At home on rested legs against a traveling New York Red Bulls side without Bradley Wright-Phillips, Aaron Long, Tim Parker, Kemar Lawrence and Luis Robles and more, FC Dallas had to have liked their chances on Saturday.
It didn't work out to plan.
The heavily rotated Red Bulls XI came to Frisco and beat Dallas 3-1, leaving head coach Luchi Gonzalez apologizing to supporters after the game.
“This hurts," Gonzalez admitted after the game. "I want to say I’m sorry to the fans that we didn’t do enough, but my commitment is to keep working, keep fighting and keep developing the group so we can earn points back and do it for our families and do it for our fans.”
The Red Bulls opened the scoring before Jesus Ferreira leveled the game before halftime. But New York added two more goals in the second half, walking away with all three points after falling at home 2-1 to the Montreal Impact on Wednesday.
Forward Zdenek Ondrasek, who played 26 minutes off the bench, didn't think he and his teammates were up to the fight.
“I would say we have to be more hungry especially at the end of the game when the team is losing — we have to be more hungry, go for the goals and believe," Ondrasek said. "And I think we didn’t do it 100 percent today."
Gonzalez agreed. He aims to increase his team's grit.
“I have some thoughts already for the next week of training,” Gonzalez said. “Over the season we’re going to create competitive environments that can have them learn to improve our dueling and fight and play our football.”
Dallas, who sit fifth place in the Western Conference early in Week 11 and are winless in three matches, will look to right the ship against LAFC on Thursday (10 pm ET | ESPN2 in US, MLS LIVE on DAZN in Canada).
