The Seattle Sounders welcome FC Dallas to CenturyLink Field for the semifinals of the MLS Cup Playoffs.
Advertisement
Clint Dempsey and Obafemi Martins will be hard for FC Dallas to stop, but only if Seattle’s midfield can actually get on the ball.
Seattle would take the lead late in the game on a free kick by Dempsey. Counting a 0-0 tie in last year’s playoffs, FCD is 1-6-2. A great outside-of-the foot pass from Diaz set Castillo up the left wing in the 18th minute and he raced past Zach Scott to score. “We were disappointed (to fall behind), but we knew we’d grind through it and get one, or two”.
Dallas held firm in the lead until the 67th minute when Andreas Ivanschitz scored with a brilliant solo effort, rounding a defender and powering home a left-footed drive to pull the home side level.
Dempsey has scored several such goals for the Sounders since joining them in August 2013, and in a postgame interview on Fox Sports 1 he admitted feeling a few frustration at not connecting on one this season. “Perfect free kick – and an important one”. “I’ve been taking them all year and I haven’t found the back of the net”.
Dempsey said Ivanschitz asked, “What are you thinking?” But it will have to do better than the 0-0 tie the teams played March 28.
The semi-final is set up as a two-game contest, with the victor being the team with the most combined goals between the two games.
However, four goals in the last three games seem to have brought Dempsey back closer to his usual self. “With our key players, we have an idea what they should doing”. They endured a brutal stretch of eight losses in nine games in June through August, when injuries and global departures drained their continuity, and threatened to bury their season.
Seattle – Frei; Mears, Marshall, Scott, Fisher, Ivanschitz (Azira, 90), Rose, Friberg (Roldan, 76), Pappa (Valdez, 62), Dempsey, Martins.
Seattle would try to respond as they put pressure on Gonzalez and the rest of the Dallas defense.
Advertisement
“We have everything to play for in these games, ” he said. Clint doesn’t want to play two days after a game. They got to the conference semifinals by putting on a show midweek, winning a wild first round game against the LA Galaxy, 3-2.
