Game: FC Dallas vs Portland Timbers Date: Saturday, April 13th Time: 7:00 PM Location: Toyota Stadium, Frisco, Texas, United States of America Weather Forecast: Heavy Thunderstorms; H 58, L 42 Competition: Major League Soccer Opponent's Recent Form: L-L-L-L-D Live TV: KTXA-21 [DFW] | KPDX-49 [Portland] | ESPN+ [Rest of USA] | DAZN [Canada] Radio: FCDallas.com/radio [English] | KFLC 1270 AM La Voz del Pueblo [Spanish] Out of town, posting this from my tablet (so no fancy logos). Sounds like we'll have 5 people at the game if the weather is any indicator.
I'm one of those idiots. Sure seems like the last couple of years the weather is usually bad on game days while being pretty decent most of the rest of the week.
VAR, as executed in MLS, is simply a bizarre exercise in confusion. Last night's Hollingshead incident was mass confusion in the stadium, the press box and on the field. I'm still not sure the ref ever explained his reasoning in not giving the PK, although when I asked Luchi if he'd seen the video he said he'd not, but it'd been described to him as more of a redirection from a header onto the arm. There is language about that type of thing not being a handball, but goodness, that is really parsing it. What an odd night and I can certainly see what PDX feels aggrieved.
That ref did Portland a lot of favors all night in regards to fouls not called and cards not given, It came back to bite them at the end where he again didn't make a call. I guess he was consistent. Consistent in not making calls. Still FCD got lucky as they seem to have been snakebit right before VAR was started by not having some plays reviewed which would have helped them to being seeming the team in the world with some of the worst VAR calls going against them especially the 20 or so pass sequence resulting in a goal being taken away for a ticky tack call that was missed right in front of the center ref. I sure felt a call was coming that would tie the game up.
FCD got REALLY fortunately last night not giving up a penalty in stoppage time. First, I'm not entirely sure how the VAR review ended up not giving Portland a penalty, but I'll leave that explanation to all the referees out there. All I know is that I've seen refs point to the spot for that sort of handball about 1000 times before. But a minute after FCD got out of jail there, Pax looks like he's knocking over a Timbers player in the box, and unless it was a stone-cold dive, it didn't look like any less than Aránguiz's penalty. So yeah, real fortunate. For me, the thing that was more concerning was the way they completely fell apart after the Timbers goal. One of those 50-60 pass sequences like what they had against the Gals would've been nice to settle things down, but they got frantic and it seemed like they were more interested in getting the goal back, rather than settling the game down. Now, granted, at that point, Portland was playing really high and were harassing everything that was in FCD's half, but still, that meant that they were stretched out, and there was space in the midfield. Blaming the youth feel like a bit of a cop-out, but I think that this is one place where it feels appropriate.
The DaMN said that after Valeri and the other sub came on at the same time and started pressing high FCD had a lot more trouble. That will be something they will have to work on all year but I expect them to improve on it. I do wonder if they are missing Acosta in those situations as it mostly seems an experience thing. I also think the way the Portand players were going after the ref didn't give them the PK call affected calls after that. I wasn't surprised he didn't call anything after that and he likely should have carded a few of them for going overboard after the non-call. I thought he was lax all game though and it favored Portland with the super hack Chara. Live by the non-call. Die by the non-call.
Well, things started to fall apart prior to the goal, but that didn't help. Frankly the problem is somewhat tied to youth and Luchi's odd insistence he put them in very vulnerable places. Not until late did he move Grezo back to more of a true 6, prior to that he and Pax were always so high up field and Cerillo was having a miserable time finding space to just settle and play forward. PDX did the right thing and forced the issue in Dallas' half and the Huntsmen could not handle it. Not last night, not in Philly and not for the foreseeable future until some experience in how to close out games develops with this group. Pablo has impressed with his willingness to defend, but he's not very good at it. Moserqua on the other hand is a disaster with his shameful half-assed attempts at it. While I get neither of these guys are going to ever be destroyers, I do wonder what the hell they are good at since neither of them have the courage to take on defenders. Pablo's last touch of the ball before he was subbed was a lazy attempt to cross to Jesus (framed by both CB's) while he didn't even pretend to even want to beat his guy into the box. Both of those guys are killing me lacking a skill and mindset that seems so 2nd nature to Pax. But back to Dustin's point: Luchi is making some odd choices in how he deploys people, mostly because I believe, he really thinks it will work. it does until the opponent figures out what's up and makes a simply adjustment themselves. Curtain did it, and Gio did too. It's not a cop-out to blame youth, but pulling an 18 yr old holding mid and replacing him with a 23 year old college draft pick (coming off a frightful performance) isn't exactly "tightening things up". This is your 2019 FC Dallas. Buckle up fans, it's going to be a ride.
The ref wasn't calling anything all night, which allowed PDX to go all out aggro. That decision to not call anything by the ref, helped PDX, but it also came back to bite them in the end. Oh hey, by the way, FCD won. I don't really care if luck was involved, because somedays it's better to be lucky than good. FCD is going to learn from this and will only get better. I would say that FCD failing to hold on against Philly one week, only to turn around and hold on against PDX, is a good sign of just that.
And there we go. No foul. I don't think enough credit is being given to Bryan Acosta's absence. While everyone's justifiably excited about Pax's play, Acosta is still a step above him in terms of maturity, reading the game situations, and adjusting the pace accordingly, and he's far more suited to a #8 role than Gruezo is. Let's just say that I would've felt a lot more confident in the second half with Acosta-Pomykal-Gruezo in the central midfield than I did with Pomykal-Gruezo-Cerrillo, or Pomykal-Hayes-Gruezo.
Swapping Mosquera in for Aranguiz wasn't much of a move to tighten up the defense either. It's one thing to not be good at defending. It's another to not even put in the effort to track back when you have a 2 goal lead (great hustle, Pablo) or just work to keep your man in front of you. One thing that would help us late in a game when we have a lead would be for the whole team to know if we're just trying to burn time or if we're trying to score. With FCD, I'd always be for trying to score. I've never seen us be able to burn much time by going to the corner.
You know, the more I look at the replay (especially the second angle), the more I think Hollingshead didn't touch the ball with his hand / arm. The header is really weak. I think gravity caused the weakly hit header to drop to Ryan's stomach / upper thigh without hitting his hand / arm. https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2019...-be-upset-dallas-instant-replay?autoplay=true Overall, not a bad referee performance, especially by MLS standards, except I thought a yellow card or two for persistent fouling was warranted.
On the Hollingshead one I'd like to see a different angle. There is also an earlier one where Ebobisse maybe gets shoved in the back by ... you guessed it - Hollingshead. He better shake this game off because FCD has two good left backs behind him.
Exactly. You know that the next opponents will make sure that the refs keep a close eye on Hollingshead. You want to avoid becoming a player who gets yellows, just on reputation.