One set piece, one goal, one point that decides the game
FC Dallas beat LAFC 1-0 on Saturday in a match neither team had much left to give, and the only goal came from the one avenue both sides could still rely on: the set piece. Joaquin Valiente swung a corner into the right side of the box in the 34th minute, and Osaze Urhoghide powered past his marker to head it into the top corner.
It was only Urhoghide’s second goal of the season, but Valiente’s delivery was the more telling number. The assist was his 13th from a set piece this year, a tally that has quietly made him one of the league’s most productive dead-ball passers and the difference in a game with little else to separate two shorthanded rosters.
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Two lineups stripped down by call-ups
Dallas played without three regular starters on international duty, including Petar Musa, the club’s leading scorer with 18 goals and five assists. LAFC had it worse, missing eight players, among them its top two scorers in Denis Bouanga (14 goals, seven assists) and Son Heung-Min (six goals, 12 assists). Neither club could lean on its usual attacking identity, which made a single set-piece goal enough to settle the outcome.
Goalkeepers Jonathan Sirois and Hugo Lloris each made three saves, and LAFC nearly salvaged a point in the 73rd minute when Armindo Sieb thought he had equalized, only for the goal to be waved off for contact with Sirois.
A road problem that keeps compounding for LAFC
The result extends LAFC’s winless run away from home to seven matches (0-3-4) and leaves the club with a single win in its last 10 games dating back to August. Dallas, at 13-6-8 and 47 points, moves further clear in a Western Conference table where LAFC, at 11-9-8 and 41 points, can no longer afford results like this one if it wants to climb back into the top half of the standings before the season runs out.
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