There was a breakaway and then it was gone, consumed by Stefan Frei with the suddenness of a wave reclaiming a footstep in the sand. At one moment Kyle Bekker had the entire goal in front of him, with just Frei to beat. A millisecond later his shot was rolling off Frei’s palm and out of bounds.
This is how it goes with FC Dallas: Rogue waves continually crashing over the bow, forcing the captain to either deploy the ballasts to keep the thing upright, or be consumed and sink before the distress call even leaves his lips.
FC Dallas is MLS’s quick-twitch muscle fiber, a continual fast-break that asks a monumental amount of discipline from the defenses it faces. The Sounders were up to that endeavor the last time these teams faced in June, when Seattle won 3-0 to place the last real high water mark on the wall before the summer doldrums hit.
Bekker’s failed one-on-one in that game was a primary example of how FC Dallas operates. Oscar Pareja’s unit looks at possession on a basic dietary subsistence level, taking only as much of it as they need to survive. The real moments when the jaws clamp shut are on counters, breaks and quick-strikes, often when the defense is least expecting a test. Everything happens so fast, and they tend to hit you where you’re weakest. Pareja is nothing if not a master schemer.
FC Dallas will employ this strategy when they meet Seattle for the first of two matches in the Western Conference Semifinals at CenturyLink Field on Sunday (6:30 p.m. PT/FOX Sports 1/KIRO 97.3 FM/El Rey 1360 AM). It’s what they did here in June, and it’s what they’ve done since. And Seattle didn’t so much as scuttle FC Dallas that day - although it did yeoman’s work whittling dangerous chances to the nub - as FC Dallas missed on the opportunities it always generates.
Think of it this way: Pareja’s group ultimately needs very little oxygen to spark.
There were only four teams in MLS this season to complete a lower percentage of their passes than FC Dallas, and none of them are still playing. In fact, FC Dallas doesn’t complete many passes all, because they simply don’t attempt many. Consider that FC Dallas has more goals this season than all but one team in the Western Conference, and they are 15th in the league in short passes per game and 17th in long passes. To compound the defensive confusion, they also put in fewer crosses per game than any team in the entire league.
Tactically, FC Dallas resembles a Christmas tree, or an upside down funnel. They rely on wingers Fabian Castillo and Michael Barrios (or Tesho Akindele, typically) to gradually become more narrow as the field shrinks, condensing the game to a tight window in a box overloaded with attackers like Mauro Diaz and David Texeira. With Castillo burning in low-flying crosses inside fullbacks he typically has little trouble beating, there is almost no defense that consistently works.
This heat map is what that funnel looked like in FC Dallas’ final game of the regular season against San Jose on Oct. 25. Note the vacant areas on the wing and the red spot in the middle of the attacking third, in the critical danger area known as Zone 14. FC Dallas does this every game.
The kind of attack is tremendously difficult on center backs. When Seattle and FC Dallas played in June, Zach Scott was largely heads up on Castillo, arguably the fastest man with the ball at his feet in MLS. Since Castillo is almost always inside the fullback - in that case, Dylan Remick at left back - he rolls a fog bank of confusion into the immediate determination of who marks him and where. By the time Castillo let loose a shot that hit the upright in the opening 30 minutes, he’d left Remick and turned Scott into a pretzel.
In this sense, building a defensive game plan around this attack is akin to hugging smoke. It’s too fast, too unpredictable, too self-sufficient to expect possession to suffocate it. So how did Seattle manage to corral it last time? That’s a bit more difficult to pinpoint.
There’s one easy way to describe Seattle’s 3-0 win in June, and that’s opportunism. The teams basically split shot attempts (FCD had a slim 10-9 edge), possession (FCD won that 51-49) and pass success rate (again, FCD just edged Seattle by a single percentage point). But the difference was as unscientific as it was glaring: FC Dallas put itself in the driver’s seat and never depressed the gas pedal.
It simply didn’t cash in.
FC Dallas had five shot attempts inside the box on June 13. Castillo hit the post in the 27th. Frei made his digging save on Bekker in the 30th. Frei knocked out another shot from Castillo in the 34th. Diaz skied a shot from 16 yards in the 38th. Blas Perez redirected an open header wide from six yards in the 82nd.
All of these chances arrived suddenly, with little possessional forewarning. All Seattle could do was mark as best it could, make the attempts as low percentage as possible and convert its chances on the other end. And that’s precisely what happened. Lamar Neagle’s opener came five touches after a turnover deep in FC Dallas’ end. Obafemi Martins’ second resulted from a corner that resulted from a deep throw-in that Seattle never even touched. Leo Gonzalez’s third in the 92nd minute came on the fifth touch after a goal kick.
The common thread knitting each of those goals together? Opportunism.
As much as Seattle’s back line would like to say that it will simply mark Castillo and Diaz and Texeira out of the game entirely, it will probably have to settle for chance limitation and hope FC Dallas has a bad day in front of goal. That has little to do with the ability of the back line and everything to do with the danger and unpredictability inherent in FC Dallas’ slithery attack.
At the precise moment you think it is pinned, the FC Dallas attack sublimates from a solid to a liquid and eludes you. And consider the following: Seattle will need to throw numbers forward in order to leave for Frisco with an aggregate edge, all while FC Dallas looks to hit on breaks and counters.
Let the tactical maneuvering begin.
