Kyle Bekker will be in familiar surroundings this Saturday night.
When he departed Toronto FC, the club that drafted him back in 2013, Bekker ended up at FC Dallas. He only played 313 minutes in six months there before the Impact traded for him on July 16. Still, Bekker got to know the Texas team well.
Hence why Bekker is in the best position, amongst the Impact squad, to foresee the reaction of FC Dallas head coach Oscar Pareja to his team’s heavy 5-0 defeat to the Houston Dynamo, last Saturday.
“Oscar wants to win,” Bekker said on Tuesday morning. “They’ll definitely be under a little bit of pressure. They’ll be eager to put this loss behind them. Just like any team in the league, after a loss like that, you want to get to the next game as fast as possible. We’ve just got to do our best to make sure that they don’t get any points on us.”
The Impact has yet to drop a point this season, while Dallas just suffered a tough loss in their rivals’ stadium. But, warned Bekker, this will be a “difficult” game nonetheless.
This being said, the Impact just put together a great performance against the Red Bulls where all three substitutes put their stamp on the match, not just the starters. Bekker, one of these three players, didn’t relinquish the ball once and was key to an impressive spell of possession.
“When you go on, you want to contribute,” said Bekker. “All three of the subs did. Johan [Venegas] with the assist when he came on, Anthony [Jackson-Hamel] scored a goal. It’s what we had to do. It was nice, at the end, to kind of play around them and show everyone that we want to keep the ball. That’s what we’re all about.”
