Is this a surprising result for both teams? I haven’t really followed ECNL results other than reading on here that they both dominated the SW conference. How Do PDA, Tophat and others play?
As far as LAFC goes...surprising? Idk. We went into the game level on points, but behind on second tiebreaker (goals scored), so we had to win.
Sting Dallas sent their top 06s, that had been playing up with the 05s all year, to play with the 06s for this tournament. We played the regular season version of the 06s at Phoenix showcase and beat them 4-0, so just looking at the result you might think a 0-0 draw was surprising, but knowing that they sent an almost completely different team to play should explain their results.
Also, just want to say that I think ECNL completely botched playoff berths. You have a team like Colorado Rapids, who are good don't get me wrong, but they play FIVE conference games, went 5-0 and qualify as #1 seed and get their own bracket? Meanwhile PDA plays almost twenty games, and gets put in the same bracket as us. Also, San Juan, the best team in NorCal stays at home because they have to play Mustang and MVLA and drop points during their much longer conference season.
Also there should be some sort of rule forbidding what Sting did. How are you going to have one set of girls play the entire season, win the conference, then bring in a whole new set of players that were rostered to the 05s?