Pro soccer: Sockers see golden opportunity in FC Dallas friendly

MIDLAND Playing against FC Dallas represents an opportunity for the West Texas United Sockers.

A tryout against a squad from Major League Soccer, the country’s top professional league.

When the Sockers play FC Dallas in an interleague friendly at 7:30 tonight at Grande Communications Stadium, West Texas United’s top players will be trying to catch somebody’s eye.

“That’s all the guys have been talking about,” Sockers midfielder Junior Hernandez said. “FC Dallas is coming, we have to show the fans what we can do.”

And the opportunity to move up is real.

Two of the Sockers’ players — forward Ben Everson and midfielder Dominic Furness — have already parlayed an open tryout with the Kansas City Wizards into an invitation to come back and practice with the club.

Everson and Furness, a pair of Middlesbrough, England natives who play their collegiate soccer at West Texas A&M, learned about the tryout from Buffs coach Butch Lauffer, who knows the Kansas City coaching staff well. West Texas A&M product Davy Arnaud is the Wizards’ captain.

An ankle injury prevented Everson from taking his first chance to practice with the team, but Furness, a rising junior at West Texas A&M, spent a couple of weeks in Kansas City with the Wizards.

“The intensity just seemed so much higher,” Furness said. “Technically, they weren’t that much better than this Sockers team, but the intensity they bring to practice every day is so much better.”

Both Furness and Everson, who returned to the Sockers’ starting lineup a week ago, plan to rejoin Kansas City when the Premier Development League season ends. Everson has one more college season left, and he’s hoping he can join the Wizards permanently after he finishes school.

But the pair are living proof that tonight’s game is an opportunity. Proof that some of the players on the Sockers’ roster have the chops to spark the interest of an MLS team.

“The PDL is a really popular place for coaches and pro teams to look and find guys,” Everson said. “It actually helps out a lot, playing against them, so they can see you firsthand.”

According to FC Dallas technical director Barry Gorman, Major League Soccer is kicking around the idea of bringing back the MLS Reserve League, a subdivision of MLS that allows MLS teams to get an entire squad of reserves playing time.

That playing time can turn into a call-up to MLS itself.

With that in mind, there may soon be more spots than ever at the top level of American soccer. Premier Development League players will probably fill some of those slots.

“That’s the level everybody wants to play at,” Everson said. “It’s a good opportunity to test ourselves against their players.”

And although FC Dallas won’t be bringing its full starting lineup, the Sockers will still be going up against established stars like goalie Kevin Hartman, an invitee to January’s World Cup training camp, FC Dallas captain Daniel Hernandez and defender Kyle Davies, who captained the United States U-20 roster for the 2009 CONCACAF Championships in Trinidad and Tobago.

The Sockers want to play at that level.

“The FC Dallas coaches are showing up,” Hernandez said. “That’s an opportunity for us to show them what we can do.”