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| It got 'em there. Four times, in fact. |
Houston Dynamo FC, then just the Houston Dynamo, weren’t MLS’s first second-wave expansion team (i.e., the ones that came after the 2001 contraction); calling them one doesn’t quite tally either because and they never had to go through the proper expansion team exercise of building from nothing. Moreover, they got stupid fucking lucky in that the team they received had just hoisted the Supporters’ Shield the season prior in San Jose.
As noted in the previous chapter in this series, the San Jose Earthquakes franchise had caught fire in the years before their ownership group yanked out their roots and moved them to sweaty Texas. A couple players didn’t make the trip – e.g., defenders Danny Califf and long-time forward Ronald Cerritos – but they came with a handful of the most famous names in Houston Dynamo history – e.g., Dwayne DeRosario, Brian Ching, Eddie Robinson, Pat Onstad, (my man) Brad Davis, etc. etc. Between that ready-made roster and employing Dominic Kinnear, one of the best head coaches of the 2000s, they had the horses to kick off franchise history with back-to-back MLS Cups in 2006 and 2007. Some minor stumbles aside, the Dynamo wouldn’t slip far out of contending over their first seven or eight seasons in the league. That’s a bit of trip, honestly, when you review the rosters that battled to losses in the 2011 and 2012 MLS Cups (just…how did that team get there in an 18-/19-team MLS?), but it also shows how far a good foundation (and a succession of stingy defenses) can carry a team. My personal highlights from the Dynamo’s glory years included the fingernail-rending battles they played in against Mexico’s CF Pachuca in the CONCACAF Champions’ Cup/League over the 2008 and 2009 seasons; those games marked the first occasion I genuinely believed MLS teams would eventually compete with Liga MX’s best, a hard goddamn sell in those days. Still, their best days dried up and, aside from the odd hurrah here (U.S. Open Cup winners in 2018!), and the strong run outta nowhere there (2017 playoff semifinalists), Houston idled through the late 2010s and early 2020s while the rest of MLS sprinted ahead. A jarring fall, given their history, and flashes of recovery notwithstanding, the question of whether they can get back up again remains open. For all the good decisions they made going into 2023 – due to the way he fits the Dynamo’s classic controlled(/stingy) playing model, pulling Ben Olsen out of early retirement made all kinds of sense and Mexican legend, Hector Herrera, gave them someone to build around, if only for (literally) two seasons – Houston still hasn’t found the attacking ace they need to make all that thuddingly responsible build-up play payoff. Closer than they have been, in other words, but still a player or two short of dangerous. Paging MLS [#.0]’s version of Ching or DeRo…
Total Joy Points: 18
How They Earned Them (& How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
MLS Cup: 2006, 2007
MLS Cup Runner-Up: 2011, 2012
MLS Playoffs Semifinals: 2009, 2013, 2017, 2023
MLS Playoffs/Quarterfinals: 2008, 2013, 2019
CONCACAF Champions Cup Runner-Up: 2008
CCL Quarterfinals: 2009
U.S. Open Cup: 2018, 2023
Long-Term Tendencies
For all the game-winners they’ve fielded, the Dynamo have never produced a strong attacking team. My loose scale tells me they’ve never gone over the league average for goals scored by more than six to eight goals (said scale jumps to "very over" somewhere around 7-8 goals for/against variance). Historically, Houston thrives with a sturdy defense at its back and slowly, yet perceptibly slips into the wine-red season in any season that back-stop fails to hold up. On the other side of the same steady coin, the Dynamo rarely fields terrible defenses and the thing that really doomed them to the wilderness in their worst, darkest seasons (circa 2014-2022)? Genuinely useless attacking units, one that fell far enough short of average that they probably couldn't see it. Related…
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| There's another famous Ben Olsen. Who knew? |
Houston was among a handful of MLS teams – Charlotte FC, Columbus Crew SC and the Seattle Sounders were the others – that held goals allowed at 40 or under (Houston was third in that mix, with 39); the next closest teams weren't close and the balance of MLS was behind still further. As before, the Dynamo owes a fair chunk of whatever success they’ve had these past two seasons to a return to their old, stubborn ways. Benny-Ball (aka, what pundits and punters used to call Ben Olsen’s soul-leaching coaching style, and maybe still do) has worked as advertised, at least on one end of the field. Locating the difference between the 2023 Houston team that clawed its way to the MLS Cup semifinals and the one that stalled at the wild-card stage in 2024 only takes some side-to-side comparisons in the numbers produced by, say, Amin Bassi (fewer PKs, apparently, but more assists!), or the way Herrera’s numbers fell off a fucking cliff (small wonder he played blind-pissed half the season). The Dynamo have other issues, to be sure – among them, a failure to replace Corey Baird’s 2023 contributions (weren't that great, really) and the reality that Sebastian Ferreira has rarely stayed healthy long enough to solve the problems the franchise hired him to – but the paltry numbers chipped in by Coco Carrasquilla and Griffin Dorsey’s failure to level up strike me as the bigger contributors to Houston’s lower ceiling.
Questions for Their 2025 Season
Even if the same task doesn’t look as tall as it would have after 2023, how to replace Herrera still feels like the big one. Gods know what a return to the low-wattage days of 2019-2022 would do a team that, frankly, looks more like a backwater than it should. Houston’s the fourth-biggest city in these United States (right?) and, your personal opinions of Texas notwithstanding, I feel like the Western Hemisphere alone has enough quality professional soccer players who wouldn’t feel uncomfortable in a conservative state to make that something of a mystery (whether they’ll be welcome in Greg Abbott’s Texas…). They're taking bigger swings lately, to their credit, but a short-term buy even on a player like Herrera doesn't quite spell ambition. Their slow start to the off-season can't be encouraging for the locals. To this point, the only signing I’ve seen from Houston was Jimmy Maurer at goalkeeper and that’s….just not the kind of signing this team needs right now, not unless Ferreira comes back whole and possessed, Dorsey finds his personal fourth gear, or (why not?) Sebastian Kowalcyzk and Bassi become a pair of tiny assassins. The Dynamo have time, and we’ll see what the next month brings, but it does feel like it’s a-wastin’. On the plus side, this will be their first full season with forward Ezequiel Ponce and every indication points to their strong core staying in place (big fan of Artur over here). Still, getting anywhere higher than bumping against the same ceiling will take getting at least two things right over the current off-season. That’s a big ask for any team that isn’t already a contender.
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