Match Report: FC Dallas 1, Houston Dynamo 2
June 5th, 2007 . 10:25 pm . By: Jamie Fougerousse
Dallas went into halftime up 1-0 on a goal by Abe Thompson. In the second half the Dallas back line, hampered by an injury to Clarence Goodson, made two errors that led to Houston goals. Ricardo Clark got the equalizer on a strike from the side of the penalty box while Joseph Ngwenya slotted home the game winner after Drew Moor pulled out of the play. Dallas came into the game having never won at Robertson Stadium. With Chris Gbandi gone playing against Cameroon for Liberia, David Wagenfuhr made his first appearance since getting his third concussion back in April against New York. Other than that change, this was the same lineup that lost to Chivas USA last weekend, although Captain Carlos Ruiz was unavailable due to Gold Cup duty with Guatemala. Houston lost Dwayne DeRosario to Canada’s Gold Cup team, meaning Richard Mulrooney would shift from his right back spot back to his more usual holding midfield role. This brought Craig Waibel in at right back. The two teams battled quite a bit in the middle third of the field for the first few minutes. Dallas had the first chance in the ninth minute when Houston defender Ryan Cochrane played a ball right to the feet of Nunez just inside his own half of the field. Nunez made a nice dribbling run up the right side, beating three Houston players before dishing the ball off at the top of the penalty box to Kenny Cooper. Cooper let the ball through for a crashing Juan Toja, but former Dallas midfielder Richard Mulrooney slid and blocked Toja’s shot. The rebound fell to Cooper, who back-heeled the ball to Toja just left of the goal about 12 yards out. Toja turned and got a shot around Cochrane to the near post, but Houston keeper Pat Onstad made a nice reaction save. In the 15th minute, Nunez played a nice ball wide to Drew Moor at midfield. Moor did very well to push the ball quickly all the way up the right sideline. No defenders ever stepped to him, and as he entered the right side of the penalty box, he unleashed a low shot that Onstad barely managed to push aside. Just a few minutes later, Brian Mullan had his first success attacking Dallas’ left flank. In the 17th minute, he received a ball from Ricardo Clark near the corner of the penalty box. Both Wagenfuhr and McCarty closed him down but the two seemed to miscommunicate as both stopped and Mullan charged right between them. Dallas was fortunate that Mullan’s resulting shot was a slow poke right to Sala. In general, the Dallas defense was doing a very good job of shutting down the Houston attack in the final third for the first 25 minutes. For the most part, Wagenfuhr was keeping Mullan at bay, the center backs were playing well together, and Drew moor was balancing the attack with his defensive duties well. That all came to a screeching halt when Goodson got injured in the 27th minute as he stretched to successfully block a cross from Ricardo Clark on the end line. Goodson was holding his hamstring after the play and remained off the field. As Dallas tried to regroup, playing with ten men, Pablo Ricchetti was given a yellow card for a hard tackle on Joseph Ngwenya near midfield. The attack off the ensuing free kick saw two crosses float across the open Dallas goal, but no Houston players were around to finish. With Goodson still off the field, Brad Davis whipped a nice ball in from the left, bending away from the goal. Joseph Ngwenya got his foot on it for the half volley from the Dallas six-yard line, but Dario Sala got a hand to it and pushed it over the bar. Ngwenya turned out to be offsides on the cross, and Dallas used the restart to replace Goodson with Bobby Rhine in the 31st minute. This pushed Drew Moor inside with Yi, with Rhine playing his customary right back spot. It was this same restart that led to Dallas’ first goal. In the 31st minute, Sala chipped the free kick too long for Dax McCarty. Ryan Cochrane headed it forward to Ricardo Clark near the center circle. Clark hit it back with his shoulder right to an open Abe Thompson. Thompson laid the ball off to Cooper on his left and took off forward. Cooper found McCarty cutting in from the right, and Dax flicked the ball behind the Houston defense just as Thompson arrived there. Abe calmly toe-poked it through the legs of an oncoming Onstad to take Dallas ahead 1-0. Almost immediately after the goal, Houston began to lay siege to the Dallas box. Craig Waibel hit the crossbar with a header of a corner kick in the 36th minute, and Brian Ching tried to put the rebound back on frame with a bicycle kick. Abe Thompson bravely ran through Ching’s attempt and blocked it point blank with his face. It should be noted here that although referee Michael Kennedy did not seem to notice, Houston’s own Mr. Congeniality Eddie Robinson was holding Dario Sala by the arm the entire sequence. Ramon Nunez got a good long-range shot on goal just after this that forced Onstad to stretch out wide and give up a corner. As the half wound down, the wide play of Houston began to pull McCarty and Toja more and more out of the middle to defend. This, in turn, opened up more space in the middle of the park with only Ricchetti there to defend. The good, quick passing game of that midfield trio needs small spaces to keep the passes accurate, and Dallas’ midfield possession began to suffer. In stoppage time, as Dallas was pushed up attacking, Mulrooney found Ricardo Clark with a great long ball behind the Dallas defense. With Wags pushed up high, Clark turned in toward goal. Ricchetti made an excellent recovering run and cut Clark off, forcing him to wait until almost to the end line to get a shot off. Dario had to reach, but he saved it. Had Ricchetti not forced Clark to cut his shooting angle, Dallas might have gone into the locker room tied instead of ahead. Just as things were getting underway in the second half, Alex Yi headed an Onstad clearance straight up inside the Dallas half of the field. Ricardo Clark got to it and sprung Ngwenya behind the now badly-out-of-shape Dallas back line. Drew Moor beat Ngwenya to the ball and turned outside with it. Ricardo Clark slid in and knocked the ball away, and it rolled to Mullan. Mullan sent it forward back to Clark on the right side of the penalty area. Wagenfuhr had recovered behind Moor but was caught between Clark and Ngwenya. By the time he stepped to Clark, Clark had turned, taken a touch, and blasted it into the near-post side of Sala’s goal to tie the game. As the half wore on, Dallas’ midfield became less and less effective as they began to tire in the heat. The width of Houston’s play continued to pull them farther and farther apart, leaving Ramon Nunez alone in the middle of the field to find Thompson and Cooper. That essentially made the attacking numbers a 3-vs-6 situation for Dallas and explains why the forwards rarely saw the ball. Joseph Ngwenya hit the post with a header off a corner in the 60th minute. Just after that, Coach Dominic Kinnear replaced Brad Davis with the speedy Cory Ashe. Just five minutes later, he helped create the game-winning goal for the Dynamo. Ashe won the ball in his own half and turned to push forward. As Dallas challenged, he laid it off to Ricardo Clark near midfield. Clark flicked it behind the Dallas defense as Joseph Ngwenya raced with Drew Moor to get to it. Suddenly, Moor pulled up and looked over his shoulder as Ngwenya slotted the ball around Sala to make the score Houston 2, Dallas 1. Ashe had been knocked down after laying the ball off, and from post-match comments it appears Moor thought he heard a whistle or something signaling play had stopped. Nunez had an especially rough time of it after the goal. This was the time when a wounded team needed its #10 to step up and pull them back. Ramon seemed to try to do too much, holding the ball too long, dribbling into defenders, and putting a free kick in a great spot over the goal. Coach Steve Morrow sensed it was not Nunez’s day and replaced him with Arturo Alvarez in the 73rd minute. He also brought Dominic Oduro on for Kenny Cooper at the same time, shifting the formation from a 4-3-1-2 to a more traditional 4-3-3. Dallas had a decent chance on goal in the 76th minute that was obscured by Telefutura’s obligatory full-screen stat review that happens every game at that time. The replay showed Toja feeding Oduro behind the Houston defense inside the 18. I have often said that Oduro tends to wait too long to take his shot and that combined with his speed often means he ends up shooting from a bad angle; this time, after watching a few replays, I realized Dom held the ball up as Onstad came out. He was looking for someone to make the back post run so he could pass to them for what would have been an easy tap-in on an open net. No one was there, and Oduro was eventually forced to take the shot right at Onstad. The 78th minute brought about the most talked-about play of the game. Mulrooney made a terrible back pass from wide mid-field that ended up somewhere between his back line and Onstad. Arturo Alvarez pounced on it, but was leveled by Pat Onstad outside the penalty box. Onstad was sent off and replaced by Zach Wells, with forward Joseph Ngwenya taken out to make room. His foul almost certainly prevented Dallas from equalizing, and he was punished appropriately within the laws of the game. What is up for debate is whether what he did was within the spirit of the game or not. I will say that I have reviewed the tackle and it was not two-footed, nor studs-up; Onstad hit Alvarez with his thigh mainly, apologized to him, and left the field. The resulting Dallas free kick was hit straight into the wall by Toja. Dallas had a couple corner kicks in the 85th minute that failed to clear the first defender, and a foul called against them on another in the 87th. Oduro had a good dribbling run in the 89th minute, but could not get a shot off. Houston mostly sat back and countered through the four minutes of additional time, but Dallas could not find the equalizer. The Hoops still hold on to the top spot in the Western Conference with 16 points, while Houston remains in fourth with 10 points. The Dynamo hosts Colorado on ESPN2 Thursday night, while Dallas returns home to host the Los Angeles Galaxy Saturday.
FC Dallas (5-5-1) vs. Houston Dynamo (3-5-1) Scoring Summary: FC Dallas Lineup:
Substitutes Not Used: Shaka Hislop, Aaron Pitchkolan, Marcelo Saragosa, Blake Wagner Houston Dynamo Lineup:
Substitutes Not Used: Mike Chabala, Kelly Gray, Stuart Holden, Patrick Ianni
Misconduct Summary: Referee: Michael Kennedy 5 Comments Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI Leave a comment | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Great report, enjoyed the factual reporting along with the analysis.
Ummmmm…you show 4 subs for Dallas
The far post run has been missing all season long.
I agree with your analysis of the Onstad play. Those calling for more than one game suspension are off base.
Had the situation been reversed with Sala fouling Ngwenya to protect a lead, those same fans complaining about Onstad would be worshipping Sala for his intelligent play.
Thanks for the catch on the subs…i cut and pasted from last week and didn’t take it out. May if we had subbed 2 Alvarez’s on things would have been different!
Thanks for the positive comment Hank!
And to add to the Onstad thing, I just thought he could have gone studs up, two-footed. He just did what he had to. I hate that he killed a certain goal, but at least he didn’t break Alvarez’s leg.