All the attention has been on the playoffs and LAFC in the last couple weeks. But I think the story of your club right now is much bigger than the departure of Dominic Kinnear. Are you discussing this? You're a major market team, right? With a downtown soccer stadium and fairly recent championships and MLS Cup runs. But right now you seem a sleeping giant. Like you're not hitting your potential. Houston got hot in the MLS conversation because it was a major Mexican American market, with all that innate soccer passion, blah blah blah. It was seen as the place Club America might try to plant their brand in the US. AEG/SUM was promoting the Mexican national team. There was the Superliga. You got Oscar de la Hoya as an owner. You had to change your name from 1836 out of sensitivity to the Mexican community. Etc etc. You were criminally fortunate to get the best team in MLS - proven heroic and personable winners - from Day 1, and they won titles right away. Fortunate BUT... The Quakes were, like, a Scottish team! Thanks to Dominic Kinnear (and John Spencer and John Doyle and Frank Yallop and Brian Quinn and Alexi Lalas and Laurie Calloway and Peter Bridgewater) the DNA and mentality of the team was always mighty mighty white. I mean somewhere around Hadrian's Wall white: Paul Dalglish white. Andrew Driver white. All those San Jose team builders were suspicious of flair. They all valued the hustle and physicality of Division 2 English football, and the squaddie college boy mentality of Bruce Arenaball, and found it hard to pay money for somebody who's going to take three touches with the ball - unless that guy had his back to the goal after collecting a route 1 bomb. Anti-glam - and cheap cheap cheap! The result, over time, was a club that seemed to set it's sights low. Just as the Quakes still do. And I'm not sure you have had an easy relationship with Latin American players. (The Quakes generally have not - nor are they comfortable with spanish speaking fans.) The league shouldn't want it's Houston market team to behave like it's the Columbus Crew. Wait that's not fair to Columbus and its savvy Latin Americans. Actually, many of the B and C market teams like SKC, RSL and the Timbers seem more ambitious than Houston. Is there any truth here, or does it just seem like I'm trolling? Or that I think Chivas USA was anything but an abomination of a concept. It's just that I had to get over the fact that Houston took my team for the better health of the league, because Houston was this incredible soccer market. And now I'm over it, mostly, and I want to see Houston be all that! So I am more interested right now in the moves and success strategies of the Houston Dynamo than I am LAFC or Team Beckham or that other hyped pipe dream, NYCFC. And it seems your club should be more fluent in latin soccer, not pandering but part and parcel of that soccer community ideally. Thanks for your forebearance, would love to hear your thoughts. Hope you have an amazing couple years as you find your way off the sheep farms and wind your way down from the highlands and out of the misty glens.
We're stuck in the middle of a weird situation. We're a decent market, but not a huge one like L.A. or NY. We are also in a Latin market, but we're so close to the border and full of new immigrants that they prefer to watch their on teams on TV instead of going to the stadium and supporting local soccer. I do agree that this is the most exciting time for the Dynamo since 2006.
Seems to me (obviously an outsider) to be potentially right up there with 2006 and getting your awesome stadium. I'm as excited as the next guy by new teams coming into MLS, but the success of the Red Bulls are more important to me than NYCFC, the Galaxy more important the LAFC, DC or the Crew more important than Orlando or Miami, Houston more important than Atlanta. I hate seeing all those empty seats.
you came here looking for intelligent football conversation? Hell we discuss tacos and women in dese parts.
it's hard to say that the current plan is to field a "scottish white" team. Four, sometimes Five starters are white with two others on the bench. Over half of this team is non white. Trying to understand the comparison of what this team was 9 years ago and how that correlates to what it is now. and how skin color has anything to do with success on the field. how do you set your sights low over time and go to four finals? yes chiva usa was an abomination of a concept. anything steeped is racism is an abomination. us missing the playoffs this year for only the second time had nothing to do with lack of "fluent latin soccer" or some beholdenence to "white scottish soccer". i do agree with the assessment of us not hitting our potential - either on or off the field. and the description of first year team was humorously accurate. it does appear that we need to be more ambitious, especially when we were told that very thing would happen by our owners; but our salary cap management has kept us from getting the likes of Martins, Dempsey, BWP, Henry, Jermaine Jones, Charlie Davies, Keane, Donovan, eddie johnson, etc.
I was ready to hate on this thread but I found myself agreeing with most of it. We were trying to play like Blackpool in weather more suited for something else. Btw, I should just ignore the comment but for the last time: Mexican is an ethnicity, national identity NOT a racial category. Sort of like a Catalan or a or a Brasilian or a British person that can come in different colors. It's not that difficult people.
Seems like trolling to me. I do agree that success in some of the legacy MLS markets is important because you can't just keep expanding and moving teams and churning them forever. Columbus had some real poor attendance this past weekend which has to be a concern
It isn't trolling, it's just something so obvious and talked about that no, we're not "talking about this." Everyone knows, we live here. It's palpable in everyday life, even outside of sports to an extent. Anyway, what I would prefer to see is a change from "I don't know how to direct my first touch out of my feet," to "oh look, I'm 1-on-1 with my man, I guess I'll smoke his ass off the dribble or with quick combination."
HdeB, what a pleasant surprise. Correct. We are the gate way to the Americas and our very diverse and very soccer savvy population knows its football. We have regressed as a MLS club for the specific reason that bean counters run this powerful MLS club like a means to an end. Profit margin. Nothing more and nothing less. They have also made every effort to clamp down on the traditions and fun that we had at Robertson as renters to what we have now which is lack of any traditions like homefield advantage and large supporters section leading the charge. If you think ^^^this than your once very established street cred went to an insane low for me. I have followed your posts for years on BigSoccer and I thought you were more on the ball, no pun intended! if your quantify MLS with anything Mexican American than I don't know if I should laugh or cry! HAHA! Amazingly yes. Circa 2005. I lead the charge against this taking place. I knew how disastorous it was to be for a U.S. city to have a mega wealthy owner from next door own an MLS team. Bad, bad logic. Yes, AEG looks at it this way, why grow the following of the U.S. when there is already a built in following for el Try to milk from with little effort into marketing or promotion. Fotunately we didn't have to change our name of the city of Houston out of sensitivity to the Mexican community. You know, General Sam Houston, the evil Mexican baby killing leader in the year 1836 whose last name was choosen for our great city. The Venezuelan leftist female soccer know it all that is Sylvia Garcia made threats of boycot over 1836 which is amazing in itself in that she, as a Latina, found a way to take a giant shit on famous Latinos in Texas history to make no mention she, as I told her and her staff to be more wise or it was going to cost her in the long run, she never showed up after promising her support after the name change. But thanks for bringing this all back up. After 9 seasons and lots of fun I had forgotten how incredible it was to even launch this AEG relocation project there in March and April of 2006. Houston was blessed. Garber and MLS were criminally fortunate. They coulda moved this team to Des Moines Iowa or St. Louis or Miami and the team woulda hit skid row! Little fan interest, no stadium plan from local government and eventually another move to a new relocated city. The Landon Donovan, Troy Dayak and Manny Lagos Teams of '01 and '03 were not the teams of Ching and Moreno and Ricardo Clark that we got in 2006, Wade, Eddie, Pat, De Ro and many others were the cross over to those teams but there was considerable shift in players from the MLS Cup years, specifically NO LANDON DONOVAN. That is on us in Houston and our ability to push our guys on versus Chivas USA there in that opening playoff round. The players spoke specifically of being down in the first leg but having this awesone home field advantage in Houston to return to and get past Chivas, which went down to injury time and a Ching header form the heavens. Again, if this team is in St. Louis Missouri, they are not winning in the playoffs to even get to the MLS Cup final that first year and history is radically different. Meh. I guess I see what you are saying. "I mean somewhere around Hadrian's Wall white" Now this is a good one! I donna maing, Donovan, Lagos, De Ro, that other fast middie there in the early 0t's all had loads of flair and technical talent. It appears you are painting with too broad of a brush on the talent level, or lack there of, of those San Jose teams in '01 and '03. Our FO is clueless so leave them be. Our coach and the staff did indeed have some wierd love hate for Latinos either domestically grown or imports. This we agree on. My inner city High School program, where I have sent one player on the play in MLS, Chicago, is the most diverse High School in the entire nation. Our Houston market is ripe for the developing with the correct strategy. Basically do the opposite of what AEG has done and let our youth get a better shot with a more comprehensive strategy. You are hitting more than missing but you have fired so many rounds off in this one OP that that is saying something! HAHA!!! Anyone worth their salt called the Chivas USA project for the stinker it was, and was going to end up being. However, MLS HQ officials and others in charge of millionaires and billionaires and their money often turn down free advise from the common folks on BigSoccer that know better and can save some fat cats a lot of money. More so since this league is so Single Intity it hurts. Stop right there. NO ONE! And I mean NO ONE I knew wanted San Jose to move to Houston. Us Houstonians wanted our own team in MLS. To start clean as an expansion team over getting someone elses moved MLS team. And certianly most of us had reservations about getting in bed with AEG who we know was fuking over the loyal and passionate Bay Area soccer fans all cuz they didn't want to fund a Stadium in the Silicon Valley Area and lied year after year to Dom and Wade and Ching on the fact that the team was NOT moving even though AEG was already down here in Houston cutting deals with the HSA and U of H. So any talk of "Houston took my team" doesn't fly partner. That talk can stop right there. If anything, us in Houston showed tremendous respect and hospitality to "your team" when a move was forced on us Houstonians and the relocated coaches/players. Done and done. I am a direct decendant of a Scot Highlander family so the highlands of no backed up Highway 59's or cool misty glens are always desired over shitty weather, worse traffic and no local ownership.
This seems like an unproductive conversation but I want to make this point - regardless of differences with the Dynamo FO, painting AEG as if they are evil for wanting cash flow out of this venture is unfair and inappropriate. I read all of these "FUAEG" posts like they have Montgomery Burns back in LA saying things like "Smithers! Make sure that Canetti bags up all of the unsold popcorn from the season and gets out her to StubHub Center to sell this weekend!!". Without AEG, Houston may not have an MLS team even today.
Btw, here is our Starting XI just this time last year, ya know, when we were making the playoffs. With only one Scottish white boy to boot! There are three other 'Merican white boys but the rest are Latino and 'Merican brothas! So again, in Houston, Dom went way different than the picture you painted on those San Jose days and being Team Highlanders.
And yet we all know this Westie. There is nothing new here you are posting. It's a business venture, this MLS. Check. Soccer fans in the U.S. have known this since 1994. The fact that other owners bailed and AEG took them over is specifically on AEG. As it is on Lamar Hunt. A man who started the old NASL up and has lost money on pro men's outdoor soccer in our nation for decades before AEG was even a company so spare us the AEG thanks parade. You didn't even mention Lamar and his family owning 3 teams at one point for example. AEG is a global entertainment group so getting stadiums built via MLS franchsies in various cities in our nation is a means to an end. C'mon man. Business 101.
Nah, really I have watched Dom's team evolve somewhat and appreciated how the complexion changed and more of Concacaf was incorporated. ...because Concacaf players come cheap. (See how I followed one unfair ethnic-baiting joke with another there? Blame Canada!) Celt Texan, I guessed my post would bait you, though that wasn't my intent. Thanks again for your forbearance. I still think AEG made the Houston move happen. And the reason AEG got fixated on Houston for MLS was they saw your city as a major Mexican American market. Is that not correct? Is my theory incorrect or my terminology (politically) incorrect? I apologize for that too but I've never found the terms for this discussion (Hispanic, Latin, Mexican...) clear or satisfying. However, that can't prevent the discussion when we're talking about the success and future of American pro soccer in a market like Houston. In my biased opinion, San Jose was the best team from 2002 - 2005. So don't think I'm selling them short. And don't you dare forget Mulrooney! But guys like Yallop could appreciate DeRo if he was chasing acres and allowing us to keep 10 men back. Ching maybe wasn't white-skinned but 'cmon, he was Brian McBride's brother from another mother - and Kinnear and Yallop played Ching over DeRo every chance they got. Kinnear was playing Ricardo Clark with rookie Danny O'Rourke over DeRo - every week!!!! Kinnear would have benched himself just like Laurie Calloway did, for being a wispy midfield distributor. Our (shared!) old school British DNA kept replicating itself and solidified into an embedded regime that was unappreciative of latin soccer and tone deaf to its audience. That's a shame in a market like San Jose or Houston. But by now, are some of us veteran MLS fans assuming this league is by and for a whitebread American audience, you know like the great Pacific PaleNess I mean NorthWest? Will we subsist primarily on American Outlaw and Sam's Army types and hope the casual ticket buyers reflect the diversity of our cities? Or can Mexican soccer passion be more significantly attracted to and served by MLS?
All true but not the whole story. US Soccer is a NON-profit with a mission to promote a domestic professional league. Funky, huh? So you can see how they got stuck in with groups like AEG via entities like "Soccer United Marketing," which rolled MLS, World Cup TV rights and the Mexican National team into one splendid "confluence of interests." But AEG's handling of the Quakes was extremely damaging to a very significant and soccer passionate market here in the SF Bay Area. And despite being so reliant on AEG for the survival of MLS, I don't think US Soccer should have rubber-stamped it.
Odd in that the talent is to be had in our region and Dom did well to find it however there was many of us wanting our club to look a bit further South to the rest of our Americas. Which we got one Argie and one Brasileno. Loyal servant for us in Houston. Cool pic. FYI, the first ever Houston Dynamo Supporters' Battle Song was taken directly from the Scottish Supporters Tartan Army Song. True story! Yup. AEG thought, oh great, Houston, there are a ton of Latinos down there and Latino=footy ticket buying customers. So you are correct there however Mexican-Americans have been in Texas for centuries and when asked what is their favorite football team they respond with Cowboys or Texans. There are of course many Mexicans living in the U.S. often nicknamed 'Merica. So merge these two categories with all the other hispanic cultures that settle in Houston that makes us so diverse and they are simply called Latinos with the local heritage ones calling themselves Tejanos or Texicans. I agree. To many Latinos, MLS=11 white boy donkeys playing kick n run, hack, chewed up sawker so to even know down this preconceived notion is a first. Then actually having an MLS team that does NOT play this way is the second step. Then winning always moves the needle. What is odd however is that even with winning Championships and having technical players on our team here in Houston, the local Latino media is so lazy and uniformed that they don't do their part to disect the sport and talk about how Houston has such a talented team for Latinos to enjoy. I mean in March of 2007 our Houston Dynamo beats the best team in Mexican domestic league history, that Pachuca side of 2004 to 2009, beats Los Tuzos and goes on to an epic return leg and that did indeed move the needle for some in our city but the local Latino media still did not give that showing it's proper due. Some cities are very homogenous and some are very diverse. I don't give MLS HQ enough credit to be ahead of the curve when planing this divide or should I say how to plan to merge this divide in our soccer culture. It can be done as the younger soccer fan is more apt to be open minded and worldly but it does take work. Our fans have done a very good job of taking to our team and representing out at the Stadium come game nights. ANd us in Houston are still not even 10 years old. You are hitting more on FC Dallas and their decade head start on us in Houston and they are just now coming around to getting a more diverse fan base at their home games. I thought that's what SuperLiga did indeed offer and was a start. But paying the Mexican winner a cool million bucks and paying the MLS winner way less than that really trainwrecked that tournament. Now it is the CCL and until MLS team beat Lig MX teams, Mexicans will focus on Copa Libertadores action and still mostly shun Upper North American domestic and Cup action.
Playing style is a big deal. You will never catch me watching 2 mid-table Premiership teams go at it because stylistic it's different than what I grew up watching in La Liga Mx. I'm not making a value judgement, because I know your average English fan wouldn't recognize the game being played if you sat them down to watch Puebla vs Queretaro. Recognizable players would also help. They don't even have to be Mexican as players like Sinha, Suazo, Chaco, Pony Ruiz, La Gata Fernandez and others that come through ingratiate themselves to different fanbases.
Thank you for the thoughtful replies. You all have the first-hand knowledge, though I partly wish I posted this in the general MLS discussion thread -- because IMO fans should be paying more attention to Houston's next steps than Magic Johnson and Tony Robbins.
My take on it, is that you have to have a winning team in this city to pack the stadiums. The make up of the metro area here is the most diverse in the U.S., but don't get me wrong here. If you were to get a good TV deal with the Spanish language channels, it would go far to promote MLS with one of the larger ethnic groups in Texas. I think the Dynamo could do well with a bit more marketing on Telemundo, Azteca, and Univision, or more promotions with La Michoacana or similar vendors. I think that it is a gold mine here, but we haven't found a way to promote. The FIFA video game generation is coming, and we could add to that with a large Latin American viewership as well. The club needs to figure out which way to go first.
Multi rep if I could. I've got a pick ax and a strong back if anyone wants to go grass roots campaing with me and my peeps. Once again into the breatch!!!
I can't believe I am responding to this but if it was feasible to tap this gold mine with limited risk - and the tenor of these posts imply the Dynamo are too busy looking for pennies to see the dollar bills laying around - it would have been done by now. We've heard this for 9 years now and I doubt the team is that stubborn or racist.
It will take considerable risk to grow the brand. I do think that you would see losses for several years before they begin to pay off. That's just how the sport is.