and would later lament the lost chances -- but they were hardly clobbering Dynamo. Richard Mulrooney was winning balls and tackling hard, making Ralston work and making his teammates feel better about the absence of suspended Ricardo Clark. Mullan and Davis, even if they weren't particularly dangerous on the attack in the first hour, all but neutralized Khano Smith and Wells Thompson, New England's wide players.
Near the 60th minute, Kinnear made the significant tactical adjustment.
Ironically, he pulled the same levers of adjustment against the same side in last year's final. But then it was about keeping New England in check, and it may have taken some bite out of the game. With both teams matched up evenly across the field -- the Revs always play a 3-5-2 -- caution prevailed and boldness suffered. The match was a stalemate and the teams needed penalty kicks to decide it.
But pushing the button because you're down a goal? That pretzel is twisted in a completely different way.
"Obviously, we had to chase the game a little bit, get after a goal," Kinnear said.
So he moved left back Wade Barrett forward and pulled Davis into the middle. The adjustment was all about getting De Rosario forward a bit more. That would presumably give Ngwenya and Jaqua a little quicker support as they held the entry passes and held off the feisty Revolution defenders. Fullback Avery John was especially effective, taking advantage of the fact that Alex Prus, typically more lenient than some MLS referees, had been assigned to the middle for the match.
De Rosario was also working hard on the defensive end. The adjustment was also meant to get De Rosario a little closer to Joseph when the Revs had the ball, to shut off the Revolution's most effective weapon in distribution.
Soon after the switch De Rosario collected an errant cross and charged boldly into the penalty area from the left, supplying a ball that turned the match. Ngwenya made a mess of the pass at first but pounced on the loose ball before Revs goalkeeper Matt Reis could scramble into a better spot.
"That's a determination goal," De Rosario said of his teammate. "He fell down, got back up, was kicking and kicking until it went in."
With the game level, Kinnear wanted to fall back into his favored 4-4-2. The Dynamo players helped him resist temptation, urging for audacity over caution.
"The guys had the mentality to keep on attacking even after we got the equalizer," Kinnear said. "I give full them full credit."
Ngwenya was also varying his runs by then, finding spaces in the corners instead of always checking back into midfield. Around the 74th minute Ngwenya dug a ball out of the corner (and, importantly, making Michael Parkhurst move away from goal) to start the game-winning sequence.
The silver adidas ball -- destined to remain in Houston another year -- circled back around before Davis spotted De Rosario near the penalty spot. "De Ro" outleaped Heaps, a former basketball player at Duke, for the game-winner. De Rosario also provided the MLS Cup game-winner in 2001, his rookie campaign.
"He was able to get a quick jump on the ball," Heaps said. "I've seen some pretty good goals in some pretty big games, but that was a pretty good one."
Davis wasn't having his best night, although he did get better after moving inside. Still, Kinnear said he never considered removing Davis. Not for a moment.
"Because you never know when that guy can produce some magic to get you a big goal," the Dynamo manager said.
Steve Davis is a freelance writer who has covered Major League Soccer since its inception. Steve can be reached at BigTexSoccer@yahoo.com. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author's, and not necessarily those of Major League Soccer or MLSnet.com.
