In front of a packed house, FC Dallas Special Olympics Unified Team dropped a hard-fought match to Los Angeles Galaxy Special Olympics Unified Team 3-2 Saturday in the first leg of two meetings between the teams.
“The atmosphere was fantastic,” FCD SO coach Kyle Schroeder said. “It was a tremendous atmosphere for these players to have that kind of electric environment. To have that many fans stick around for this was amazing for the team.”
FCD opened scoring in the seventh minute of the game when Zachary Parcher took a pass sent in from the midfield and slotted it past the LA keeper to the bottom-right side of the net.
Roy Bayona doubled the lead for FC Dallas in the 19th minute. Partner Matt Cummings sent a through ball to Bayona who went one-on-one with keeper before blasting it home.
“We came out we played really well,” Schroeder said. “We created a lot of chances at the start of the game. We did a fantastic job of getting the first two goals and then as the game moved on we fatigued just a little bit.”
FCD almost headed into half with the clean sheet in tact before LA took a ball down the middle, and Rafeal Lopez snuck it under the crossbar to cut the lead in half.
LA Galaxy made it even in the 45th minute with its own score to the bottom-right netting and took the lead and the win in the 47th minute with an upper-90 rocket from the boot of Carlos Arriaza.
The teams will meet again September 26 in Carson, California.
“Obviously we got a little bit of work to do because we obviously want to come back with a win,” Schroeder said. “We’re just going to continue to work on our central midfield because I think that’s where they had a little bit of an opportunity against us. I think we’re just going to keep training hard, and we’ll get there.”
