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.]

Thumbnail History

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.

Portland Timbers 2-1 Houston Dynamo: Good and Good Enough

You taste it after. Trust me.

My man of the match for the Portland Timbers 2-1, get-on-to-the-next-round win over the Houston Dynamo was Larrys Mabiala. The reason: as born out by the box score, Houston set up the penultimate ball over and over again - and they posted 24 shots (over Portland’s 13), and crossed into the area 22 times (to Portland’s eight, a refreshing detail) - but one Timber or another got in the way of damn near everyone of those shots and crosses. The Dynamo’s four shots on target attest to that. Mabiala didn’t cut out everything that flew into the area, but he cleared more than his share, and I think Portland owes the win to its defensive core.

Before going on, I simply have to share my delight at hearing ESPN’s Alejandro Moreno talk about the staggering end of the Houston Dynamo dynasty, the 2011 and 2012 MLS Cup teams that “succeeded” by playing the grinding brand of soccer that fans enjoyed and neutrals endured, maybe even suffered. A throwback to the Bobby Boswell/Geoff Cameron juggernaut was a moment for a guy who marched through the first 20 years of MLS history (e.g., me; for the record, Moreno was on the much more compelling 2006 MLS Cup-winning Houston team).

Back to the present, Moreno dredged up that history in the context of the Dynamo’s shaky recent history - e.g., missing the playoffs, and badly, for four out of the past five years (and they finished 10th in 2017, the one season they made it; grim shit). The question was posed as a trade-off - pleasure versus success, enjoying watching your team versus reaching a final - and, as an argument, it manages to be fair and irrelevant in the same breath. Those early 2010s Houston teams took bigger risks on attacking talent (e.g., legit MLS legend Brad Davis getting enough out of Will Bruin and Cam Weaver), while Houston’s more recent editions looked to the best attacking talent Honduras has to offer - e.g., Alberth Elis, Mauro Manotas, and, until this season, Romell Quioto - often at the expense of a good defense, on the grounds they’d run over the opposition.

With more money coming into the league [Ed. - This is too loose], Houston has been able to hold on to its Honduran talent (Quioto excepted, who, incidentally, did all right for Montreal this week) and build up its defense a bit. They’ve still struggled a bit over past couple seasons, coming in over average, but not heavily, for goals against, but they’ve also attempted to cure by calling in Aljaz Struna and Matias Vera in 2019, then ripping the fucking heart out of Timbers’ fans by swiping up Zarek Valentin for their 2020 roster. All the same…surely, I’m not the only one who saw Houston try to win this game by pressing Portland, right? Especially after they went down at the 35th minute by way of a straight-up glorious striker’s goal by Jeremy Ebobisse.

Portland Timbers 2-1 Houston Dynamo: A Win, a Loss, an Uneasy Sensation

Drafty...

“Timbers fans will never forget the complex emotional rush as he took the Providence Park field as a Timber one last time.”

That’s from The Mothership’s recap and, personally, nothing about the emotional rush was “complex.” I watched the Portland Timbers’ stressful (please, God, not another draw) 2-1 win over the Houston Dynamo with only a couple people, and we toasted Adi at least three times last night. Timbers fans had the fun of watching Adi grow into its first genuinely reliable forward of the Major League Soccer era, and that means Adi will leave a little history behind when he goes. Did I tear up when he scored the game winner? No, shut up…that was…hold on, look over there! (I’ll loop back to this.)

The recap also featured this statement:

“Blanco was in contention for [Man of the Match], given his opening goal and the work he did in breaking down Houston's defense all match. But then Adi stepped on the field, seized the narrative, and made his last one count.”

Nah, it was Blanco, not least because that (frenetic) game-winner doesn’t happen if he doesn’t rescue the ball from (pretty sure it was) Alfredo Machado’s sliding tackle. After a whole damn night of seeing Portland shove the ball forward with the blunt cluelessness of a toddler straining to shove the square-shaped object into the star-shaped hole, that moment of composure really stood out. I’ll skip the over-long back-story for what pops into my head every time I see a team force the ball forward like that* [ed. see note, at the bottom], but, even when you play into the teeth of a team’s defense, you still want to hit around the actual goddamn teeth. The Timbers kicked at one tooth after another more most of last night, and it very nearly cost them two points. And a serious dent to team/fan morale. So, God bless you, Mr. Blanco, and you too, Mr. Adi.

It takes a goal with that much narrative and poetry to it stuff (hold on, 80-12, yeah) 68 minutes of teeth-grating frustration into the place where I keep my repressed memories (e.g., that short hitch in the KGB). Between Houston’s (too-soon!) equalizer and the game-winner, an almost tangible gloom hung over the table where I sat, watching and stewing as Dynamo players seemed to read every pass Portland played into midfield. I’m looking at the box score now and I’m calling it what it is - a damned filthy propaganda. Unless the league has re-defined the word “pass’ to include cases where the player controls it for less than one second, the Timbers never completed 83% of its passes last night, and I think they got the numbers backwards on the duels too. (Maybe they used a random number generator? A rooster pecking corn?)

Houston Dynamo 2-2 Portland Timbers: An Unwelcome Comparison

Also, these get fucked up real fast.

A couple, three weeks back, I posted a poll on twitter that gave a quartet of projected overall records (e.g., 6-5-3, 4-7-3, 8-2-4, etc.) with which the Portland Timbers would see out the 2017 season. I don’t remember the exact numbers (and that tweet lies buried beneath an avalanche of anti-Trumpublican venting), but I landed on each of those projections by going through the rest of Portland’s schedule and divining results based on the opposition, the venue for each game, and some vague potential plotlines for each opposing team going forward. I felt like science, people (if only social science).

How’d I do so far? I had the home game against Real Salt Lake carved in stone as an easy Portland win (violently nope!), and yesterday’s draw against the Houston Dynamo as a certain loss – both of those across all scenarios. As for the road win against the Vancouver Whitecaps, I put that down as either a loss or a draw, so…yeah, fucking psychic over here. If anyone out there wants help picking the ponies, I offer reasonable hourly rates. (A friend helpfully pointed out that I got the total number of points over the past three games right at least – four points out of nine.)

If I sound less confident than I used to over the past couple seasons about what’s happening with the Timbers, I guess my rebuttal is, can you blame me? If this team played soccer like it thwarts expectations, they’d win the triple every year.

As for yesterday, the best excuse I can offer for a bogus (and silent) “Lock of the Week” prediction was that the Dynamo team I expected didn’t show up. Part of that had to do with the twin Honduran terrors – Alberth Elis and Romell Quioto – starting the game on the bench. Portland countered with a line-up close enough to its starting eleven – and that’s even with Lawrence Olum starting in central defense (more later), and Darlington Nagbe and Sebastian Blanco starting on, at least what I assumed were the opposite of their usual assignments in the 4-2-3-1.

The Timbers opened the game strong (literally; just re-watched the condensed game and the team held possession through Nagbe’s opening shot inside the first minute), and they continued to find one another in space all the way to Diego Valeri’s opening goal. Some bad defending provided either the secondary or primary assist (Zarek Valentin fed Valeri, but, holy shit, did Leonardo make at least one terrible decision in playing that pass), but the Timbers earned that one. The team looked comfortable most of the evening, especially on the ball; the passing was respectably crisp and all concerned looked lively in spite of Houston’s sticky East Texas heat.

Portland Timbers 4-2 Houston Dynamo: Referees and Comeback's a Bitch

Referees pictured at right, toward the top...

I can’t speak for the rest of Providence Park, but, the second the halftime whistle blew, my little corner of it positively raged at the referee (Alex Chapman, right?). So many middle fingers; didn’t think there were enough hands to hold all of ‘em. And  yet, a couple notes on this.

First, referees are as the gods; we are but their playthings. To put that another way, try to think of them the same way the ancient Greek thought of their gods – i.e., as capricious beings meddling in the affairs of mortals – and you’ll keep your blood pressure in check, your face won’t develop lines later in life because you’ll twist it into contortions less often, etc. I guess this makes the crowd a Greek chorus of the crowd, and the players the armies at the foot of Troy’s walls…c’mon, we’ve all read The Iliad, yes?

As for the job of refereeing itself, I view keeping a lid on potential violence during a game as their primary mission. After that, I assume they all try get things right, but I also understand that they’ll bone a few calls most games, and it is what it is. All in all, it’s a shitty, thankless job that both fans and players make worse. A world without referees is a world without soccer, so can we all move on from this particular whining point?

OK, next point…hold on…gotta climb down from my high horse…

Second, in most cases a referee can only hurt a team when they’ve left themselves in a position to be hurt. And that’s at least a bit of what happened last night in the Portland Timbers' (eventual) 4-2 win over the Houston Dynamo: the Timbers coughed up free kicks all around their 18, and most of the fouls were legit – including the one that lead to Houston’s penalty kick. Roy Miller got his leg around Erick “Cubo” Torres, a call was reasonably made, etc.