The Ups and Downs of Being a Dynamo Fan

Being a Dynamo fan is not for the faint of heart. After a decade of malinvestment and terrible strategy moves (e.g. permanently trading away an international player slot on the roster), a definite case could be made that it’s easier building an expansion team franchise from scratch than rebuilding the Dynamo. And after seeing St. Louis and FC Cincinnati this year, I don’t think many would argue the reverse.

Still, a lot has been accomplished in a relatively short amount of time, and hope springs eternal in H-Town.

Which is what makes this last week so difficult to take. Between Open Cup and regular season play, the Dynamo have had a run of a lot of games to play these past 10 days, with another road-game coming up this Saturday.

After losing to MNUFC on the road in the regular season game, the team returned to Texas for a solid, but stressful game against Dallas where they drew 1:1. For the most part I thought the team showed signs of continuing their forward trajectory into the season, with a rock-solid defensive showing, an excellent midfield that appeared sloppy at times, and a completely uninspired attack.

Next came a hometown rematch against MNUFC in the US Open Cup where we won 4:0. I was at that game and got to see the team up close. We got to see Aliyu on the field at the front and I was impressed by how much it transformed our attack. As promised, he’s a player that gets in behind the defense and disrupts the line. There were several times it was obvious that he’s still settling in, and had no idea where he should be, but the potential was obvious from the moment he got on the pitch. It became even more evident that following Saturday against Austin, where the Dymamo ground down the Austin side in a 2:1 match. Not only were we hopeful this season, but we were shaping up to be dangerous. The rest of the league hadn’t noticed yet, but we are becoming the kind of team that would disrupt all sorts of playoff aspirations for bigger, better teams. The rebuild was happening faster than I had hoped. While not perfect, we had depth in defense, one of the best midfields in the league with a serviceable second string on the bench and we were starting to get an attack worth talking about.

Of course, just when you start getting cocky, it all comes crashing down. Last night’s 6:2 loss to Vancouver was a travesty. From the opening Vancouver goal less than 20 seconds into the match, to Houston regaining the lead at 2:1, and then through the rest of the game, we looked off. And not just off, but defeated. The mentality was lacking, the execution was lacking, and the team vision was lacking. The low-point for me was Nelson Quiñones getting sent off with a red card for a face slap to a rival player. The physical contact was minimal and not truly worthy of a red card in terms of danger to the player. But the move was obviously aggressive, made in full view of the ref, and was definitely targetd at the player’s head. All of this made the call fair given the standards of the league. And all of it was due to a lack of composure and professionalism from one of our supposed rising stars. It was the culmination of a series of events in game that just harkened back to last year where the team just looked angry and incapable of being considered much of a threat in the league.

And that’s the rub right now. I very much want to believe this turnaround is happening and brighter days are ahead. But when you see a performance like last night you realize how much further we have to go.