recognize him, but apparently this is former RSL player Sunday Stephen. RSL declined his option last November, potentially over a contract dispute. He's here keeping fit and training. FCD interest in him is unknown.

News and Notes

Michael Barrios has cleared concussion protocol and is fine. He trained most of the entire session.

Carlos Gruezo is also back in full training. Coach Gonzalez says he's cleared and is also available to play this weekend. Gruezo looks up to speed to me.

Jimmy Maurer also is training. He looks ok to me too, no sign to my eye of an ankle problem that had him on the MLS injury report last week.

Cristian Colman had a little regression in his recovery. That something that almost always happens with an ACL when the player starts to cut. He's a little limited in his lateral movement apparently, and I'm sure mental confidence, so FCD has him working on building muscle strength around the knee. Coach Gonzalez says another month and Colman should be back in training and "revving back up."

Coach Gonzalez also says Paxton Pomykal was 100% cleared before he left. FCD could have played him against LAFC but chose the less risky path for both Pomykal and the club, keeping him out and let him go to join his U20 teammates.

No sign of Santiago Mosquera. That's not surprising as he's still 2 to 3 weeks away from a return at best. Coach Gonzalez says he's up walking and is mobile. So positive on that front.

After the warm-up and a few basic drills, Technical Director Andre Zanotta came and pulled Thomas Roberts and Bryan Reynolds out of training. I thought that meant they were going to play for North Texas on Wednesday evening, but they didn't.

It turns out the reason NTXSC mystery signing Abdoul Gaffar Ibrahim has never shown up is "visa problems." Which is the same reason Assistant Athletic Performance Coach Felipe Merino is still not in the country either. There's a lot of "visa issues" going around these days. Ema Twumasi got stuck in Ghana for a month trying to pick up his green card in a similar fashion.

Practice Observations

FCD spent most of the day working on breaking a press and building out of the back. Specifically in a more vertical style, getting a little higher up the field with different options. Some of the rotations included the "opposition" covering up the center backs like San Jose did, forcing the FCD build to use different methods than the basic build they started the season with.

Ema Twumasi is looking pretty sharp again but I don't think he's very high in Coach Gonzalez's rotation. I do like what I see today in terms of where he was a month ago.

Francis Atuahene, on the other hand, is way behind. He's lost so much time from injuries. He needs a lot of training time and playing time.

Obviously, with Matt Hedges sitting out the next game with his red card, Reto Ziegler and Bressan took most of the reps as the center back pair. I liked watching Hedges work with Callum Montgomery and the other young players. Giving tips and suggestions, etc.

Jacori Hayes has a lot of Bobby Rhine mentality in him. He brings it 100% every single day in training. I've never seen him take a day, drill, or rotation off. Amazing work rate.

Bressan, Carlos Gruezo, and Michael Barrios all were pulled out of the final 20 minutes or so of today's session. Coach Gonzalez says this is workload management. Good. That's important during the grind of the season. I'm glad to see it happening under Gonzalez as the tough summer grind is beginning and all these pieces are going to be missing. Coach Gonzalez says some practices will be shorter and some players will be pulled out from time to time as these three were today.

Catching up with Luchi Gonzalez

I thought the LAFC game was Jacori Hayes' best game in about a year, what did it take for him to find his best form again?

I think rhythm, continuity, just getting opportunities, training... he's a kid who kinds of grinds, he wants to get better. He brings everything to training. He's an honest player.

He's improving, I think, his awareness. Just checking shoulders, we've been working a lot on just checking shoulders. If he's checking his shoulders, [he's got] fantastic center midfield instincts. I think he's mindful of it and he's getting the job done. He's doing a positive job right now.

Looks like he's going to have to carry a heavy weight over the next month and a half. Is he prepared for that?

Yeah, he's gonna have to be. [general laughter] He's gonna have to be, that's for sure.

We know he's going to do it. It's not going to be perfect but he's going to help this team do what it needs to do when we're missing some important pieces.

Did you have any concerns with verticality with Reto Ziegler at left back? It's been a while since he's played out there.

Yeah, we did. But what Ziegler does well is play forward balls. Maybe he's not going to get to the end and cross, but he's going to play so the goals... the goal that was taken away and the goal we scored were both balls that Ziegler played forward. And apart from "find a way" our other theme is "play forward."

Play forward, look, and play forward. Almost to the point where we force it a little bit. But I'd rather have that... then look for the right balance. Rather than don't play enough forward and we're getting stripped in these square, negative passes. So I think we're doing better.

Reggie's [Cannon] second half he played forward a lot more than his first half and that's important, even a man down.

So today's training was a lot about verticality and finding a way forward. Up, back, through; up back, through. That's the idea, in theory, and we want to keep getting better at it.

Would it be fair to say you would prefer to reset than to attempt a penetration as a team that you didn't feel was on?

Absolutely. So we don't want them to force it, where they are just giving the ball away. So they have to check and say, "Can we rotate it?"

But if the opponent is pressing in a way that resetting is going to put us in trouble, then we need to combine and rondo forward. We need to rondo forward. We need movements behind, then movements to show. We need the movements two steps in behind to show... or two steps to show, then get in behind.

That literally was what we were doing today, trying to jam it up the line here on the left and right side. I saw good things and I saw moments where we lost it and we transitioned. But when we lost it we were in a better position, we lost it more upfield where we can transition and get it back.

Then when we opened it both sides there was a little more ball rotation. We'll do that more tomorrow [Thursday] and Friday.

How is Bressan transitioning? He's used to a more physical style from South America it seems?

Yes, absolutely. He's tackling... [general laughter] I love it. We love it.

We need him to just channel it and adapt to the league and to the refs. And he's gonna do that. We had a good talk and he's adapting.

You saw the first PK.

That looked clean to me.

Yeah, so, the second... well it's a bouncing ball to the hand. Yeah, it's a PK.

Yeah, you can't argue that one.

No.

You also saw some of the clips from the game in LA... he just needs to keep the intensity but adapt but he's going to be fine.