FC Dallas knocked the Columbus Crew out of the 2005 edition of the U.S. Open Cup on Wednesday night with a 3-1 victory after extra time at Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium on the Ohio State University campus.
It was a busy night for referee Ricardo Salazar as he issued six yellow cards and two ejections and called a penalty kick.
"I thought we had a grip on the game," said Crew interim coach Robert Warzycha. "I thought we had them because they were cramping and had so many yellow cards."
FC Dallas players were booked four times to the Crew's one during regulation. The story was quite different during the first session of extra time.
Substitute Danny Szetela and Frankie Hejduk earned direct red cards for hard fouls on Arturo Alvarez three minutes apart as the first extra session grinded to the end. Down to nine men, the Crew had a change in tactics.
"We were trying to get through the game and get to penalty kicks," said Warzycha. "It is not possible some times."
Wednesday was one of those times. With only 17 minutes until penalty kicks would decide the winner, FC Dallas turned the attack up a notch and Abe Thompson put away the winner with seven minutes to spare.
Despite playing for the spot kicks, Warzycha decided not to use his full allotment of substitutes. Late in the match, the Crew commonly defended with everyone except Kyle Martino. That included forwards Jamal Sutton and Knox Cameron while Mark Schulte languished on the substitutes bench.
"In a game like this, you play 30 minutes more than usual. Anything can happen," said Warzycha. "That is why I was keeping the sub until the end."
While the fourth-round encounter will be remembered for the officiating, the Crew's lone goal was truly an exceptional demonstration of teamwork at its finest. It started when Eric Vasquez caused a turnover in the midfield and sent the ball wide to Chris Henderson.
"Chris Henderson looked up and made a good pass near post," said Cameron. "My job is to get near post. I was too far past the post [to shoot] so all I could really do was get a flick on it and redirect it."
Goal-scorer Martino said: "It was played nicely out wide and Frankie made a great run into the middle. The ball got played right across. Knox just flicked it perfectly to Frankie's foot."
Cameron's heel pass went directly to Hejduk who slotted to ball to an open Martino.
"Luckily, it went to Frankie and Frankie made a good pass to Kyle," said Cameron. "We work on having far post runners and those guys were in a good spot."
Martino made sure the perfect setup would not be wasted and leveled the match at one.
"Frankie knew exactly where I was going to be. A lot of the work was done before the ball came to my feet," said Martino. "I just had to put it in the net."
John Kuhn is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
