HOUSTON – The Houston Dynamo are in dire straits after failing to pick up points for the third consecutive time at home. Worse yet, the Orange have failed to score in the past two games.
The 1-0 loss to the Chicago Fire Saturday is the eighth loss in a 10 game span that includes two victories.
Despite the lack of goals, Dynamo head coach said his team dominated the game. And while Houston did dominate possession, 55 to 44 percent, the scoring opportunities it created were far and few between.
Houston had four shots on target, 3 in the first half, and one in the second. Still, Cabrera said his team dominated.
“If you watched the game you know that we dominated. We cannot lie. I don’t lie to you guys [the press]. When we are not playing well I come over here and say ‘We didn’t play well.’ But today we played well,” Cabrera said. “We dominated this team but we couldn’t score.”
And therein lies the problem.
On paper, Houston ticks every box as having dominated the game, but in the end, the scoreline matters most. And the Dynamo were nowhere to be seen.
“This has been a difficult season for us, the strikers – even though I have scored eight goals, and Albert as well, as well as Memo, in the last few matches we have had a shortage of goals,” Mauro Manotas said.
“We have tried to score in every possible way. Today we did it again, we tried, unfortunately (the ball) could not find the back of the net and we have to keep working, keep pushing forward and hopefully, we can score in next game.”
The Fire wasn’t any better at creating chances, but the one they did create, they finished off.
“This one hurts. Playing at home, losing 1-0, not creating too many chances. One mistake, last game – this game. And that’s it, you know. Both games, one mistake and that was it,” DaMarcus Beasley said.
“That punished us and we couldn’t find a way to put a ball in the back of the net. It’s difficult, it’s tough right now. It hurts. And I myself, uh, we can say, yeah this one hurt.”
Saturday’s 1-0 loss to the Chicago Fire leaves the Dynamo with 11 games to play in Major League Soccer, with four of them at home.
Houston sits in 9th place in the Western Conference with 30 points and sits below the playoff line. The goal of returning to the MLS playoffs is slipping away with each game.
Does the team feel the pressure?
Cabrera said emphatically that the teams feels the pressure, especially after two subpar performances at home. He adds that the team’s remaining 11 games are essentially finals for the Orange.
With that in mind, has Cabrera considered changing things up to give the team a spark?
“We have all our best forwards. Those are the ones that score goals for us. So, it’s not like we didn’t play our best formation. We played but that’s the game,” Cabrera said. “Sometimes you are are going to score three, four. Sometimes we cannot score and right now we are in a drought scoring goals.”
Houston will have to do something it hasn’t done much of in the past three years if it wants to return to the MLS playoffs — win on the road. If they fail to do that, Saturday’s loss could be looked at as the first nail in the coffin of the Dynamo’s 2019 season.
Jesus Acevedo Jr. is the Editor-in-Chief of The Bayoucitian. He’s an award-winning bilingual journalist from Houston, TX. A graduate of the University of Houston, he has written for the Houston Chronicle, La Voz de Houston, MLSsoccer.com, and ProSoccerUSA.
Before becoming a journalist, Jesus spent his early 20s drumming his way across Houston with two bands — Shortcomings and InsertNameHere. The memories that Jesus made as a musician were the seeds that started the idea for the comedy, Houmans: The Series.