FRISCO, Texas – Never one to pull any punches, FC Dallas head coach called Thursday’s 1-0 loss to the Los Angeles Galaxy the worst performance by his team since he’s been head coach.
Watch: FULL MATCH HIGHLIGHTS
That brutally honest evaluation was dead on considering this was a game where FCD looked like 11 individuals instead of a single, cohesive unit for much of the 90 minutes.
“I thought it was really a poor performance on our part,” Hyndman said. “It might have been in my opinion, the worst performance since I’ve been here. I think we’re too good of a team to have that poor of a performance. It was just very disjointed. I think we’re much better than that.”
LA got their lone goal of the evening in the 17th minute, when Chris Klein fed Tristan Bowen near midfield. FCD center back George John was trying to pull Bowen offside but Bowen dashed up the left flank, laying it off to Mike Magee for the easy finish. And John took full responsibility.
“It was a bozo play on my part trying to pull offsides so far up the field,” the FCD defender said. “I was thrown off a bit by the linesman. I thought he was going to raise his flag but he didn’t. It doesn’t matter if it’s offsides or not. It was just a mental mistake there that cost us the game.”
Both teams finished the night with seven shots, with three each on goal. But Hyndman again didn’t like what he saw from leading scorer Jeff Cunningham, who had just one attempt. In the 63rd minute, Hyndman pulled him for Eric Avila, the second straight game Cunningham was subbed out at the identical minute-marker.
“I don’t know what it is to him,” the FCD coach said when asked if he was sending a message to Cunningham by bringing him off. “It’s not getting things done.”
For most of the night, the Galaxy did a great job of keeping FCD central attacking midfielder David Ferreira from being able to trigger the offense. Much of that was due to a great job of defending the pesky Colombian by LA’s Christopher Birchall.
However, in the end, this one boiled down to what has become a continual issue for FCD: a lack of finishing.
“We had some players who had good chances but they made very bad decisions,” Hyndman said. “They took a bad-angled shot or they should have passed it or when they passed it, they should have shot it. I think it’s a little bit of composure in the attacking third as well.”
It was a humid night at Pizza Hut Park, but Hyndman wasn’t about to chalk this one up to the elements.
“I just think we were all on different pages,” he said. “I thought the first half, we weren’t there. We were sleeping. I said to the players at halftime, I’d never seen this before. I had never seen this team give up the ball as much as we had.”
