Heading down the stretch with a lead on the road is situation the Houston Dynamo have not been in much this season.
Coming into Friday night’s game at Sporting Kansas City, the club had just one road win to their name — a May 3 result against lowly Chivas USA. For the first time since then they found themselves with a lead to protect against a rival in a hostile environment.
Despite a lack of recent experience with the situation, Houston held up. Resisting an expected push from SKC all while dealing with a change in goal due to a twisted knee to Tally Hall, the club showed they still have the ability to see a game out away from home.
“With a 3-1 lead on the road defending was very important for us and I thought we did a good job tonight,” head coach Dominic Kinnear told MLSsoccer.com by phone. “I think we defended well. We dropped deep and I think Tyler [Deric] came out to get a couple of balls there and defended well and played the ball and didn’t give away too many second chances.”
Houston was put in that situation due to some good habits that had left them so far this season.
After talking about being aggressive and getting in front on the road the last several attempts the club pulled it off when Will Bruin lashed home an opportunity off a mistake in the 36th minute. Bruin left the game after that with a twisted foot, but he gave Houston a boost heading into the locker room.
Despite giving the lead back on a 54th minute Dom Dwyer goal, the club again went against their 2014 form and instead of dropping their heads struck back not once, but twice with David Horst and Ricardo Clark scoring on set pieces.
To add a final twist, the club saw out the final 10 minutes with reserve Tyler Deric in the match. Hall attempted to play but minutes later his injured knee forced him out and his reserve into action.
“I just tell him good luck and you got this,” Horst told MLSsoccer.com when asked what he tells his new goalkeeper when entering the match. “Tyler knows what to do. He’s been here a long time, is a very good goalie and has worked his butt off. We had complete faith in him when he came in the game.”
It all worked out. Despite the mistake prone nature of 2014, Houston, at least for one night, took care of business on the road. In a season where they had not given the responses they wanted, they finally came through.
“Kansas City’s a very good offensive team and they’re a team that never says die. I thought everybody did a great job tonight up until the last whistle,” Horst said. “Hopefully we learn from this experience and keep it going the rest of this season.”
Darrell Lovell covers the Houston Dynamo for MLSsoccer.com.
