Well, that wasn’t good. The first half was bad and it got worse until Orlando had the game in hand.
“To be honest, he first half today was the worst first half since we took over.”
Interim Coach Peter Luccin
Let’s break it down.
Lineups and Tactics
Interim Coach Peter Luccin rolled his 3-4-3 with just one change with Sebastian Lletget coming on for the suspended Asier Illarramendi.
At halftime to try and get things going, Luccin brought on Tsiki Ntsabeleng for Omar Gonzalez.
“In the second half, we tried to change something, so that’s why we subbed Omar out. We saw that Marco Farfan and Sebastien Ibeagha were defending the long spaces and shifted a little bit quicker.”
Peter Luccin
63rd minute, Logan Farrington and Bernie Kamungo replaced Patrickson Delgado and Alan Velasco.
94th minute, Show Cafumana replaced Sebastian Lletget.
The Orlando socials are too chicken draw their 4-2-3-1 so we go to MLS.
Up 3-0, Orlando started subbing at the 65th-minute mark with Duncan McGuire and Luis Muriel replacing Martin Ojeda and Ramiro Enrique.
73rd minute, Nico Lodeiro came on for Wilder Cartagena. 81st minute, Felipe replaced Orlando’s MVP Facundo Torres.
Goals
0-1 Orlando City goal, 18th minute. A great cross from out wide by Rafael Santos is driven in with a smashed header in front of Omar Gonzalez by Ramiro Enrique
0-2 Orlando City goal, 51st minute. Rodrigo Schlegel beats Tsiki Ntsabeleng to a corner for another header goal.
0-3 Orlando City goal, 55th minute. An absolutely sublime pass by Ramiro Enrique finds Facundo Torres in space behind for the finish.
“I think we’ve been doing that all year. The bad thing is that we’ve been giving up goals early on, and then the good thing is that we always feel like we can create enough chances to score goals. We just can’t keep giving up multiple goals a game and expect to win in this league. It’s a very competitive league. It’s very tough, very even, and we have to continually try and get better.”
Paul Arriola
1-3 FC Dallas Goal, 78th minute. Paul Arriola converts a PK earned by Bernie Kamungo.
Lo Bueno
My Man of the Match was Tsiki Ntsabeleng. I know he was beaten on the 2nd goal, but I also thought his never-quit attitude and energy were the catalyst in the 2nd half when FCD finally started playing better. In a single half of play, he had 44 touches, 4 shot-creating actions, 5 progressive passes, 6 progressive carries, and was 2/2 in take-ons.
Marco Farfan made his 150th MLS career appearance against Orlando. Congrats Marco.
FC Dallas has sold out 16 straight games this season. It’s the first time in club history they have sold out 16 straight. I assume the 17th will also sell out giving them a sellout season. Even if buts-in-seats is closer to 80% this is still a good thing.
One of Maarten Paes‘ 4 saves was fantastic. I don’t have a clip of it but he had to react and get down so fast. It was quite impressive.
The respect.
Camino del Medio
Jesus Ferreira continues to improve via eye test and stats check… well, at least in the 2nd half he did. I also noticed a couple of nice passes to Musa which I was pleased to see after last week’s complaint. In this game, Ferreira was coming back very deep to try and get play going and ended up with 0 shots. That’s not something we want to see. But he did have 7 shot-creating actions, 9 progressive passes, 4 key passes, and 5 passes into the box. As always his positioning was good in that deep context, with 8 progressive receptions (the other end of a line break). Now if he can just do all that higher up where he can get shots on goal, that would be a better balance.
Muy Feo
Without Asier Illarramendi, Dallas is not very good. Believe they have won just a single game without him since he joined the club. I would have liked to have seen Show Cafumana in for him with Lletget and not Patrickson Delgado who was poor enough vs LAFC that I didn’t think he should lose his spot.
Without Illarra, FCD really struggled to play out of the back. Again. Orlando wasn’t high-pressing all that much, but they controlled the middle and cut off the lanes.
“To be honest with you, we were a bit confused, trying to find the balance of building out and playing long. We just got caught in between.”
Paul Arriola
FC Dallas was getting stomped in the first half. They could hardly find the ball and were being over run in midfield. So I understood the decision to bring on a mid and go 4-2-3-1. It just didn’t work and it made the defense quite vulnerable. Honestly, it should have been 5-0 at one point as Duncan McGuire missed a couple he shouldn’t have (0.7 xG in 26 minutes).
“Today was not just about the backline behavior, It was about the general behavior of the eleven players on the field. In the second half, we tried to change something, so that’s why we subbed Omar out. We saw that Marco Farfan and Sebastien Ibeagha were defending the long spaces and shifted a little bit quicker.”
Peter Luccin
Per usual, a bad FCD night can be found in the shots. Orlando was 7 of 13 on target, over 50% with 75% of shots in the box. Dallas? 6 of 16 on target for 38% and 57% of shots game inside the box.
FC Dallas Playoff Hunt
Min – 45 pts
Por – 45 pts
FCD – 37 pts
Dallas needs 3 wins in 3.
AND either Loons OR Timbers to lose out.
(Technically 0-2-1 Timbers could also be passed.)
So on the attendance thing I’m curious how next years gonna look. Around where we sit there’s 6 other groups of season ticket holders (ranging in size from pairs to a family of six) that we talk to and of the 7 groups (including us) we are the only ones renewing after the price hikes. All 6 of our neighbor groups declined. Bums me out. I’m sure it’ll still fill up with so few seats open next year, but it’s really frustrating to see so many fans that care about and are invested in FCD forced out.
On the actual game I am still absolutely flummoxed by the fanatical dedication to the 343. It seems like it puts everyone on the team aside from the 9 in an unnatural position. I know they said it’s to suit the DPs but honestly I feel like even they’d be better served in a 4231 full time (but, you know with 2 center backs, not a center and a full back forced out of position). Let Velasco play the 10 and Ferreira be the right wing that he seems determined to be. I know at this point of the year I’m just a broken record about it, but I can’t think of a single player that benefits from this setup aside from Ruan but he’s been here about 10 minutes. Meanwhile it seems to highlight what our squad is worst at.
You raise some excellent questions.
I’m sure they aren’t concerned about the attendance when the stadium will hold just 11k for the next 3 years.
As for the formation, I agree.