Portland Timbers EA SPORTS FIFA 19 competitor Edgar "RCTID_Thiago" Guerreroculminated a fantastic day at the 2019 eMLS League Series Two, presented by PlayStation, with a close, 2-1 loss to Philadelphia Union's Cormac "doolsta" Dooley in the Grand Final of the tournament Sunday night at the National Soccer Hall of Fame in Frisco, Texas.
The day's results from the round robin play, combined with his previous League Series One results in LA and a three-point bonus for reaching the final meant that Guerrero leapt from sixth place all the way to third in the overall regular season standingsahead of next month's eMLS Cup at PAX East in Boston.
"I feel like the tournament went well," Guerrero said at the end of the day. "I started off really good and then I had a stretch of decent results that I would not have liked and then I ended really strong."
Guerrero finished the early round robin section of the day in Texas in first place, going 5-1-3 against the rest of the Western Conference. Guerrero started with four straight wins against Minnesota United, Vancouver, San Jose and Seattle. He then clinched the top spot in the west with a clutch 3-2 win over the LA Galaxy in his final match of the round robin.
Into the knockout rounds, Guerrero defeated reigning 2018 eMLS Cup champion Guillermo "Kid M3mito" Trevino with a fantastic 2-0 shutout in the quarterfinals. The second goal came late in stoppage time only seconds after M3mito nearly tied it with a shot that clanged off the post.
Facing host FC Dallas and hometown favorite Alan "AlanAvi" Avila in the semifinals, Guerrero silenced the crowd at the National Soccer Hall of Fame with a thrilling 3-1 victory.
"The energy [in the room] was insane because they all thought they were going to beat me – the crowd and the commentators both thought that the Texas players were going to beat me," said Guerrero, who firmly played the underdog role to success. "I felt confident and I wasn’t nervous in any way. Because while I had played [M3mito and Alan] both in regular [season] play, and we had tied, I knew if I stepped it up a little bit more, I could beat them.
"I love playing players like that because they attack, they don’t try to hold the ball and it’s fun. It makes for entertaining matches."
In the championship, Guerrero took on Philly's doolsta, the winner of the eMLS League Series One event in LA and who had finished the League Series Two Eastern Conference round robin play in first place. The battle of the conference top seeds initially went Portland's way when Diego Valeri opened the scoring with a great goal in the first half.
Doolsta equalized shortly after the half and then a late penalty call that went the Union's way allowed the Philly player to win his second League Series event in a row.
But the day was a huge success for Guerrero as the performance and jump in standings will give him a huge boost heading into March's eMLS Cup tournament.
"It’s going to help me because I have more confidence now playing because I’m getting positive results," he said. "So going into eMLS Cup, I feel like if I do really well, I could make one of the European tournaments with the [FIFA Ultimate Team] points that I would get from playing in [Boston]."
