With champagne flowing, the music blaring and the Houston Dynamo players dancing and chanting, there was a feeling of utter euphoria in their locker room Sunday after beating the New England Revolution to win a second consecutive MLS Cup.
It's safe to say the feeling was a bit better than the last time Houston played at RFK Stadium.
In that May 26 game, Dynamo fell behind 2-0 before a half hour was gone, finally losing 2-1. After losing five out of six games, the defending MLS champions had hit rock bottom. It was time for an intervention.
"Hey, let's get it all out in the open and get the emotions going," Dominic Kinnear told his team during a 54-minute closed door meeting following the game. "After that, we took the attitude of last year is last year and let's get back there this year."
Kinnear said veteran goalkeeper Pat Onstad addressed the team, telling them that they were "no longer on the podium," referring to the trophy presentation at the end of the MLS Cup Final.
"We just weren't playing well as a team," Onstad said. "From there on in, I think we trusted each other for the rest of the season."
"Just play," was the message Kinnear drove home.
"That was a hard loss to D.C. here and at that point we weren't even in the playoffs yet," Richard Mulrooney said. "It was early on, but we wouldn't have even made the playoffs if the season ended that day. Guys opened up their hearts, spoke the truth and we needed to do that."
Dynamo won the next five games and were unbeaten in nine in a row until a 1-0 loss to the Charleston Battery in the U.S. Open Cup. Their next league loss wouldn't be until Aug. 4.
"It reinvigorated the players," Craig Waibel said. "We're not used to being bad, we're not used to being mediocre. We were both of those things, the lower side of mediocre after that loss in May."
If you're looking for the point of the season where Houston righted their ship, it was that night.
"That's when we realized we weren't playing the type of soccer we want to play," Brad Davis said. "We just sat and hashed everything out for 45 minutes to an hour after the game, got it all out on the table and we figured it out from there."
Remarkably, Houston went from winning two of its first eight league games after a heartbreaking 5-2 loss to Pachuca that eliminated them from the CONCACAF Champions' Cup to winning a second consecutive MLS Cup. Some around the league had written Dynamo off, but their attitude didn't waver after that night in May.
"That's pretty much when our season turned around," Brian Mullan said. "After that we went on our long winning streak and it led us to this point here."
Dylan Butler is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
