FRISCO, Texas — The Seattle Sounders are Western Conference Championship bound.
The Sounders defeated FC Dallas 4-2 on aggregate on their Western Conference Semifinals series, despite losing 2-1 in the second leg at Toyota Stadium on Sunday evening. Tesho Akindele opened the scoring for Dallas in the 25th minute and the game opened up considerably from there.
FC Dallas had been knocking on the door for much of the first 20 minutes, mercilessly attacking the Sounders’ left flank and whipping in an unusually high number of crosses. FC Dallas head coach Oscar Pareja started a conservative 5-3-2 lineup in the first leg, but was far more aggressive with a 4-3-3 on Sunday, with his outside backs Atiba Harris and Maynor Figueroa even acting as faux-wingers.
The result was a very defensive-minded Seattle team in the opening 45 minutes and one that was considerably lucky to head into halftime only down 1-0. Harris and defender Walker Zimmerman each had high-percentage opportunities that they squandered, the former on a great save from Stefan Frei and the latter a ball shanked wide of the net.
The Sounders were outshot 23-8, but head coach Brian Schmetzer still found positives to take from the match.
“The thing that stands out was the ‘duels won,’” Schmetzer said. “We won 60 percent of the duels, so although Dallas came strong, we were able to win the majority of the duels and that is what helped us persevere against a team that was going all out and trying to press to get back in the series.”
Schmetzer and the coaching staff had their hands tied at halftime when left winger Jordan Morris unexpectedly couldn’t return to the field due to a hamstring strain. Schmetzer replaced Morris with Oniel Fisher, who slid into left back, and moved Joevin Jones to left wing.
The move to bring on Fisher helped stem the FC Dallas attack by allowing essentially two defenders in Fisher and Jones to work together on the left wing. The Sounders also tried to pressure higher up the field to mitigate FCD from pumping balls out wide.
Seattle calmed down after that and the Sounders built possession to nix the early barrage they faced.
“Even though we prepared them for that onslaught, it came at them fast and furious and took them a little while to get their feet under them,” Schmetzer said. “We needed to play a little better in the attacking half of the field and connect more passes because we weren’t going to be able to withstand that onslaught for another 45 minutes.”
Seattle broke FC Dallas’ backs in the 54th minute by attacking Dallas' defensive third. Defender Tyrone Mears flew up the right flank and came up just short of a through ball from Erik Friberg, but Mears swiped Zimmerman and played a brilliant low cross into the path of a sliding Nicolas Lodeiro for the all-important away goal that ultimately put the aggregate series out of reach.
“We were lucky to weather the storm…and going into halftime down 1-0 was a best-case scenario for us,” said midfielder Brad Evans. “We knew they were going to throw numbers forward and we needed to keep the ball. Once we connected one, two, three passes, we broke pressure.”
Next up, the Sounders will face the Colorado Rapids, who defeated the LA Galaxy in penalty kicks earlier Sunday. The Sounders will host the first leg on Tuesday, Nov. 22 (7 p.m. PT; FS1, KIRO Radio 97.3 FM, El Rey 1360AM) before traveling to Commerce City for the second leg on Sunday, Nov. 27.
Seattle lost 3-1 and 1-0 in its two matches against the Rapids this season, but the two teams haven’t played since May 21.
When asked about how well the Sounders will matchup, Schmetzer deferred, saying that his team likes to live in the present.
“Colorado is a very good team,” Schmetzer said. “But tonight we just want to enjoy this moment that we’ve worked really hard to achieve.”
