Sounders aim for win, but a few other results OK

Zimmerman, fittingly, got the eventual victor to lift Dallas to a 3-3 (4-2 PKs) aggregate goal victory on Sunday to put them into the Western Conference finals.

Yet another scenario is if regulation time ends and the score is 2-1 in Dallas’ favor; in that case, the game would go into extra time as the aggregate score would be level at 3-3 and each team would have one away goal.

The Crew and Red Bulls will play the first leg for the finals in Columbus, Ohio on November 22 and the second leg in Harrison, New Jersey on November 29. “Even though they got that late goal, no one on the team was thinking, ‘Oh, we’re going to lose to Seattle again.’ It was more like, ‘Let’s score, win this game and move on'”.

All year, the Seattle Sounders have taken us on a roller-coaster. For 80-odd minutes their defense held, only to see FC Dallas grab an apparent victor on a Tesho Akindele header from Je-Vaughn Watson cross.

The celebration wouldn’t last long for Dallas as Seattle got a game-tying goal in the 90th minute on a corner kick by Marco Pappa.

Portland did gain a significant advantage with the 0-0 draw in the first leg. Because of the road goals tiebreaker, Portland will advance to the conference finals with any draw in Vancouver other than 0-0.

Dallas had multiple chances in the extra time, particularly behind the fresh legs of Akindele and Michael Barrios’ quickness, but nothing ever materialized for the hosts. If we can get more than one, then fantastic, but we have to go out with an attacking mentality.

The Sounders and FC Dallas couldn’t resolve their home-and-home series through 120 minutes of soccer Sunday night at Toyota Field.

“Stefan, obviously, kept us in the game”.

Portland’s Fanendo Adi scored the critical away goal in the 31st minute and the Timbers went on to win 2-0 at Vancouver, taking an aggregate victory by the same score.

The New York Red Bulls are your example of a former big-spending team that figured out a more frugal way to build a victor.

The LA Galaxy have gotten the best of the Sounders in recent years, eliminating them from the playoffs three times since 2010, including in the conference finals last year on their way to becoming champions.

“When I was subbing on, I was thinking there was no way we were going to overtime”, Akindele said.

“That’s the ownership’s decision and they’ll decide that”, Schmid said when asked if he plans to return next season.

And yet despite FC Dallas’ young roster continually rolling forward with the run of play for the majority of the match, Seattle brushed away attack after attack.

Zimmerman gave Dallas a 4-2 win on penalty kicks after his team’s 2-1 victory through regulation and extra time.

Schmid has yet to capture the elusive third MLS Cup title he’s been chasing since he left an MLS Cup-winning Columbus Crew side for Seattle after the 2008 season. But in the shootout, he dived to his left to stop shots from Andreas Ivanschitz and Chad Barrett. Seattle is 2-0-1 vs. Dallas this season: a scoreless draw March 28 in Texas, a 3-0 win June 13 at CenturyLink, and 2-1 last weekend in the home leg of this series.

“The Cup is what we haven’t given (our fans) yet”, coach Sigi Schmid said. As much of a toss-up as penalties can be, a cool head and experience can often help tip the balance. Frei finished with eight saves. “I try not to cloud myself with those negative thoughts”. That score line was the only one that would send the series on to extra time.