There really isn’t going to be much sugarcoating from this one. FC Dallas simply did not create enough chances or momentum forward, and the underlaying numbers that you’ll see below back that up quickly.
San Diego dictated the match from start to finish, holding nearly 75% of the possession, outshooting Dallas 19-6, and finishing with a 1.56-0.42 xG edge. Even though the final score stayed at 1-0, it never felt like Dallas consistently threatened to find an equalizer.
Let’s dive into the numbers from this one.
xG Battle/Attacking numbers
We knew going into this one that Dallas was largely going to sit back and let San Diego come at them with the ball. Dallas wanted to absorb and counter, just like we’ve seen them do time and time again on the road this season.
Dallas finished the first half with two attempts, none on target. One that was blocked and one that went wide. Honestly, both were decent looks by Patrickson Delgado and Shaq Moore.
But if you are looking into the shot map above, you’ll quickly see that the second half attempts weren’t all that better than the first half ones. Everything was low quality and nothing that really put San Diego’s defense under pressure.
Part of that was the how disconnected Petar Musa was to the attack. We discussed that a good bit yesterday, but when your main attacking player is having to come 20 or 30 yards into his own half to get the ball, that is a problem.
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