New York City FC will conclude a four-game road trip when they square off with FC Dallas on Friday night in Frisco, Texas.
NYCFC (10-8-5, 35 points) will travel to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex on the heels of a 1-1 draw at Sporting Kansas City on Saturday, a result that gave them points in three of their four matches in July.
Andres Perea scored his first goal of the season, and Matt Freese stopped five shots for NYCFC on Saturday.
New York heads into the weekend in eighth place in the Eastern Conference, just three points short of sixth-place Orlando City. NYCFC have a 1-1-1 mark in stops in Charlotte, Orlando and Kansas City.
“I can’t say it’s affected us more than I expected, because this is my first experience going through it,” NYCFC coach Pascal Jansen said about the road trip. “We know it’s part of MLS, so we have to deal with it. My performance staff has been preparing our players for these circumstances long before we entered this stretch. Hopefully, we’ll benefit from that and be able to perform as well as we can.”
FC Dallas (6-10-7, 25 points) head into the second contest of a three-game homestand after a rousing 3-0 win over St. Louis City on Saturday. Petar Musa assisted on an early goal by Brazilian teenager Kaick da Silva Ferreira and added a second-half brace to lead the Toros.
Musa has found the net seven times in Dallas’ past seven fixtures and has a team-high 11 goals in league play.
The victory snapped a five-match winless streak for the Toros and was their first win on their home pitch in MLS play since March 29. Dallas still has just two home wins this year — which is last in the Western Conference and tied for second worst in the league — while its seven losses at home are tied for the most in MLS.
The Toros will begin the weekend in 12th place in the West, four points below ninth-place San Jose in the playoff standings.
Dallas coach Eric Quill said he saw something change in his team during a 2-2 draw in San Jose on July 16.
“Something triggered in San Jose,” Quill said. “I really started seeing a team that’s honest, a team that’s fighting for each other, communicating to each other, picking each other off the ground, clapping at each other. We have to stay humble and hungry. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but I’m proud of this team.
“This team is not giving up.”
–Field Level Media
