Last week, home teams in MLS went 10w 3L 2D, illustrating the inherent difficulty of playing away in the league. Road teams did fare better this weekend, with Seattle, Miami, Vancouver, Real Salt Lake, San Jose, and San Diego all notching wins.
But all those teams got to retain 11 players — and as Austin FC head coach Nico Estévez observed after Saturday's 3-1 loss to Charlotte FC, compounding being on the road with being a man down is a tall order for any MLS team.
"My experience said to me, when you are down a man in this league, it's really, really difficult, more when you play away," he said. "At home, maybe you can bring that extra energy that the fans give to you. But in away games, it is tough and it's difficult."
The red card resulted from Guilherme Biro making studs-to-ankle contact with CFC forward Idan Toklomati — more on that later, don't worry — in the 23rd minute, and with the send off coming two minutes later following video review.
(The sequence starts at 0:54 of MLSSoccer.com's highlight video; the league used to make it easier by clipping red card videos and by having standalone goal and card videos you could link to.)
"Even though we want to do more, even though we wanted to create more, it is tough, and then it requires a lot of effort from everyone, but you're putting a lot of effort on defending, then when you have the ball, you're tired," Estévez added. "And then, the opponent has one extra player, and then they arrive, and then it's a little bit more difficult for us when we are down as any other team. But we have to learn from those situations, in case they happen again, how we can deal better with those moments."
