TORONTO — David Ferreira, F.C. Dallas’s diminutive midfield maestro, became the second Colombian and fourth South American to win the Major League Soccer Most Valuable Player award on Friday.
Not since the afro-topped Carlos Valderamma strode through the Tampa Bay midfield in the league’s inaugural season has a Colombian won the award.
Ferreira, who is a good four inches shorter than Valderamma (eight inches, if you factor in the altitude of Valderamma’s fro), netted 8 goals this season and recorded 13 assists, second in the league, for a team that emphasized defense.
“It’s all based on the calmness you have in the moment,” said Ferreira who admitted his transition to the rough-and-tumble M.L.S. didn’t often afford him the requisite tranquillity.
“When I went to Brazil, I had to find time to adjust,” he said through a translator. “Dubai, same thing.
“When you’re a new player, you have to adjust yourself to fit in with the team.”
Ferreira arrived in Dallas on loan from Brazilian club Clube Atletico Paranaense in 2009, after a loan stint in the Middle East, and wasn’t nearly as assertive a force as he was this season.
He’d often get lost on the field in the beginning of his first season, and was mercilessly fouled by less skilled but more determined opponents.
“I had to prepare myself physically in the preseason,” he said. “I knew this year it had to be different. The people who brought me here were confident in me.”
Dallas Coach Schellas Hyndman had faith in Ferreira, but initially the coach said he didn’t know how to coax more out of his evidently talented midfielder.
“When he came here, I remember the team wasn’t clicking because David wasn’t clicking,” Hyndman said. He took Ferreira to lunch after practice at La Cantina, a Mexican restaurant across the parking lot from Pizza Hut Park that has since closed.
“I asked him what he wanted. Should we play more of a 4-4-2, “ Hyndman said, giving his player a rare chance to weigh in on team tactics. “Did he want more freedom to drift out to the wing?”
“What can I change to get more out of you?” the coach asked. “’That’s your job,’ he told me.”
Hyndman said that after that lunch he was more insistent with Ferreira, but also found better tactics and better combinations of players to complement Ferreira. Both coach and player say Ferreira enjoyed the freedom to do what he does, which is play a crafty brand of soccer, while the coach worried about the big picture.
Like Valderamma, Ferreira can dictate the pace of the game if given the opportunity to control the ball, as he did expertly in the playoffs, especially Dallas’s 3-0 win over the Galaxy at Home Depot Center in the Western Conference final. While his teammates neutralized the Galaxy’s Landon Donovan and David Beckham’s long diagonal crosses went for naught, Ferreira shined in midfield, scoring the opening goal and assisting on the dagger third goal.
Ferreira will again be called on to orchestrate the Dallas attack when it faces a deliberate and direct Colorado Rapids team on Sunday at BMO Field. It will be Dallas’s first M.L.S. Cup final, and it will go as Ferreira goes.
“Sometimes, when you bring in the stars, there’s a great expectation to deliver immediately,” Hyndman said. “It takes some time. Even though David isn’t a designated player, he plays like one.”
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