Write On Sports LLC - "Houston Dynamo 2006: Relocated and Rock-Steady" by Jeff Bull

Houston Dynamo 2006: Relocated and Rock-Steady

2007-01-12 20:58:30 | By: Jeff Bull

To all appearances, the team that would become the Houston Dynamo ended Major League Soccer’s (MLS) 2005 season by getting screwed over twice. That story begins with the relocation of the club from San Jose to Houston: thus the San Jose Earthquakes became the Houston Dynamo, a change that required shifting all operations 1,900 miles eastward. But the bitterest pill came with a first-round playoff ouster at the hands of intra-state rivals, the Los Angeles Galaxy. It wasn’t just that San Jose finished the 2005 regular season as the league’s top team; they also stomped the same Galaxy team the weekend before the playoffs by a score of 3-1.

Fast forward one year and the newly christened Houston Dynamo are reigning MLS champions. Not only did the club survive their premature ouster from the playoffs and a move to a new city - one that started with a public-relations meltdown revolving around naming the club no less - but they thrived. By MLS Cup, they’d built a bond with Houston soccer fans strong enough to prompt thousands of said fans to take the short bus ride to the final in Dallas. Video from the final shows a stadium painted Dynamo orange for the day. Not bad for a nominal expansion club.

New Men

The trick, of course, was that Houston wasn’t a true expansion club. Moreover, the team that relocated from San Jose was top-to-bottom solid. With few changes required, Houston didn’t make many. Some players moved on - goalkeeper Jon Conway left early in the season for Red Bull New York - and a couple - midfielders Mark Chung and Ian Russell - retired. Another player well known in MLS circles, forward Ronald Cerritos, would be released in the middle of the 2006 season. All in all, though, Houston’s players saw plenty of familiar faces when they walked into their new locker room.

The Bad

The worst thing one can say about Houston’s season is that they failed to top FC Dallas in the Western Conference table in spite of being the better team. The fact they went on to win MLS Cup renders pointing this out feel a bit like fussing over microscopic pieces of lint on a perfectly good coat. Still, that second-place finish grew from something significant: Houston’s season-long difficulty with putting away games. They ended the season sharing the record for the most ties with Chivas USA: they tallied 13 ties in 32 regular season games.

While Houston stayed in the playoff frame for the overwhelming majority, if not all, of the regular season, this meant they left it till late to qualify for post-season play. There’s something instructive, though, about the game in which they did it; that came against DC United on the final day of September. DC United, who was by that time in the depth of their late-season tail-spin, flat out-played Houston on the day and, in spite of playing in Houston, the latter looked for the world like a clear underdog. Houston held on until a moment of brilliance - a Brian Ching bicycle kick from further out than I’d ever seen one scored - ended the game and guaranteed Houston’s place in the post-season.

The Good

That game against DC United gets at what makes the Houston Dynamo one of the league’s best teams. One can just name a position and Houston boasts a good- or even great-for-MLS player to fill it, whether in goal with Pat Onstad, the defense in Wade Barrett, Eddie Robinson and Craig Waibel, or at forward with the already mentioned Ching, who scored the vital equalizer in MLS Cup, and a crafty workhorse named Alejandro Moreno. They’re best, perhaps, at midfield with Brad Davis on the left, Brian Mullan burning up the right, and Ricardo Clark commanding the middle. But the real trick is how well the parts work together; no matter how brilliant Ching’s goal against DC was, it was the 86 minutes of rough and steady play preceding the goal that allowed it to stand up.

The one player left deliberately unmentioned - Canadian midfielder, Dwayne DeRosario - deserves a place apart. It’s not so much about his team-leading numbers, or the cracking and quick goal he scored against England’s Chelsea FC in the MLS All-Star game. The reality is, few if any players in MLS can generate excitement like DeRosario, as revealed in a vivid memory of a Houston home crowd rising to its feet as one great, bright-orange mass when DeRosario picked up the ball on the sideline, deep in the opposition’s defensive third. It didn’t matter that the ball came to DeRosario well outside the penalty area because the crowd expects great things from him every time he touches the ball. The same can be said for only a handful of MLS players.

Before moving on, it’s also appropriate to note Houston’s first-year fans. While it certainly helps to introduce the team to a new city by winning a championship, the fact is Houston’s fans came out long after the novelty of having a team might have worn off. Deep in the season - the same one with 13 frustrating ties, roasting Houston summer afternoons, and a long wait on the playoff spot - Houston still drew comfortably north of the league’s average attendance of 15,000.

Wrap-Up

Stifling Houston summers aside, the San Jose Earthquake’s move to Houston and change to the Dynamo turned out to be a happy one. The embrace between players, team, and city seems both mutual and eager; the former, especially, seem to gush about the fans in Houston whenever they get the chance. Better still, scattered reports relate that the team’s old fans in San Jose haven’t defected either. Put it all together - great collective spirit on the team, several of the league’s top players, as well as one of the league’s best, and doting fans - and you have a season that’s almost nauseatingly happy.

The Future

The modesty of the changes made between 2005 and 2006 look to repeat in the current off-season. The year-end review posted on MLSnet.com reports that Houston’s head coach, Dominic Kinnear, “cited no deficiencies in his squad.” Only one player from the last season, Canadian midfielder/defender Adrian Serioux, left the club; he was picked off in the expansion draft for next year’s genuine expansion club, Toronto FC. As well as Serioux played in MLS Cup, he was long more back-up than starter in Houston. But with everyone else staying put - for now; both Ching and DeRosario have attracted some overseas interest, the latter in particular - and none of the players too far on the wrong side of 30, Kinnear’s assessment of his squad seems a safe one. To be sure, DeRosario leaving would clearly hurt the club, though not nearly as badly as Ching; they’re simply thinner at forward. But even if both players left, Houston would slip from contender to outside contender at worst.

As the cliché goes, Houston’s status as champions means there is definitely a target on their backs. Unfortunately for the rest of the league, they’re up for the challenge.

Editor's Note: This is part of a series wrapping up the 2006 season for each of Major League Soccer's 12 teams. Readers can find other entries in the series by clicking on the author's byline.