This is one of those matches where the final score and underlying numbers seem to have two completely different conversations. FC Dallas walked away with a 3-3 draw on Sunday against St. Louis CITY SC, despite being outperformed in several areas on the night.
But the numbers also highlight what Eric Quill has repeatedly praised about this group: its ability to keep fighting when a match looks absolutely lost. Down 3-1 in the final match of a long road trip, Dallas could have packed it in and called it. Instead, they turned it on and got two goals as a reward.
Let’s dig into the numbers behind a performance that wasn’t always pretty, wasn’t the best defensive performance, but most certainly was not boring.
xG Battle/Attacking numbers
This is a strange attacking performance from FC Dallas because the underlying numbers don’t remotely scream three goals. Finishing with a sub 1.0 xG number and walking away with three goals from 12 shots is kind of impressive when you boil it all down. After some recent matches where Dallas created enough to score and couldn’t finish, apparently the soccer gods decided to balance the books a bit in our favor.
The bigger story here is the finishing. Dallas put seven of its 12 shots on target and generated 2.20 xGOT from just 0.77 xG (or 0.98 if you like Fotmob’s numbers more). In other words, the chances themselves weren’t overwhelmingly dangerous, but Dallas did an excellent job turning them into difficult shots for Roman Burki to deal with as the game wore on. Nine of those 12 attempts came from inside the penalty box and Dallas scored on three of those opportunities.
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