SEATTLE - It was a tale of two halves for FC Dallas as they took a 4-0 loss in their final road match of the regular season against Seattle Sounders FC on Sunday night.
For the opening 30 minutes, Oscar Pareja’s new look up front with Michael Barrios on top of a formation with Tesho Akindele and Kellyn Acosta on the wings seemed poised to compete for the full points at CenturyLink Field. An unlucky bounce leading to one defensive error sent the whole thing unraveling, though.
“We wanted to stretch the game with Mikey in the first half and then Tesho was trying to dominate the middle and I thought we did that very well. We created some spaces and we created some attack that we wanted, but once again without finishing,” Oscar Pareja said. “One of the plays when we were building, Seattle got the first goal and the plan was to continue the same, but we started giving some spaces and at that point, Seattle started just getting some sharpness up front and every time they had the options, they were clinical.”
“The first half was good. We dominated the first half,” Javier Morales said. “The second half was another game. We pushed too hard and we created space in the back [for Seattle to capitalize on].
Heading into the final week of the season, FC Dallas is now on the outside looking in and needing to capitalize on home-field advantage, with a little help from around the conference to keep their playoff hopes alive.
San Jose pulled a late equalizer in a 1-1 draw with Vancouver to pull even on points with FCD and earn the sixth and final playoff seed on a tiebreaker, with 12 wins to Dallas’ 10. Coupled with a loss by Real Salt Lake on the road in Colorado, the three teams fighting for the last spot all remain separated by one point.
If San Jose drops any points against Minnesota next week and Dallas wins over LA, they’re in.
“It’s going to be difficult. We need to be well prepared mentally,” Hernan Grana said. “We have one game to go and we know that now it doesn’t [fully] depend on us, but it does depend on us to win. regardless because we play at home in our field, and beyond that we need to get the three points. Now, there is just one game left. We need to forget this game and think about the last one.”
“Now, we’re still alive and and we have one more chance,” Morales added. “We have to wait for a result [in other games], but we have to improve our game.”
