HOUSTON – The Houston Dynamo avoided back-to-back losses by getting a 2-0 win over the Columbus Crew. Mauro Manota and Tómas Martinez scored a goal each in the half.
Here are three thoughts from the game:
Rebound win and performance
After a letdown loss on the road to the LA Galaxy, a game that Houston played well enough to earn a draw but conceded a goal in the 88th minute, winning 2-0 at home was just what the doctored ordered.
Head coach Wilmer Cabrera said after the game that his side came out with personality. His players agree with him.
“I thought it was important for us to rebound,” Dynamo defender AJ DeLaGarza said. “We are playing a team that was a little bit beaten with three games in a week and then traveling here. We needed to jump on them early and we did that.”
Houston got on the scoreboard in the third minute after some high-pressure from Alberth Elis let to a Mauro Manotas tap-in goal. Houston wanted to bounce back after their road loss in Los Angeles, and the first fives minutes showed it.
First clean sheet of the season
La Naranja was winning games but in this early part of the season, they had yet to notch a clean sheet.
While they had only played six games before entering their bout with the Crew, not having a clean sheet was something important to the Dynamo.
“It’s huge. We’ve obviously been winning a lot of games, but getting the clean sheet is big for our confidence,” Dynamo ‘keeper Joe Willis said.
“The defenders were incredible today. I think we got five or six blocked shots around the box, goal-line clearances. It was a real team effort to get the win.”
Cabrera notes that defensively, the team is in better shape because the backline is going to “click” since they’ve played many games together now.
He adds that the team also looked at cleaning up their mistakes.
“So far, we have been conceding too many goals on PKs, set pieces. So, today we received some corners but we were sharp,” Cabrera said. “We were good and that is important because we’re making adjustments.”
An early lead
The Dynamo got control of the game almost after kickoff. Houston pressured the Crew high up the field and it resulted in the game’s first score, a Manotas goal in the 3rd minute.
Minutes later, Manotas had an opportunity to go add another goal to his tally but his low-shot effort was parried away by Crew ‘keeper Zack Steffen.
While Houston notched an early lead, Cabrera says the early score could have turned out bad for Houston.
“I thought it was a moment where we were happy to score right away in three minutes, but it is dangerous when you score that soon because that makes you feel comfortable and relaxed,” Cabrera said. “We don’t want that. We didn’t want that but the players were solid.”
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.