FC Dallas Vs. New York Red Bulls, 2011 MLS Cup Playoffs: Red Bulls Knock Out Dallas With 2-0 Win

Just to recap, no team that has played in the CCL group stage has ever won a MLS Playoff round. FC Dallas’ losing neatly fits into that narrative and I suppose we’re going to have to hear about it until someone breaks the streak, but people don’t really believe this do they?

If the Red Bulls survive and advance, Solli will be forced to sit out.

Of course, some pretty questionable defending contributed to it, but credit where credit is due. Lindpere made a nice run and Ballouchy made an absolutely perfect pass. Maybe this is exactly what Hans Backe has been dreaming of.

At the time, Backe cautioned us all against letting the hype train run off the tracks and seemed genuinely concerned that expectations would lead to Agudelo’s downfall. Of course, the only way he could control that was by not playing Agudelo ... and that’s exactly what he’s done.

Sure, Agudelo plays, but not that much and certainly not as much as his supporters would like. On Wednesday, like most nights, he’s starting on the bench. He’ll probably enter the game sometime very late in the match with very limited opportunity to make an impact.

But I doubt it.

He has found out just how bad it can be as the Red Bulls have been awash in negativity basically ever since he got there. It’s not really his fault, of course, as he has played just fine since his rocky start. But no one on that team seems to like each other and I just imagine Rost sits alone in the training room, wondering why he decided to sign on to be a part of this mess.

Of course, scoring on such a play would not have done anything to answer the questions about his suspect defense, but at least it would have been a nice moment to celebrate on an otherwise forgettable night.

Maybe Shea knows this and is playing right into it. Shea is a pretty darn good player, and as our own Ryan Rosenblatt recently pointed out, he’s probably going to be playing in Europe pretty soon. But it can’t hurt his profile to constantly have people talking about him.

Think about it: Almost as often as people are making fun of his ... we calling that a mohawk, I guess? ... they are talking about how promising of a prospect he is. Heck, the hype around him was good enough this summer that a lot of MLS MVP voters seem to have overlooked the fact that his production dropped to almost nil over the final three months of the season.

The only plausible theory I’ve heard is that Red Bulls coach Hans Backe really hates using his bench anyway, and this way he won’t be tempted to accidentally pick a player he didn’t intend to use. It seems crazy, but that seems as plausible a solution as any.

Even if Backe didn’t intend to use any other players, this just unnecessarily limits his options. Sure, it saves a few bucks on air travel, but is that really worth it?

Yes, that’s not exactly an apple-to-apples comparison. If you look at a similar timeframe for the Red Bulls, their record is 4-2-2, which is still better, but maybe doesn’t make the point quite as clearly. It’s also worth pointing out that FC Dallas’ record includes CONCACAF Champions League games, which the Red Bulls weren’t playing in, obviously.

Still, it’s not an irrelevant point that OAM makes. The Red Bulls have been playing better lately, and FC Dallas has been struggling. No way around that.

FC Dallas is still FC Dallas, with a stadium way out in Frisco and barely any fan base to speak of. [Insert joke here about only the players’ parents showing up or something along those lines].

Yesterday, our own Ryan Rosenblatt wrote that Brek Shea is unlike any American player ever. In many ways, he is correct. There has never been an American player with Shea’s combination of physical ability, value to potential European suitors, and a body of work that proves that value is based on more than his natural talent. However, Holden is an excellent comparison, though there are two reasons the two are not directly comparable. One, that Holden walked away from the Dynamo on a free. Two, because his path to the league and a starting role was so much different.

Last season, FC Dallas got to the MLS Cup Final on the back of fantastic performances by the deserved MVP of the league, David Ferreira. He may return to the team for the Conference Final or MLS Cup Final if the team manages to get that far, but for the time being, Ferreira is unavailable. Brek Shea is the best healthy player on the team by some distance. New York’s ability to self-implode could allow Dallas to win on Wednesday night without a stunning performance from Shea, but they’re not getting far without a spectacular man of the match performance from their left winger.

Naturally, as we head into the playoffs, the spotlight is back in Marquez. He’s been moved from the defense to the midfield, but his effort has only been marginally better. While he’s flashed his incredible ability with a few pinpoint passes and the occasional strong tackle, he’s also watched attackers run right by him and tracking back has been treated as more of an optional task.

Daniel Robertson is the managing editor for FC Dallas blog Big D Soccer. Follow him on Twitter @BigDSoccer.

In many seasons in Major League Soccer, the road can be unkind to a lot of clubs. Few are able to truly navigate it to a point of a winning record - while most end up going away from home in hopes of just getting the old “road point.”

Hans Backe’s club cannot rely on the road point in this match however, as the wild card round is a winner take all. Instead his club will have to do exactly what they did last month when they were in Frisco - defend like crazy and hope for a few lucky breaks.

Rodgers has been one of the key cogs in the Red Bulls attack this season. He is second on the team with nine goals, adding three assists to his point total. The Red Bulls are 9-3-8 in games Rodgers has started and just 1-5-8 in games he did not start.

Simply put, there is nobody in American soccer history with whom we can reasonable compare Shea. That may not be evident evident upon first view - it’s fairly easy to lump him in with the rest of the young Americans who have drawn interest from big clubs in Europe. None have the pedigree that Shea possesses. As he he looks towards a big-money move overseas, the best comparison to Shea is not an American because there has been no American player like him.

When it comes to MLS players making big-money moves abroad, Jozy Altidore leads the way. He left the New York Red Bulls for Spanish side Villarreal in 2008 for $10 million, a figure which still stands as the record as the largest fee paid for a MLS player. Most reports indicate that Shea will be sold for a similar fee, certainly challenging the record that Villarreal set in buying Altidore, if not surpassing it.

The thought that these teams would be meeting in the wild card round of the playoffs would have been almost unthinkable. Yet, here we are on the eve of their Wednesday night matchup trying to assess what happened to these two promising teams. In both cases, we can safely say that lack of serious depth got the most of them.

In the case of FC Dallas, their depth was tested in their first ever foray into the CONCACAF Champions League. It’s probably too early to say they failed that test, but it should come as no surprise that they aren’t giving much indication that a return trip is something they relish in the near future.