FC Dallas won't be lifting the Copa Tejas crown this season. That honor sadly goes to those orange wearing folks down in Houston following Saturday's 1-1 draw between FC Dallas and Austin FC.
I thought it felt weird playing Austin for the first time this late into the season, but the 'rivalry feels' were certainly there early and often in this one. Dallas ended the game with a ton of fouls (14 to Austin's three, yikes), and looked like a team at times that could pull away with a result.
In the end, it was a draw, a very gritty draw no less. Let's dive into some key items from the draw.
Special thanks to Alex Rubio for allowing us to use some of his photos from Saturday’s game in our articles this week.
Juice ran out in the attack
Oh boy, that is a very light shot map from FC Dallas. The majority of that came in the first half with one or two coming in the second half. This is a product of absorbing the attack from the other team, but it was also a product of just chaotic touches that led to no chances up front in the second half.
We were struggling to get ourselves out and rondo through the first wave of pressure to get the ball to the other side so we could get numbers high in the game. So, a little sloppy. I need to look at our tactics, things we could do to maybe not get pinned so well. - Eric Quill on the club’
For me, a lot of the sloppy play that FC Dallas manager Eric Quill is referring to is down to the main issues we've seen all along this season: chemistry. If you look at the midfield grouping of Chris Cappis, Sebastian Lletget, and Ramiro, that is a brand-new combination. Then when you toss in guys like Anderson Julio, Kaick, and Patrickson Delgado in the second half, you get a bit more chaos thrown into the mix.
I'm not trying to make a bunch of excuses here for why things didn't go well in the attack. This is a road game against a rival after all; a lot of the usual stuff gets tossed out of the window for me. All I'm getting to is that when it was good in the first half, it was down to Petar Musa's hold-up play along with Logan Farrington's energy. Cappis and Lletget were also solid in keeping things calm to push the ball forward. They just lost all of that in the opening 15-20 minutes of the second half.
