Anytime things go horribly awry for a particular team, it’s human nature to try and find that one moment where it was particularly evident that season wasn't going to end well. But that’s no easy task when looking at the 2011 FC Dallas season. You can pick which moment was the most catastrophic but here are five possibilities:

October 26-Loss to New York in MLS Wild Card Playoffs

Go ahead and call the writer of this article the ultimate cynic but the outcome of this game wasn’t all that surprising. Sure, there was all that talk about the Red Bulls being without star forward Luke Rodgers and their record without him in the first 11 but that was exactly that, talk. Based on their form over the last 6-8 weeks, there was absolutely zero reason for optimism with this FCD bunch.

Not only had they turned in bad showing after bad showing down the stretch, but they also weren’t scoring goals. Sure, they did have a mini two-game winning streak in October against Chicago and Vancouver. But those were two clubs not going anywhere who are not very good. So any hope those two wins gave supporters of this club was nothing more than a mirage. Dallas fans should look at the loss to the denizens of Harrison, New Jersey like this, it made the inevitable official. The 2011 season is now over and it’s time to move on. There were some highs and incredible lows but there’s always next year.

October 18-Champions League Loss to Toronto FC

Like the season-ending defeat at the hands of the Red Bulls, chalk this one up to a result that has to be characterized as not all that shocking. Sure, the cards were all on the table for FCD-a win and they were through to the CCL’s championship round. And this was a TFC team they had already beaten three times in 2011.

A funny thing happened on the way to Pizza Hut Park that night, the Reds, who basically had nothing to lose, went all out for this one. FCD. on the other hand, did not and was basically flat. That might make this defeat the most disconcerting of the year. Compare it to the playoff loss to New York where at least Dallas came out and played with some fire. There was absolutely no sizzle from the host side in the CCL match and while some were taken aback by how bad FCD performed with so much on the line, others realized what the loss to Toronto truly was, a harbinger of equally bad things to come in the MLS Playoffs.

September 24-Houston Comes into PHP and Takes It

There’s no discounting the utter disdain FCD fans have toward their in-state rivals. But to see Dominic Kinnear and company come into Frisco on Sept. 24 and leave with a 1-0 win thanks to a set piece goal by Geoff Cameron, assisted by who else but notorious Dallas killer Brad Davis.

Not only did that loss mean that the Dynamo captured El Capitan, the Civil War era Mountain Howitzer Cannon given to the winner of the season series along the bragging rights for an entire calendar year, but it also signaled another pretty disturbing trend. This marked the second straight week that Dallas had been unable to grind out at least a point in a game where they outshot the competition by a huge margin but resembled more of the Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight when it came to scoring goals. That was a label that would dog this team for the balance of the regular season and heading into the playoffs.



September 10-FCD Gets Blanked at New England

Sure, there was a time when the Revolution was truly relevant in Major League Soccer, not all that long ago to be exact. But the times have changed for New England as the 2011 Revs were one of the worst clubs in the league in what was expected to be Steve Nicol’s last year at the helm there. Yet as bad as the Revs were, they still managed to hand FCD a 2-0 blanking at Gillette Stadium in early September.

That defeat might not have the pizzazz of the playoff loss to the Red Bulls, a defeat at the hands of in-state rival Houston or the defeat against Toronto FC that allowed FCD to crash out of the Champions League, but anytime a club loses to the dregs of their league, which is what New England was in 2011, it’s cause for concern. Maybe it was an anomaly on FCD’s part, but we all know it wasn’t. So, with the bad omen this loss seemed to send, this has to be an underrated candidate for the club’s most catastrophic moment.

September 28-Huge 5-3 Loss to Tauro FC in Panama

While the September losses to the Revolution, Red Bulls and Houston each offered signs about how the 2011 season might end for FCD in league play, this shocking loss at the hands of Tauro FC on their home grounds offered a glimpse into how things might end for Dallas in Champions League play.

That’s because Tauro had yet to win a single game in CCL play and looked like a lock to finish at the bottom of the Group C table, at least until Dallas, who may have become the ultimate streak buster in 2011 in a bad way, visited. All of a sudden, Tauro looked like a different side, scoring five goals and basically frustrating Dallas to no end, so much so that left back Jair Benitez and fellow Colombian Fabian Castillo each received straight red cards, meaning they wouldn’t be available for FCD’s CCL group stage finale on Oct. 18 against Toronto FC. It was an alarming lack of “emotional intelligence” that loomed large in the loss to the Reds and may have ultimately cost FCD a CCL run.