Since FC Dallas played a doubleheader yesterday, today's 11 am session was a lighter recovery day. That means for the players who yesterday went close to 80 minutes it was just some jogging and then a team building fun soccer/tennis game.

The younger kids who only played a 30 to 40 minutes yesterday went much harder today, doing a series of small side games that were 3v3 with neutrals or 4v4. The players in this group were Moises Hernandez, Edwin Cerrillo, Arturo Rodriguez, David Rodriguez, Ricardo Pepi, Ema Twumasi, and Bryan Reynolds.

The soccer/tennis game was a lot of fun. There was much laughing and good-natured taunting going on. Here's your winning team.

FC Dallas Tucson camp Day 2 Champions of soccer/tennis. (2-17-19) (Carter Baum / FC Dallas)

Temps are holding in the low 50s, which is nice when the sun is out but is kind of brisk when there are clouds and wind.

Fun in the sun. pic.twitter.com/KARKXV4Gxg — 3rd Degree (@3rdDegreeNet) February 17, 2019

News and Notes - not so many observations.

Since there wasn't a whole lot of training happening, aside from the young kids, I don't have a ton of observations but I do have some news items.

Carlos Gruezo, as I reported on Twitter, has left town to go get his green card. That's a big get for FC Dallas. It brings them down to 10 internationals with 9 slots.





There will be some activating and deactivating of internationals by FCD this season by using short term loan stints with North Texas SC. See Coach Luchi Gonzalez interview below.





Coach Gonzalez says he hasn't picked a captain yet. More on that also below.





Right now they are scheduled to play RSL here on Wednesday and NY Red Bulls on Saturday. Schedules can be fluid here so stay tuned.





This afternoon there was a video session planned. Coach Gonzalez said it would be broken down by position to show group positional elements. And that tonight a team building event of some kind.





I asked Coach if he has defensive and offensive specified assistants and he said he uses all of them in all the roles. He likes to keep it fresh and use different perspectives. Mix it up.

Catching up with Luchi Gonzalez

How do you choose a captain? Do you pick? Do the players vote? Have you already done it? What's your thought on captains?

Yeah, so it's always an interesting process. We feel it's a mix. No decisions, final decisions about A captain has been made. We feel there's captain candidates or a group of potential game captains because there can be an injury and then that one captain is not available. So I think it's smart to know the three or four guys who potentially can be on the field, who have the qualities at any moment to be the captain.

But that's a process that we feel is us with our instincts, what we're reading, so we're doing rotations. We're picking different captains each game and seeing how it looks and feels.

And then we're going to get some feedback from the team. Who do they see in that way, who do they feel leads them. Not just maybe vocally, but in terms of their attitudes. Maybe socially. There's different types of leaders, right?

So that's out process. No, there's no final captain. We feel likes there's candidates of captainship and we'll be ready to pick a captain for game one. But that doesn't necessarily mean he has to be the captain for the entire year for every game.

You have two games left on the schedule for your first team. Which one of those games will be the final "ok this is our eleven" and "this is our final push to full game fitness?"

This Friday/Saturday. We've got something in the works with Portland to play them either Friday or Saturday back to back with New York. Whatever teams they throw at us, whether it's the first or second group, we're going to approach Friday/Saturday wit h a 90-minute mentality. Give guys maximum game readiness and fitness. Mentally, physically, technically, tactically. So I would say Friday/Saturday is the goal for that idea.

Do you feel like you're close to locking down your first eleven for the start of the season?

Yeah, closer. Closer, each week I think closer. We have to be on our toes, be ready. Just cause there is a starting eleven yesterday that doesn't mean they will be the starters in the next game or in our opener.

That's the culture we're trying to create here, everybody's on their toes, everybody's ready. Anything can happen. We want to keep our guys healthy of course.

Closer, definitely closer. But certainly not final.

Good news on Gruezo getting his green card, but you're still over your 9 international limit having 10. How's that going to work with you guys this year?

It's about activating and deactivating. There's guys we'll activate for our second team [North Texas SC] that are on international status as well. It's just how we manage it weekly with MLS and USL. I think we're in a good position to handle that.

Speaking of your second team you have a few kids from there with you. Can you talk about why you bought them and what is good for them about being here?

So a development club, we feel... we needed the extra numbers to close out some of these games. Especially the second of a back to back game. That second game if we have a specific minute objective, giving guys 70 to 75 minutes, we don't want to go over that if we don't need to. And that's a good opportunity to get some of our young guys in our second team and our academy system coming here and having an experience with our first team guys.

It's two things. Number one it's to fill the minutes that we need to fill so that we're not overloading so that we're loading the right amount of minutes in game rhythm; and number two for development. For those players to go back and they themselves be leaders as they grow in their confidence and grow in their objective from the academy at 17 to the first team. It serves those two purposes.

Tomorrow

Another training session at 11 am. This one should be close to a full session so a lot more fun stuff to watch and talk about.