Jesús Ferreira and Paul Arriola caught LAFC asleep at the wheel

A heads-up play turned the tide of a high-profile MLS matchup

Saturday night’s high-profile showdown between FC Dallas and LAFC was turned on a heads-up play from FCD that made the visitors look a bit foolish.

Dallas trailed 1-0 late in the match despite a 13th-minute red card for LAFC defender Ryan Hollingshead, with Chicho Arango’s goal the difference for the first-place visitors.

But everything turned in the 78th minute when LAFC’s Franco Escobar was whistled for a foul on Marco Farfan on the edge of the box. Escobar vociferously protested the call, which prompted his teammate Jesús Murillo to come over and try to calm him down.

In the meantime, Paul Arriola made quick eye contact with Jesús Ferreira, who slowly began drifting into the pocket of empty space that Murillo had vacated.

The result? A quick free kick, an opportunistic finish, and the game’s tying goal. Minutes later, Ferreira would score again to give the home side a 2-1 win. The USMNT forward reached 18 goals on the season, which tied a franchise record.

“We have that chemistry inside the field and outside the field,” Ferreira said of Arriola in a postgame interview on FCD’s local broadcast. “Whenever we can see each other and sense each other, we know that something’s going to come. So once I saw him pick up the ball, I knew that there was going to be a play and then I got on the end of it.”

Watch Ferreira’s opportunistic goal vs. LAFC

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