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.

An MLS History Project, 2007: A Grand Re-Re-Re-Opening

All was right in New England the next season...

“The 2007 season was often cited as the first season in the modern-era of Major League Soccer.”

This claim is currently under investigation…but the phrasing begs a question: did another season replace this one as the season “often cited as the first season of the modern-era of Major League Soccer”? Also, is that hyphen necessary?

Grammatical/verb tense cheap shots aside (to think, what someone else could do with any of my posts), Major League Soccer saw a handful of changes going into the 2007 season that stake the claim. For one, MLS allowed jersey sponsors for the first time that season (one of the sponsors hints at what might have nudged them over the line: “The international recognized brand, Red Bull became the shirt sponsor of New York Red Bulls, whom they owned.”). The long, uneven path toward standing up an international club competition in the CONCACAF region got a boost as well; while they wouldn’t switch to the CONCACAF Champions League until the 2008 season, MLS and Liga MX ran the Superliga up the flagpole – and, holy shit, the New England Revolution won the 2008 edition, beating the Houston Dynamo on penalty kicks. Turns out pigs can fly, man…

…but if I had to name the one thing that finally made these regional tilts worth playing, I’d go with the magnificent duels Houston played against La Liga’s Pachuca CF. They played the first during the 2007 season, back when it remained the CONCACAF Champions Cup. Houston, those beautiful bastards made it possible to believe a North American team might one day one it all.

Two new soccer-specific stadiums opened – one of them hosting a new expansion team (welcome aboard, Toronto FC!); the other was the Colorado Rapids’ Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, aka, The Dick (tell me they still call it that) – and MLS made some tweaks to the rules of competition (again; more below), but it was the arrival of the designated-player (DP) rule that really puts a spine into that “first season in the modern-era of MLS” claim. I think just about everyone likely to find this lonely post knows how the DP rule works (short version: “permitting one big-ticket foreign player to play for each team without going against the team's salary cap”), but it’s fun to look at who showed up in that inaugural class:

MLS 2X6: Sending Off DeRo; The (Imaginary?) Jewsbury/Johnson Situation + 6 More!

But....TRADITION!!!

First of all, and son of a bitch, somebody pinched my feature title (yes, yes, almost certainly before I first used it, but still)! It turns out that the Portland Timbers' official site carries a feature titled 2 X 4. It's pure puff-piece to me, but I’m not about to go toe-to-toe with a media behemoth like portlandtimbers.com...so I went with the obvious solution – e.g. add a couple inches to one side.

That said, since I'm rarely going to be timely posting this thing once-per-week, I really need to kill on content. Or at least produce an amusing read. Gulp.

TWO...
1) A Legend Quietly Departs Stage Left (Tres Canadien)
And that quiet piece is curious because, as pointed out in a "what all did he mean for Canadian soccer?" think piece, Dwayne DeRosario didn't play quiet. A showy goal celebration defined his career (on top of pulling off one of the most memorable political moments in MLS history*) and, prior to the last couple seasons, De Rosario could flat-out fucking ball (more on that later). As has been pointed out all over, DeRosario could have got a long (tortured) Landon-Donovan-esque arrivederci had he retired right – that's as opposed to doing well short of a whole lot for Toronto FC last season and posting a whisper via Twitter. Happily, the tributes came in regardless (even archived ones) and DeRosario absolutely earned it. He was every bit Donovan's peer, a ready answer in any argument about who was the best player in MLS for everyone who didn't like Donovan. Now, personally, I always preferred DeRo, who was gritty and inventive were Donovan was practiced and polished (to diamond clarity, it bears pointing out). Hit that first link above and you'll see why DeRosario had his haters, too, if for vastly different reasons than Donovan. With the latter, it was an argument about phoning it in, while it was a whiff of arrogance that dogged the former throughout his career. Well, screw that: I like my players messy; that's why I didn't really take to Donovan until, 1) his freakout departure to Cambodia, and 2) I could no longer ignore all the, uh, records.