Getting Reacquainted with Houston Dynamo FC, MLS's Lost Nomads

What a dump. (IYKYK)

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

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Think of Houston Dynamo FC as the expansion team that wasn’t. They arrived in Houston in 2006 as the one and only team in MLS history to be relocated (right?) and they got stupid fucking lucky in that the team they received had just hoisted the Supporters’ Shield the season prior in San Jose. A couple players didn’t make the trip – e.g., defenders Danny Califf and Troy Dayak, as well as long-time forward Ronald Cerritos – but they came with a handful of the most famous names in Houston Dynamo history (all amply represented in the 10 Players to Know section below) and added at least one famous face, aka, midfielder and future (fragile) USMNT bubble-player, Stuart Holden. Blessed with a strong ready-made roster and one of the 2000’s best head coaches in Dominic Kinnear, the Dynamo kicked off franchise history by winning back-to-back MLS Cups in 2006 and 2007. When they finished 2nd and 3rd overall, respectively, over the next two seasons, Houston threatened to become regular contenders: two more trips to MLS Cup – in 2011 and 2012 – put a couple more teeth into the menace (and yet, if you look at the starting XI for both of those games (see links above), you’ll wonder how it happened). They had to console themselves with the U.S. Open Cup in 2013, but the future still looked bright…despite the second ninth-place finish in as many seasons. Then, out of somewhere close to nowhere, the wheels came off and caught fire: no matter how far the league lowered the bar, Houston would make the MLS playoffs just once over the next nine seasons – and even then, they squeaked in at 10th overall (2017). The end of that long walk through the wilds saw them end three straight regular seasons at 25th overall, the playoff line almost too far away to see and the Wooden Spoon whistling through the air close behind (fortunately, they had three of MLS’s historically (or lately-)worst teams running interference in each of those seasons). After at least a couple rebuilds, a series of bad calls on designated players, and no small amount of suffering among the fanbase, Houston Dynamo FC finally returned to the playoffs due to finally getting a big DP call right and pulling the right head coach (Benny Olsen!) out of early retirement.

Best Season(s)

Easy-peasy: the 2006 and 2007 MLS Cup seasons. Those early Dynamo teams weren’t necessarily elegant, but they were solid, well-coached and they had some of the best game-winners of their era pulling on an orange jersey.

Getting Reacquainted with the New England Revolution, MLS's Mighty Bridesmaids

New England, in off-season.

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

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I moved to Boson in 1998, the same season I consciously uncoupled from DC United (successful teams don’t challenge you enough) and embraced the New England Revolution as my team. The Wooden Spoon stung their bums for the one and only time at the end of that very season and, to be clear, I was not surprised. I watched them try to squeeze star-power out of Darren Sawatzky, fer crissakes. How could I have known that the New England Revolution would go on to contest four MLS Cups in six years a mere three seasons later? Sure, they missed the playoffs two more times (the 90s were not gentle) before they established themselves as MLS’s Second Most Menacing Team and, obviously, all four of those trips to MLS ended in a disappointment and with soccer’s equivalent of a side of syphilis, but I bumbled into backing the right horse, regardless. Against the back drop of everything that came before, the 2002 MLS Cup run almost certainly felt like a fluke (bit fuzzy here; courting the wife, becoming a stepfather that season), but, for every fucking MLS Cup between 2005 and 2007, the Revolution walked onto the field with a very real shot at, and expectation of, winning. Never happened, of course, as New England lost every one and they remain the Buffalo Bills of MLS to this day, the bridesmaid to everyone else’s bride, etc. For me, none of those losses hurt like the 2006 final and, for all that I firmly believe that exploring the trauma sports fans experience when their team loses is the greatest possible waste of time for any and all therapists’ time, I do consider that loss formative to how I “enjoy” soccer to this day (i.e., never get too close). To their very real credit, the Revolution has never stopped trying since that stab straight through the fucking heart. They returned to MLS Cup the very next season…and lost again, to the same fucking team (the Houston Dynamo), only in regulation that time. They returned to MLS Cup again in 2014…which they lost to a different team (peak Los Angeles Galaxy that time), but at least they made it to extra-time in that one. And yet they picked themselves up again- if after missing the playoffs for three consecutive seasons (again), and after a couple seasons of “making the playoffs” (i.e., if you die after your first step in the door…?) – right after that, they produced the greatest regular season in MLS history. That happened in 2021. The record still stands, but I’d argue for a deeper truth about that record: the Revolution earned it with their third very capable team in franchise history. I have no doubt that all of the times they’ve fallen short stings every die-hard Revolution fan like a swarm of hornets, but, as well as the “bridesmaids” thing holds up, New England are kinda sorta the masters of the rebuild. They have been successful. They're the 10th most-successful team in MLS history on the Joy Points Scale (see end of post for methodology*).

Best Season(s)

Of course, I have to say the record-setting Supporters’ Shield winning season, but I have massive fucking respect for the Revolution team that shook off the shock of the 2006 MLS Cup loss and made it back to MLS Cup 2007. They’d lost Clint Dempsey’s combination of goals and a beating competitive heart by then, but that team rallied, put their collective heads down, and got shit done…well, until the second half of MLS Cup 2007. To think they went into halftime up 1-0 and on a goal by Taylor Twellman to boot. Those were the...ddddaaaaaaaaaaaayyyysss!

Getting Reacquainted with Real Salt Lake, a Team Frozen in Amber/MLS 2.0

Far, far, FAR worse than it looks.

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

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I’m here to tell the kids that joining MLS as an expansion team today is nothing like what it was in the mid-2000s. Back then, the incoming front office couldn’t sign even one designated player, so, when building their Year One roster, they had to pick through the same crappy buffet as the rest of the league. That’s the league Chivas USA and Real Salt Lake stepped into and, golly, does “stepped into” get right to it. It took Chivas USA just one season to turn over a competitive roster – signing some soon-to-be famous young Americans made all the difference - but it took RSL over three seasons to do the same. And yet, when they finally pulled that off in 2008, they became one of MLS 2.0’s most consistent – and dangerous – teams. The argument for that fleshes out between the Best Season and Names to Know sections below, but RSL made the playoffs over the next seven seasons with two trips to MLS Cup and one to a CONCACAF Champions’ League final thrown in. They turned Rio Tinto Stadium into a fortress on the back of a 29-home-game unbeaten streak that started in June 6, 2009 (their road form, meanwhile…) and the familiar winning formula of having a couple ringers running wild in front of brick wall (aka, an effective attack and a sturdy defense). And then, player by player and season by season, the members of that great team either aged out or moved on. No matter how dangerous they’ve looked at the end of any post-season since, and outside the 2016 and 2019 season (9th and 6th respectively), RSL has finished in 11th place or lower in every season after 2015; they’ve probably forgotten what a trophy looks like by now. They still turn up the odd great attacking player, but they never enough of them on the same roster and in the same season to take them that vital one step further. RSL still rolls reliable center backs off some invisible assembly line, but they otherwise look stuck in MLS 2.0.

Best Season(s)

The easy choice points to their MLS-Cup-winning season in 2009 – aka, the most famous “Rimandoing” in MLS history – but I’m going with the 2010-2011 run to the CCL final. If there’s a better underdog story in CCL history, I haven’t heard it. Moreover, that scrappy little RSL team came achingly close to winning it just three seasons removed from serial failure in MLS. They started the two-leg series by drawing the road leg at Monterrey 2-2, which meant all they had to do to lift the trophy was keep Monterrey off the board at Fortress Rio Tinto – and, to be clear, the final fell within the above-referenced home unbeaten streak. The stars don’t align much straighter than that…but then some guy named Humberto Andres Suavo Pontivo scored at the 45th minute for Monterrey and RSL couldn’t pull back one goal, the end.

Getting Reacquainted with Los Angeles FC, aka, the Spoiled Rich Kid that Transferred to Your Public School Under Somewhat Mysterious Circumstances

Still mid-orgasm. Started in 2021.

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

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With this post, this project arrives at the first team to play in MLS for less than a decade; Los Angeles FC has just six seasons behind them. It also gets to why, for all its shortcomings, the Joy Points Scale (methodology at the bottom of the post*) holds up all right. LAFC has enjoyed as much success as any team in the league over those six seasons. To do the math: they won one Supporters’ Shield, one MLS Cup, plus they made an unsuccessful trip to another Cup (the season just ended, in fact), and they made the playoffs in five seasons of six and, if memory serves, people and pundits read them as a bona fide contender for four of those playoff runs…

…also, what a bunch of assholes.

That’s good enough for them to rank eighth all-time on the janky little scale I concocted for this series – which gets to another truth about the American top-flight – i.e., that somewhere just shy of 20 teams have enjoyed either fleeting success or no success at all. LAFC, meanwhile, doesn’t have a history, not really, hence the temptation to roll Chivas USA into the mix and call it the history of LA's "other team." I dismissed that for the same reason I’m not counting the Miami Fusion as part of Inter Miami CF’s history. Just totally different animals in both cases.

Best Season(s)

A fucking no-brainer, obviously: they won the double in 2022 and capped off the Shield by winning what was arguably the best, wildest MLS Cup in league history (and pour one out for the Philadelphia Union for that loss). I’ve never experienced such a thing with any team I’ve followed in any sport, but imagine it feels like an orgasm after tantric sex.

Long-Term Tendencies

LAFC has a short, proud history of scoring tons of goals. Their 2019 team holds second-place for goals scored in a single season (at 72), but they’ve either been very over or very, very over the average for goals scored in, again, five of their six seasons. They even scored very over the average in the one season they missed the playoffs (2021), but even that’s a little weird given that they had a worse defensive record in MLS’s weirdest season, aka, 2020. Still, and not unlike the team as a whole, LAFC’s defenses have generally been good.

Getting Reacquainted with FC Dallas, MLS's Consummate B (or B-) Students

How's your Italian, young man?

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

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FC Dallas, fka, the Dallas Burn undermine the entire “Joy Point” concept (see end of post for methodology*) because they rank seventh in MLS history more for consistency than what any fan would recognize as joy. Choosing their best season required no more thought than choosing between the two seasons they actually won a trophy. Dallas rose to these lofty heights the same way Red Bull New York did – i.e., by being in the league for as long as they have and consistently making the playoffs. Unlike the Red Bulls, I don’t believe anyone outside their most committed fans (meant, here, as both committed and “committed”) have ever uttered the words, “I think this is Dallas’ year. They did reach MLS Cup once, in 2010, but they lost to…the Colorado Rapids. (When people tell you that MLS is a weird league, believe them.) And yet, and to their very real credit, Dallas have missed the playoffs just seven times in 28 seasons (including one season they got tagged by the Wooden Spoon (2003)) and they finished in the top half of the table in (literally) half the time. Not a bad run, all in all, but not a great one, and not what any reasonable person would describe as “joy.” If one had to grade the Dallas franchise what could you give them but a B, or maybe even a B-. On the plus side, they do have that dynamite academy, aka, America’s answer to Ajax in the Eredivisie…makes you wonder how high they could rise if they kept some of those promising players two days after their 20th birthday. Or thereabouts.

Best Season(s)

The 2016 season, easily, and with nod to the prior season as a sign of things to come. I had to check back to both rosters to remember who suited up for them in both years (2015 and 2016) and, small coincidence, those same players are well-represented (if not over-represented and via a cheat) in the 10 Players to know section below. Those sections speak to another general truth about FC Dallas: it’s less that they never make ambitious signings than that they often miss the mark when they do, sometimes wildly. At any rate, Dallas won both the Supporters’ Shield and the U.S. Open Cup in 2016, which means their fans felt actual joy once – which I suppose beats the usual experience of salivating over the latest academy kid that they’ll say goodbye to right around the time they remember his name...

Getting Reacquainted with DC United, A Metaphor on the Benefits of Inherited Wealth

Had some great damn songs, but...

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

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Tempting as it is to see DC United as the team that squandered its legacy as the first best team in MLS, that narrative writes their first (and only) renaissance out of its history – i.e., the 2004-07 seasons, which saw them win another Cup and two more Shields. The echo might have been half as loud, but it did happen. Against that, those first straight-up fucking insane seasons – DC won three MLS Cups and two Supporters’ Shields, on top of having a crack at a fourth Cup in 1998 (the Chicago Fire won that one) – created a firewall thick enough for them to hold at sixth place on the all-time Joy Points Scale (methodology below*) despite getting slapped with four (4!) Wooden Spoons and some of the worst seasons in league history. Between them checking out of the post-season a half decade at a time and 10 seasons of Benny-ball (when Ben Olsen was in charge) thrown into the mix, it’s almost impossible to remember that DC United reigned as the undisputed Kings of MLS 1.0. Some of MLS’s first great players starred for DC, not all of them listed below (e.g., Jeff Agoos, Roy Lassiter, and Raul Diaz Arce, to name a few). In fewer words, yeah, the designated-player era passed them by. That doesn’t mean they didn’t try, and that they haven’t had a couple hyped hopes, but they have yet to catch up to a league that seems to get faster with each passing season.

Best Season(s)

I’ll always have a soft spot for MLS Cup I, when DC stepped into the downpour that fell on it as the underdog, but I’d call the 1997 and 1999 seasons the franchise’s high-water marks. I don’t remember 1999 so good, partially because I’d moved on to Boston and rooting for the New England Revolution, but I had a front row seat for 1997 and they ran away with everything that wasn’t nailed down. Special team, special players…also, this is where I picked up my aversion to success…

Long-Term Tendencies

DC built their trophy-winning seasons on reliable, live-wire attacks – sometimes to the point of covering for a shaky defense. The reverse held true as well: they suffered their worst seasons when a stumbling attack became the anchor that drowned them. Defense hurt a little as well, but the offense was always a little worse. And here’s a fun little detail: despite its reputation for playing it safe, the Benny-ball era (2010-2020) didn’t consistently translate into improved defensive performances: DC either hit over or above the average for goals allowed in eight of his 10 seasons coaching the team.

Getting Reacquainted with Columbus Crew SC, the Team That Pulls Rabbits Out of Hats for Fun

Smoke Lucky Strikes

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

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If nothing else, Columbus Crew SC provided a fair chunk of the start-up talent that the Seattle Sounders leveraged to leap-frog them on my patented “Joy Points” scale (see the end of the post for methodology*); hell, Chad Marshall was central enough to both teams’ success that I’m counting him twice. But, to backup: the Columbus Crew came in as an MLS original...man, does anyone else miss the old “leering construction worker' crest? Ahem. The Crew started undistinguished – i.e., they made playoffs, only without going anywhere – before hitting what, despite a wild-hair Supporters’ Shield in 2004, can only be described as a rough patch. They missed the playoffs five times between 2000 and 2007 and even picked up a Wooden Spoon two seasons after that wild-hair Shield. From that point forward – and, damn my amnesia, it continues to the present day – Columbus has developed a pattern that goes something like so: they bring in an attacking ringer – e.g., Guillermo Barros Schelotto, Lucas Zelarayan or Cucho Hernandez – that raises a broadly competent core to glory, only to have that latest model run out of actual steam after two or three seasons. To drive home the point, in the twelve seasons since their first, best run (see immediately below) – starting in 2012, basically - the Crew have a 50/50 hit-rate for just making the point-season. Despite That’s not all bad, clearly, seeing that they’ve won two MLS Cups over that same period (2020, aka, The Weird Season, and 2023) and they went into a third final as the seeded team…where, honestly, they got lightly screwed, even if they did half the screwing themselves (see: Clark, Steve and Valeri, Diego). I’m saying that as Portland Timbers fan, for what it’s worth…

Best Season(s)
For all their slips, Columbus has fielded some genuinely impressive teams – and I very much count the 2020 and 2023 Cup-winning teams among them – but those late 2000s teams that they built around Schelotto just…did things to teams that, often, left them on the side of the road staring at the sky with a headful of nightmares. That team paired an MLS Cup with their second Shield in 2008 and they added a third Shield in 2009. Those other Columbus teams absolutely kept them on the map/board, but it was the 2008-12 team that put them on it.

Long-Term Tendencies
A bit surprising in that they don’t show a ton of wild deviations from average when it comes to goals scored and allowed. Odd outliers aside – e.g., a couple of the seasons they missed the playoffs, the double-winning season in 2008, and 2023’s freakish attacking stats – Columbus generally stick at or around average of goals scored and allowed. Heck, they had a four-season stretch from 2010-2013 where they hit MLS’s middling sweet-spot – i.e., they either scored or allowed the average number of goals - six out of eight times. Even so, a soft pattern sticks out in all that: in most of the seasons when they missed the playoffs, it was problems with scoring that kept them out. The defense throttled their dreams a couple of times – e.g., 2000 and 2016 – but Columbus has a history of fielding good and strong defenses, and to the tune of being at or well-below average (10 times!) in 22 of 28 seasons. In other words, small wonder they sweat the attack.

Identity
A magician pulling rabbits out of a hat.

Joy Points: 21, or good enough for 5th place all time (based on an admittedly warped scale)

10 Names to Know (with regards to Zac Steffen, I stiffed the goalkeepers)
Brian McBride (1996-2003)
Whenever I think of McBride, I see him with either a swollen eye or a bandage wrapped around his head. Though famous for headed goals and hold-up play, he could wind up a decent shot too. McBride played like a warrior and scored 62 goals along the way. One of MLS’s first “homegrown” stars.

Not pictured here (if you know, you know.)

Stern John (1998-1999)
He came, he saw, he scored goals at a fucking ridiculous clip (44 in 55 appearances, wha….?). John played just two seasons in Columbus [EDIT, corrected to read 1998-99; thanks, commenter!]; and did he even finish both?), but he’s a good legend from early MLS history. Again, Columbus is to good players what Sudbury is to unbelievably attractive women.

Jeff Cunningham (1998-2004)
Nearly as effective as McBride in his time with Columbus, but a totally different player, Cunningham started his career/MLS legend with them. He combined a soft touch with next-level speed, a lethal combination for both MLS 1.0 and 2.0 defenses, and that’s why he’s still fourth all-time for career goals scored in MLS – and without a challenger in sight.

Eddie Gaven (2006-2013)
While Columbus would later become famous for the attacking ringers mentioned above, they also have a strong record with recognizing young talent within MLS and letting them thrive. For all that he looked like a strong breeze could carry him off, Gaven fells like a prototype for one of those forever-buzzing, catch-me-if-you-can midfielders that disrupt defenses. And he played and grew throughout Columbus’ best seasons (as nominated above).

Chad Marshall (2004-2013)
Simply put, a brick wall with a screen tied to the top that catches 90% of anything that threatens to fly above it. An incredible defender for two teams, but he started with, starred in, and anchored the Crew’s defense through its first glory years.

Guillermo Barros Schelotto (aka, GBS) (2007-2010)
For me, Columbus won the race to sign the first, best designated player in MLS history. But for the shaggy hair, he looked more like a math teacher than a professional athlete. The league had seen decent attacking mids before, but none of them opened the game for everyone around them quite the way GBS did.

Frankie Hejduk (2003-2010, ambassador till death)
I did a “who’s Mr. Sporting Kansas City” for the last post in this series, but it’s Hejduk for me. The rare eccentric in a league that either can’t find them or somehow discourages them, a surfer in Central Ohio, etc. But Hejduk backed it all the way up on the field, both for Columbus and the U.S. Men. And I hear he still shows up at the stadium. Just wonderful…

Federico Higuain (2012-2019)
The next in Columbus’ frankly remarkable succession of attacking wizards, he continued the GBS tradition of providing regular goals and assists (I remember him for his free-kicks). He was similar down to the build, but also played in a more-evolved MLS – which may explain the mind-blowing fact that Columbus never won a trophy with him.

Jonathan Mensah (2017-2022)
A successor to another tradition, Mensah may not have been as dominant as Marshall, but I can think of no better way to explain how highly I rate him besides saying that I’m still shocked to this day that they traded him. Still, he anchored a defense that won Columbus a Cup. Which tends to be enough for them because…

Lucas Zelarayan (2020-2023)
They keep finding players like, say, Zelarayan, aka, a midfielder that could fuck up a defense at least three different ways (e.g., off the dribble, free-kicks, and waltzing through a defense with a teammate). If there’s a greater mystery in MLS than how a team from Central Nowhere U.S.A. keeps finding players like this, I don’t know what it is. To be clear, I don’t mean that “Central Nowhere” thing as an insult – I was born in Cincinnati and went to high school in Pullman, WA for fuck’s sake – but to acknowledge that Columbus, Ohio has a limited international foot-print.

Where They Finished in 2023 & What the Past Says About That, If Anything
Third-place in the East with a Santa’s sack full of goals, a lopsided goal-differential and, ultimately, their third MLS Cup. Not bad, in other words. Once you see the pattern, last season lines up nicely with…call it the last 20 seasons of Columbus’ history. Again, they have a history of finding great-for-MLS players, which continued with Cucho Hernandez and only got better with the addition of Christian Ramirez and Diego Rossi, and the historically strong defense held up, if with a big, elegant assist from the central midfield pairing of Aidan Morris and Darlington Nagbe. More to the point, after watching them all but flow through the Eastern Conference playoff bracket – again, for the record, FC Cincinnati is my second team (see birth-place) and that loss left scars – they didn’t so much win MLS Cup 2023, as run it. To circle back to the pattern, I believe this current roster has a couple strong seasons left in it – so long as the F.O. can keep it together and Wilfred Nancy in charge of it. I’m not much on coaches as transformative figures, but I only have to look at Columbus’s 2021 and 2022 to believe that he’s got something special in his noodle.

Notes/Impressions on the Current Roster/State of Ambition
Even with Columbus’, again, remarkable track record with signing good ‘n’ fun players, they hired (just learned this) hometown(-adjacent) wunderkind, Tim Bezbatchenko to keep that conveyer belt moving. Their history says a slump will come again, but they’ve put on some damned tall stilts to keep ahead of it.

* Joy Point Index
Winning the CONCACAF Champions’ League: 5 points
Claiming Supporters’ Shield : 4 points
Winning MLS Cup: 3 points
MLS Cup Runner-Up: 2 points
Winning the U.S. Open Cup: 2 points
Winning CONCACAF Champions Cup: 2 points
MLS Is Back Cup: 2 points (yeah, yeah, I’m a Timbers fan; still, that was a tough one)
CONCACAF Champions League Semifinalist: 1 point
Making the Playoffs: 1 point
Missing the Playoffs: -1 point
Missing Playoffs in 1996-97, 2002-2004 (when 80% of the league qualified): - 2 points

Wooden Spoon: -3 points