FC Dallas are looking to lock up homefield advantage for the first round of the playoffs when they close the regular season against red-hot Sporting Kansas City on Sunday in Frisco, Texas.
Dallas (13-9-11, 50 points) is in third place in the Western Conference entering Decision Day, three points ahead of the Los Angeles Galaxy and Nashville SC.
A victory or tie against Sporting KC (11-15-7, 40 points) will clinch a top-four seed and a home playoff match for Dallas. The club would still claim homefield advantage with a loss if both the Galaxy and Nashville fail to win their respective contests.
“I know it’s technically out of our hands but we gotta just reward ourselves for all the hard work we’ve done,” Dallas midfielder Sebastian Lletget said. “I mean, I thought we’d done really well to get to this point.”
Dallas is 0-1-1 over its last two matches and failed to clinch third with last weekend’s 1-0 road loss against the Colorado Rapids.
Sporting KC is the hottest club in the league with a seven-match unbeaten streak (5-0-2).
Sporting KC stand tied with the Seattle Sounders for the 11th most points in the West. The club floundered most of the season before playing stellar soccer down the stretch.
“We haven’t been at that quality for so much of the season and we just left it too late,” SKC forward Johnny Russell said. “But I think teams know, everyone knows this is an off year for us. …
“We’ve got one game left, so approach that the exact same way. We’re going to Dallas to win it. We want to finish the season on a high and then that carries into next year.”
Russell is tied with forward William Agada for the team lead with eight goals. Forward Daniel Salloi has seven.
Dallas is led by forward Jesus Ferreira, who is fourth in the league with 18 goals. That output matches the franchise record shared by Jason Kreis (1999) and Kenny Cooper (2008).
Paul Arriola has nine goals and fellow forward Alan Velasco has six. Arriola is returning from a red-card suspension while Velasco is available after missing the past three games due to a quadriceps injury.
Sporting KC have won their past two road games in the series after going 1-5-2 over the previous eight visits.
–Field Level Media
