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What we learned in FC Dallas’ Decision Day win over Vancouver

It definitely wasn’t pretty, but it was just enough to get the job done.

By Drew Epperley
Osaze Urhoghide celebrates his second goal of the year. (Photo via FC Dallas)
Osaze Urhoghide celebrates his second goal of the year. (Photo via FC Dallas)
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In a way, breaking down this game feels a bit odd given that it was the final regular season game and the Vancouver Whitecaps ended up being down a man for 85-ish minutes.

Still, FC Dallas continued its impressive turnaround from earlier this year to finish the season 5-1-4 in their final ten games. I know I’ve brought up those stats recently probably a bit more than I should, but when the season appeared dead and lost in mid-July, I wouldn’t have expected this kind of response from this team.

At the same time, I also shouldn’t be as shocked by it either.

After all, when the team was struggling as much as they were in the early summer months, many of you were asking me if I thought manager Eric Quill was on the hot seat or not. I didn’t believe he was then and thankfully the club stuck to their guns about him.

There is a lot of emotion there, and for good reason.

Okay, let’s dive into this one a bit.

Yeah, who would have thought?

“We have fans back home that pay to come see us play, and they watch us with everything that they have, and we want to represent our fans and the city of Dallas. We want to fight and be a club that they're proud of. And I think that if they're watching over the last three months and what we've become, they should be really proud of the efforts and the steps we've made to be where we are, and we deserve to be where we are. I'm grateful, I'm happy and these guys deserve all the credit, because their mentality and their efforts is what why we're here. So I'm just a fan of what we're doing right now.” - Eric Quill on reaching the playoffs

After the loss loss against LA last week, I thought there was very little to no chance that we’d see a win, let alone avoid the Wild Card round of the playoffs. There was going to be no Petar Musa or Logan Farrington guiding the attack. Ramiro being out also felt like a pretty big loss for the defense. Toss in the fact that Vancouver was arguably the hottest team in the league going into Decision Day (they were unbeaten in their previous eight games.

It seemed like too tall of a mountain for FC Dallas to climb.