FC Dallas dropped more points on Wednesday night, losing 2-1 to St. Louis CITY SC.
Lineups
FC Dallas — Maarten Paes; Ema Twumasi, Sebastien Ibeagha, Nkosi Tafari, Marco Farfan (José Martínez _ 81’); Facundo Quignon, Paxton Pomykal (Liam Fraser – 81’), Dante Sealy, Sebastian Lletget (Asier Illarramendi – 61’); Jesús Jiménez (Jimmy Maurer — 15’), Jáder Obrian (Eugene Ansah – 61’).
Substitutes not used — Geovane Jesus, Alan Velasco, Bernard Kamungo, Paul Arriola.
St. Louis CITY SC — Roman Bürki; Kyle Hiebert (Anthony Markanich – 46’), Tim Parker, Joshua Yaro, Akil Watts (João Klauss – 71’); Jared Stroud (Indiana Vassilev – 46’), Eduard Löwen, Njabulo Blom, Rasmus Alm; Aziel Jackson (Tomás Ostrák – 80’), Samuel Adeniran (Nökkvi Thórisson – 46’).
Substitutes not used — Ben Lundt, Joakim Nilsson, Jonathan Bell, Lucas Bartlett
Scoring Summary:
STL: Anthony Markanich — 82’
STL: Nökkvi Thórisson (Eduard Löwen) — 85’
DAL: Eugene Ansah — 90’+5’
Misconduct Summary:
DAL: Maarten Paes (ejection) –12’
STL: Jared Stroud (caution) – 44’
DAL: Marco Farfan (caution) – 60’
DAL: Asier Illarramendi (caution) – 67’
DAL: Facundo Quignon (caution) – 75’
STL: Indiana Vassilev (caution) – 90+4’
Weather: Sunny, 80ºF
Attendance: 22,423
Stats
FC DALLAS POSTGAME QUOTES
Head Coach Nico Estévez
On the team’s performance prior to conceding the first goal…
“Playing 70 or 80 minutes with 10 players can be difficult, especially against a team with the energy of St. Louis. If you look at the stats, we had better expected goals and multiple clear chances. The difference was that they took advantage of their chances, and we didn’t. I am really proud of the group for how they fought to get a result on the road. In my opinion, it was not a red card. You can’t kill or break a game like this for an accidental action. He goes to kick the ball and he puts his hands out so he can support his fall. The hand is attached to the arm and the body, so you can’t cut it in that moment. I do not agree with the decision of the referee, and I don’t think the calls were even for most of the game. Any doubt was against us, I am not really happy with that. We deserve more respect.”
On Dante Sealy’s performance…
“We had a game plan for their formation changes in game. We told Dante to drop back and make the backline of five to counter their overload. We did well when we had 11. We had clear chances as well up until after they scored the first goal. Once they scored, we created more urgency, but we have to win every position against any player of St. Louis. The opponents got lucky in those actions because our team tried to hold those actions. Dante did good for his first start, and there were other things he could also improve on. We will work on those things to get better for the next time.”
On the rotation in tonight’s lineup…
“The schedule is what it is, and we have to be smart about it and how we use our players. We had a bad experience back in May and we do not want to experience that again. For us it was important to rotate tonight. We felt that the players we selected tonight were ready to compete. This turnaround from Wednesday to Saturday is very quick. We play against a good side in Atlanta United and we need to be at our 100%. To be honest I am very proud of the group tonight.”
Forward Dante Sealy
On his first MLS start…
“It’s a great feeling to get my first start. I’ve worked so hard towards this. It’s disappointing having a red card, it changed the game a lot. But we’ve got to take it head on and get ready for the next game.”
On the team’s performance down a man…
“We have a strong group with a strong mentality. We try to fight to the end and we had some good chances to take the lead and unfortunately we didn’t and we paid for it at the end.”
Midfielder Liam Fraser
On making his FC Dallas debut…
“Personally, I’m happy to get the ball rolling for the club and organization, they’ve shown faith to bring me here. Although we didn’t get the result today, we want to turn that around on Saturday and see if we can put this behind us as quickly as we can, take a few lessons from it and move on to the weekend.”
On the team’s general performance…
“Jimmy (Maurer) came up with some huge saves and unfortunately we weren’t able to keep a clean sheet for him because he made some big ones for us. We’ll take pieces from the game and look forward to Saturday.”
Goalkeeper Jimmy Maurer
On the outcome of tonight’s match…
“It’s brutal, the boys just worked so hard. We created some really good chances to even score goals and it just makes it that much tougher. Getting a goal at the end almost hurts even worse. We knew we had it in us. We defended amazing, the effort – we were talking after, our body language, attitude, calmness, composure, defending and grinding was amazing all night. It’s a tough one to take but we got to try and build on it and use the defensive workrate and everything else we did and take it into Saturday and be ready to try and get some points at home against Atlanta.”
Forward Eugene Ansah
On takeaways from the match…
“I am disappointed for the whole team, because we started good but we got that early red card. The takeaways for me from this game is that we will learn and carry into Saturday’s game with that knowledge for another challenge.
On the learning lessons from this game…
“We have to have the courage for when things are not going our way, we have to keep on going. Like tonight, we had to bring that courage out, and we kept on pushing even though things were not going our way.”
