Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Or, in the case of Ricardo Pepi, cometh the boy.
The 17-year-old FC Dallas forward wasn’t old enough to vote in the presidential election earlier this month, but he showed Sunday that there are no age restrictions for putting a team’s MLS playoff hopes on your shoulders.
FCD prevailed in a penalty kick shootout over the Portland Timbers, 8-7, earning the team’s first playoff win since 2015. But when Pepi entered the fray as an 85th-minute substitute, the match appeared lost.
The Timbers had finally cracked the Dallas defense, which for nearly 82 minutes had fended off wave after wave of Portland attacks. Diego Valeri slipped through Jorge Villafaña for a 1-0 lead, and the first-round heartbreaks of the previous two seasons were suddenly top of mind.
“We felt that hurt from last year’s Seattle game,” Pepi said. “We knew we weren’t going to give up. I came in with a strong mentality, wanting to do something and change the game. I did it.”
Two of the four allotted stoppage-time minutes had expired when Bryan Reynolds headed down a Timbers goal kick and Ryan Hollingshead lobbed a hopeful ball back toward the goal. Pepi reacted first, and wasn’t rattled when he saw his initial shot saved by Portland goalkeeper Steve Clark.
The El Pasoan had the confidence to know he belonged in this spot, and the composure to finish when the ball careened off the post, back to his waiting right foot.
“It’s natural. It’s not forced,” said FCD coach Luchi González of Pepi’s self-assured nature. “He’s a young man that’s worked really hard through the youth program, the academy. He’s always been humble but really hardworking. He doesn’t depend on his talent. He tries to show a great mentality to learn and to be patient, and to give everything in his opportunities. Tonight was a product of that.”
The relationship between Pepi and González traces back to when the player was 12 years old, playing for an El Paso affiliate of the FC Dallas academy. Pepi was born and raised in nearby San Elizario, and González was the one who recruited him to move to North Texas in 2016.
Word about the young goal scorer started to spread, and reached a crescendo last year when Pepi scored 11 goals in 13 matches for the club’s USL League One side North Texas SC. He was signed by FC Dallas as a homegrown player last June.
He’d scored twice before Sunday, and appeared in 17 matches including four starts in 2020, but had yet to fully break through in front of a national audience. González, the former academy coach turned head coach, trusted his guy.
“It’s not really a verbal confidence,” Pepi said when asked how the coach expresses that trust. “The confidence he has in me is by putting me in the (85th) minute 1-0 down. That shows the confidence he has in me. I’ll take that. That’s what allows me to play with confidence myself.”
It was a big night for the Luchi Gang, the nickname given to the academy prospects González has put on the field since taking over last year. Reynolds, 19, started at right back in his playoff debut along with midfielder Jesús Ferreira, 19, who was in the lineup last year in Seattle. Pepi and Tanner Tessman, 19, converted two of FCD’s eight penalty kicks in the shootout.
The night’s other hero was goalkeeper Jimmy Maurer, who made seven saves in regulation and extra time before stonewalling the decisive penalty shot from Villafaña.
Dallas, the sixth seed in the Western Conference, advanced to face the winner between No. 2 Seattle and No. 7 LAFC, which takes place on Tuesday night.
“Either team is fine with us, but I think we would all love to get a home game,” Maurer said. “So I think we’re probably going to be rooting for (LAFC).”