There are nights in Major League Soccer where you lose because the other team is simply better than you are. And then there are nights where you lose because you never really gave yourself much of a chance.
Saturday’s 1-0 loss in San Diego was much closer to the latter of those two. When you consider that all three previous meetings between the two squad saw no fewer than five goals scored, seeing a 1-0 result felt respectable.
San Diego controlled possession, dictated the tempo, and forced Dallas to spend the majority of the match defending deep in their own defensive third, all while the Dallas attack struggled to create anything tangible of note.
This wasn’t a truly disastrous performance by any means, but when your attack generates so little, the margin for error becomes almost nonexistent. San Diego pounced on the one true chance that they got and Dallas never found a response.
Let’s dive in.
Can't chase the game...this much
Okay, we knew this was going to be the case. Dallas was always going to be comfortable sitting back and letting San Diego come at them, over commit numbers in certain areas, and hope for a quick counter attack.
In most games, that plan works well.
But against San Diego, a team that was desperate to get something positive going after only one win in their last 12 matches coming in, the margins were super thin to sit back for too many stretches of the game in the manner that Dallas did on Saturday.
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