Sometimes you have to win a bit ugly in this league to get by. For FC Dallas, to complete its first three-game winning streak since 2020, Saturday was certainly not the prettiest of performances.
For a team playing its third match in seven days, with travel mixed into the stretch and not having your top player for part of it, there is something to be said about winning without needing to control every phase of the game. In the 2-1 win over Portland on Saturday, Dallas picked its moments, finished two of them and made sure to make those goals stand.
Let’s dive into the numbers from this one to see how Dallas pulled it off.
xG Battle/Attacking numbers
Dallas spent much of Saturday night without the ball, finishing with under 40% possession, while the Timbers completed nearly 500 passes and generated 18 shots to Dallas’ nine.
But the standout on those shots for Portland was the quality of them, most came from an average or poor location, which kept the xG numbers at a pretty low rate. Dallas on the other hand had a higher percentage of their attempts on target, which once again showed that Dallas made the most of the opportunities that they got.
Sometimes volume doesn’t mean quality.
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