Game: FC Dallas vs San Jose Earthquakes Date: Saturday, April 27th Time: 2:30 pm Location: Toyota Stadium, Frisco, Texas, United States of America Weather Forecast: Partly Cloudy; H 84, L 61 Competition: Major League Soccer Opponent's Recent Form: D-W-L-W-L Live TV: KUNV-23 (Univision) [DFW] | Univision [USA] | Twitter [USA] | DAZN [Canada] Radio: FCDallas.com/radio [English] | KFLC 1270 AM La Voz del Pueblo [Spanish] San Jose started the season as hot garbage. They've improved recently with a few impressive results against KC and Seattle but we need to smack them.
I'm not sure if I should me more frightened of SJ coming off a good effort at Seattle or if they were coming in like they did last season. One of many things in our favor - no way Shea Salinas will score more than one goal this game as he did in Seattle.
Salinas always plays well at home. I'm wondering if SJ's man marking system will cause us problems since they're the only team doing it. Seattle players say it was a big problem for them. I'm hoping Luchi and the brain-trust has a good plan for this but sometimes good plans don't pan out.
Good article about Luchi's system with nice insights by Reggie Cannon and Reto Ziegler, who have to be two of the smarter guys on the team. Interesting to hear an articulation of the difference in approach between Oscar and Luchi. https://sports.yahoo.com/24-thoughts-fc-dallas-jonathan-dos-santos-us-u-20-roster-001838042.html
San Jose owned FCD while the Quakes were hot garbage and FCD wasn't, so now that they appear to not be hot garbage, this is where FCD gets them?
That game was hot garbage. Thankfully, San Jose only walked out of Toyota Stadium with one point as opposed to the three that had become the customary parting gift the last couple of years, so I guess that's progress. Hopefully, Pax's hammy situation was minor and he was subbed out as a precaution because FCD looked really awful in the second half with him off the field. Speaking of central midfielders who didn't go the full 90, I'm guessing that the Mosquera-for-Acosta sub was because San Jose was doing a pretty good job gumming up the midfield, especially after Pax left at half, so Luchi decided to roll the dice with a more direct strategy, which seemed to work at times in the second half. But it was kind of disconcerting to see that San Jose was the fresher team in the second half, with the better first touch and winning the 50-50 balls and the second balls. And they were the road team that played on plastic on Wednesday night up in Seattle. The underlying theme to all of this is that FCD might have a conditioning issue that might need to be addressed. And I don't want to alarm anyone who might be worried about conditioning, but next week's game is another Univision afternoon game... in Houston. But despite FCD's overall crapitude, it's not as if San Jose had a compelling case for getting more out of this match than they got, because while FCD was determined to give the match to them, they were too nice to actually take it, even when Almeyda brought in the the FCD-killers, Wondo and Jako, toward the end. It figures that Univision's moment of the match was Jesse's save on a play that was offside anyway.
I can't honestly remember a worse quality game I've watched this team play in years. It looked like the players were on drugs. I've seen 14 year olds with more skill. Just shocking all around.
I pretty much was expecting this after reading Seattle players comment on their midweek game against SJ and chaos comments. If a seasoned Seattle side had problems with the man marking system then of course our young side did. That they came away with a point against a better team that that had our number the last few years is a plus. I didn't like moving Pax away from midfield but I understand why they did it. FCD has too many passengers at winger and forward. There is more depth at central mid but no one else can play the 8/10 role like Pomykal and that hurt the team with more touches by less creative types. I think FCD will have to live and die by mixing Mosquera, Badji and Aranguiz and leave Paxton in the midfield where he has the most influence.
As others have reported, scheming for this man-marking system is problematic. As Buzz pointed out their move to position two midfielders on Hedges and Reto on goal kicks rendered Dallas hapless. While he's been overwhelmingly better than he has any right to be, my one pick on Cerillo is how slow he is in transition. He's almost too patient and for a team that is already simply toooooo sllllooooow to transition into attack, he's a significant part of that problem. Also, Luchi was disappointing in how nonchalant he was about the result - " we had an honest talk about it...we'll adjust in training" and oddly being quick to comment on the "sun shining" and it's impact on the game, while not pointing out it was the home team who were clearly worse for the wear from the heat. But I'm steaming from watching Hedges and Jessie openly instruct each other and teammates to "slow down" and delay restarts beginning with about 5 minutes left and thru injury time. 0-0, at home, and you're actively working not to win? that, is really disappointing. when asked if he now has a hammy-epidemic, he claimed they'd started researching the concern "more than a month ago" when Hayes did his. Despite that, in that time, they've had at least 4 others on the senior team and sources report it's become a concern of such significance down thru the academy the U17's and U19's were all given tests earlier this week. Pax as a wing is a really good solve for getting the best 11, at this moment, on the field. It was working pretty well until he hurt it. Mosquera continues to be a wet fart of an attacker, and a DP. young team, young manager - it's what we should all be expecting.
Good write up hear on how FCD was too narrow against the man marking system where you need width to spread the markers. https://www.bigdsoccer.com/2019/4/28/18520659/what-we-learned-against-fc-dallas-san-jose-earthquakes Think about how wide teams in the Mexican league play and you get the idea. I think it was also a mistake to play the three mostly defensive CM's together and makes the second time Luchi has done that (opener was the other) and it doesn't work in his ball control system. he better get at least one other CM playing that more creative role every game as Pax may miss some with U20's/U23's/injuries/cards. Aranguiz should be that guy but if he can't hack it Roberts better get ready quick.
I thought in the first half FCD did OK getting through SJ by good off the ball runs and passes leading the receiver into space. In the second half there was very little movement off the ball. So frustrating watching Reggie beg for anyone to move to get open to receive a throw. You'd think SJ would have been the team more out of gas at the end of the game with their man marking and Wednesday game. Nope, it was us. I couldn't decide if Jesse was wasting time at the end of the game out of habit or because he felt we were just hanging on. WTF with only 5 extra minutes? There were 3 for water break, the standard 3, plus some guys lying around for a couple more. I assume if we'd been ahead with the standard Jesse time wasting, it would have been 10 extra minutes. Good to see Aranguiz track back and play some D. Hollingshead had some really bad moments - lucky none of them turned into goals. I saw Luchi on the FCD website postgame saying they need to work on making runs behind the midfield and the back line and improve off the ball. I was encouraged that he didn't resort to the typical "improve focus" and other BS like that.
Hate beating this dead (VERY DEAD) horse but was also really disappointed in the attendance situation. If we can't be full/near full for a Saturday afternoon game with near perfect weather, what hope is there?
I said this elsewhere, but some of the bigger strip clubs in town put up more billboards to promote themselves around town than FCD does.
Maybe if they put a strip club at the stadium attendance would improve? What’s the average attendance for lingerie football?
It's not the Dallas market. Just compare Wizards/Wiz/Sporting KC with Hunt ownership and new ownership. Their attendance was way worse than ours historically. If an ownership group like them took over FCD attendance would sky rocket. They have won more titles than us (especially MLS Cup) but overall have they been better than FCD over the last five years? Do they have a better academy? I guess a full house that's loud would be fun but ticket prices would double and mostly help the owners bottom line.
I know it's the Hunts. Definitely not blaming the market. We're the 4th largest population metroplex in the country, there's really no excuse from the people upstairs. I do enjoy not having to worry about getting extra tickets and the fact that those tickets aren't together but I can still sit with the people I bring. I enjoy the lower prices too. However, I just think back to both home playoff games in 2015 and think if we could turn that out or 80% of that on a weekly basis, it would be fantastic and worth the "inconvenience."
Yeah, it should pretty obvious to anyone by this point that HSG puts money into the organization, but it's into the academy, the stadium, putting games on over-the-air TV (unlike those dingleberries in Chicago, DC, and Cincinnati), and the senior roster (to a certain extent), but NOT into marketing and outreach. I have 0.0000000 doubt that FCD could sell out its suburban stadium on a regular basis the way that our northern neighbor does, but that would take considerable time and money and effort to make that happen, and HSG has intentionally decided to spend that time and money and effort on those other parts of the organization. And you can kind of see the reason why. When they sell Pax in the next couple of years, how much are they likely going to get for him? And when they sell other promising young players down the road, how much are they gonna get? And how many tickets would they have to sell to make that kind of dough? So I don't worry about attendance, because the people writing the checks don't worry too much about it and are content to let it grow organically -- and it has grown organically over where it was five and ten years ago.
The closure of the south end makes it hard to compare. I'd say it's plateaued for the last five years or so. I also think that Jefe's reasoning sounds great but it is romanticizing the Hunt's motives. I believe they are believers in the Academy portion, like having a good team but for some reason don't believe in having a strong FO on the attendance side. Kind of odd for the owners of the Chiefs who also have sellouts. Maybe those tickets sell themselves from when they were kids and they've never been around a team that had to bust it to sell tickets. I'm sort of at a detente with them as my values mostly align with theirs - Win, use as many local kids as possible to win, have a great crowd.
Afternoon games are tough for the many families who have kids. The family that sits in front of me already know they won't be at the May 11 game at 1pm because their kids have soccer games. They've missed all or part of the other afternoon games this season. This would be part of the stupidity of gearing the franchise toward suburban families. What does your average family want to do on a day full of watching kids soccer? Go watch more soccer!!!
There's nothing romantic about my assessment of the Hunts' motives. I think it's cold and calculating. Get attendance to "high enough," and put the investment into producing moneymakers.