SAN ANTONIO — San Antonio FC had the ball. It had the chances. It had Tampa Bay pinned back for much of the night.
It just didn't have a goal.
For the second straight match, SAFC walked away with a clean sheet Saturday night at Toyota Field, but a dominant performance produced only a point in a 0-0 draw with the Tampa Bay Rowdies.
San Antonio controlled 58 percent of possession and outshot Tampa Bay 16-4. Five of SAFC's attempts found the target.
While the Rowdies didn't put one on frame, when the final whistle sounded, the scoreboard looked exactly as it had at kickoff. And that is becoming a familiar frustration for San Antonio.
“I haven't seen the stats, but what I saw in the game is that we had the possession for most part,” head coach Carlos Llamosa said. “We shut out Tampa. I don't believe they had a clear chance.”
For much of the night, they didn't.
SAFC dictated possession and spent extended stretches in Tampa Bay's half, while its defense gave the Rowdies little room to threaten going the other direction.
“For the most part, we took the ball away from them and we controlled the game,” Llamosa said. “We played a good amount of minutes in the attacking half.”
The missing piece was the one that matters most?
A goal.
Despite 16 attempts, San Antonio couldn't find the breakthrough. The club has now gone without a home goal since Aug. 12, a drought that has made otherwise encouraging performances increasingly difficult to turn into wins.
“There is frustration right there when we played a good game and we think that we deserved better, that we deserved the three points,” Llamosa said. “But this is the game, and we need to continue working.”
There are positives.
SAFC has posted consecutive shutouts, and Saturday's defensive performance was solid. Tampa Bay finished without a shot on target as San Antonio controlled both possession and territory.
But clean sheets only guarantee one point when the goals don't come at the other end. “If we're doing solid defensively, we need to score goals to get the three points,” Llamosa said.
That's the equation facing San Antonio as the season moves forward.
SAFC sits eighth in the USL Championship Western Conference and is 1-3-1 over its last five matches. With points becoming increasingly valuable, performances like Saturday's have to start producing more than draws.
San Antonio didn't need more of the ball against Tampa Bay.
It didn't need more shots.
It needed one of them to go in.
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