Soccer in
Dallas, TX

Dallas Wasn’t Just a City.
It Was a Part of Growing Up.

In Germany, the TV show Dallas first aired in June of 1981. What followed was a national obsession. Every Tuesday evening, up to 42% of all Germans gathered around their television sets to second-guess J.R. Ewing’s next move. We argued about Southfork Ranch the way American kids argued about their favorite sports teams. Dallas was not just a TV show — it was a cultural moment that shaped a generation of Germans who had never set foot in Texas.

For me — growing up in Germany, dreaming of sport, eventually becoming a sports journalist — Dallas was already somewhere I felt I knew before I ever arrived. The city had a personality. It had drama, ambition, and the kind of confidence that makes you want to be part of it.

Then came Dirk Nowitzki. In 1995, working as a sports journalist for Sat.1 and RAN — Germany’s biggest commercial sports broadcasters at the time — my first major assignment was to write an essay about a teenage basketball player from Würzburg who people were saying could be the greatest basketball talent Germany had ever produced. His name was Dirk Nowitzki. He was 17 years old. Nobody outside Germany had heard of him yet.

Three years later, in 1998, Dirk went to Dallas. I had written about him before America knew his name — and he ended up in the city that had been part of my imagination since 1981. He stayed. He became a superstar. He won a championship. He retired as one of the greatest players in NBA history — in Dallas.

So when TM17pro came to Texas, when we started building our soccer camp program in the Dallas Metroplex, it felt less like a business decision and more like coming home to a place I’d always known. Dallas connects Germany and America in a way that no other city does. And for us — a German family building something real in American soccer — that connection means everything.