Um… wow.
Look, from time to time, these kinds of meltdowns happen. The undefeated road form was bound to end at some point, but man, I don’t think anyone would have predicted a 5-0 meltdown.
“We’ve done great on the road but tonight’s performance was just not good enough. We know that.”
FC Dallas Coach Eric Quill
As dreadful as that performance was, there’s a lot to learn from it.
Let’s break it down.
Lineups and Tactics
I couldn’t quite bring myself to predict that Coach Eric Quill could go with the 3-4-3 at San Diego, so I was just a little bit surprised by the move. The players he plugged in did make sense, given the pieces missing in action, and matched the version I did offer in my preview.
62nd minute, Coach Quill, down 3-0, finally made some changes, but surprisingly didn’t change the tactics. Show Cafumana, Bernard Kamungo, and Patrickson Delgado were brought on for Kaick, Logan Farrington, and Pedrinho.
76th minute, Tarik Scott and Tsiki Ntsabeleng game on for Anderson Julio and Ramiro.
San Diego FC, under Coach Mickey Varas, was in a 4-3-3.
38th minute, due to injury, Onni Valakari replaced Alex Mighten.
67th minute, Oscar Verhoeven came on for Willy Kumado.
81st minute, Milan Iloski and Hamady Diop repalced Chucky Lozano and Luca Bombino.
Goals
1-0 San Diego FC. 20th Minute. A penalty kick scored by Chucky Lozano. I didn’t think it was a foul – and neither did the commentators – but the ref did and VAR seemingly agreed, so what do I know. C’est la vie.
2-0 San Diego FC. 27th Minute. Sebastien Ibeagha overpursues instead of getting back and leaves a massive hole. Chucky Lozano outruns Lalas Abubakar and scores easily.
3-0 San Diego FC. 56th Minute. Sebastien Ibeagha overpursues instead of getting back and leaves a massive hole. Oz Urhoghide tries to cover, leaving Anders Dreyer wide open. Nice finish though.
4-0 San Diego FC. 73rd Minute. Sebastien Ibeagha overpursues and gets easily spun. Oz Urhoghide tries to cover, leaving Onni Valakari open. His shot goes off the bar and down, but across the line.
5-0 San Diego FC. 87th Minute. Sebastien Ibeagha doesn’t overpursue but gets spun anyway. Milan Iloski finishes the hard angle to the back post.
Lo Bueno
I always make myself pick an FC Dallas Man of the Match, and this one was hard. I don’t think anyone on the team had a “good” game. So I ran through the starting XI in my head, and I couldn’t think of a time Anderson Julio did something that I thought was stupid. This, while playing the unfamiliar position of wingback, so he gets the nod. But I don’t feel very strongly about it.
Chucky Lozano was, in reality, the man of the match. With two goals and two assists, he became the fourth different player in MLS history to accumulate 2g/2a in a single match for an expansion team in their inaugural season.
Camino del Medio
Dallas continues to be heavily lopsided left with 41% of attacks down that side. It’s not bad specifically, but certainly some more threat down the right, notably from Shaq Moore, would be nice.
I considered Shaq Moore for MOTM for a split second, but I could get over the passed-up shot toward the end of the game, and he had 7 turnovers. Paying wingback actually frees him up and removes a lot of the defensive responsibility. 61 touches, 3 shot-creating actions, 1/1 on take-ons, 4 progressive passes.
Muy Feo
60/40 possession was to be expected. FC Dallas shooting a paltry 2 for 9 on target was not. San Diego, by comparison, had an astounding 8 of 12 shots on target. That’s serious domination.
“Our final third play [is what went wrong]. We had chances to punish early on in the game, and we didn’t punish. There were clear chances that had to be put away, and the first thing in the game that they got was a penalty.”
Coach Eric Quill
The 3-4-3 tactic was a disaster. That was a master class by San Diego on how to use wide wings to pull apart a back 3 (no wingbacks getting back, which was clearly the tactical choice) to create gaps. There should have been an early adaptation and change in the tactics, even if Coach Quill didn’t want to sub yet, the shape could have been changed. To never change the tactics and keep getting scored is worrisome.
“We got to call it what it is, and be upset about it, and it can’t happen again. It’s unacceptable. This turn of events, that’s the way the game went. We were humbled.”
Coach Eric Quill
Sebastien Ibeagha and Ramiro both had very subpar games. You can look at the goal clips to see Ibeagha constantly pulled out of position, and Ramiro, who was at least in the right position some of the time, was getting bypassed for pace with ease. Pace matters, particularly in MLS, which is widely considered one of the fastest leagues in the world. Father Time is undefeated.
They have a lot of quality and if you’re late and disorganized, you get punished. And then we were in these individual defending moments that just didn’t turn out well for us tonight. It became a trickle down process. We’re chasing, and chasing under fatigue, unorganized. It compounds itself and that’s what happened.
Coach Eric Quill
Dallas had some guys up top at least attempting to run at the San Diego defense, but the number of turnovers was “too dang high.” Dallas was dispossessed 10 times with 17 miscontrolls for 27 losses of possession. Amazingly, they had 39 at Miami (win) and 30 at Minnesota (tie), making these three games the three worst turnover games of the season. It was just this game that the turnovers really cost them.
Here are the 27 losses of possession against San Diego. Notice the high concentration of turnovers in the Chucky Lozano area (left wing).
Lucho Acosta passed at a brutal 64% (lowest on FCD). While we might not care for a pure striker, he had 63 touches and attempted 53 passes, both led the team… and thus the low passing percentage is really hurting the team.
FC Dallas and Trinity FC combine for 0 goals this weekend. Yuck