It took all year and all manner of circumstance, but Dominic Kinnear finally found himself in a position of some discomfort: the postgame interview area in the tingly minutes after Houston Dynamo's MLS Cup triumph.
The Dynamo manager has been a rock all year. So have his players. They negotiated a period of enormous transition with unshakable resolve.
Kinnear and Co. calmly assembled the organizational pieces this year, and faster than they could reasonably been expected to. The club moved halfway across a large country when the San Jose Earthquakes morphed in a few head-spinning weeks into Houston Dynamo.
So it was ironic to watch as Kinnear finally found a reason to fidget. He squirmed a bit nervously and asked sheepishly if he was prattling on too long with his answers.
"I'm a little new at this," he told no one in particular as he changed out of a wet jacket, moistened apparently by one part man sweat and one part celebratory champagne.
Indeed, everyone in orange -- and there were thousands at sunny-but-chilly Pizza Hut Park on Sunday -- will excuse the Dynamo manager if he was a bit disquieted by the scene. Everyone will be inclined to cut them plenty of slack after so gracefully winding through a difficult year.
They looked just as unflappable in the ABC-televised final. Kinnear's resilient men remained a steely lot as the game remained scoreless -- and even as they fell precariously behind late in overtime.
Through 120 minutes of tight soccer, the Dynamo did more to deserve the trophy in the first MLS Cup Final decided by the penalty kick tiebreaker.
"The attitude of never giving up is the mark of a champion," Kinnear said. "It's why we're sitting here right now."
Things started off swell for the Dynamo, who accelerated into the 11th MLS championship faster than Steve Nicol's Revolution. It probably should have been the other way, with New England settling in faster. New England, not Houston, had been in the very same spot one year before, appearing in suburban Dallas last November to face Los Angeles in the final.
But it was the Orange nearly tearing open the game with a second-minute goal. Brad Davis almost managed to drive a shot past Revs goalkeeper Matt Reis from a difficult angle.
The good chances -- few as there were in a match that produced just eight saves over 120 minutes -- were falling the Orange way in the first 25 minutes. Kinnear's men looked quicker to the loose balls and leaned more aggressively into the attack.
Not everything was going Houston's way. Adrian Serioux is a handy fill-in for the suspended Ricardo Clark. Serioux didn't do badly -- but he's not Clark, and it sometimes showed. Serioux doesn't organize the midfield quite as quickly and isn't as clean in distribution.
Serioux got caught once dribbling out of the back early, an ill-advised maneuver that nearly spilled into a New England goal. And later he flirted with real disaster, lunging from behind on Shalrie Joseph, who had broken into the penalty area.
"Did we miss Ricardo today?" Kinnear asked rhetorically. "I think we did. We missed his mobility. We missed his calmness on the ball."
Houston goalkeeper Pat Onstad got in just the right place to parry Taylor Twellman's point-blank header in the 25th minute, New England's first real opportunity. (It turned out to be the Revs' best chance before overtime.)
With New England gaining more of the game, Kinnear adroitly shuffled the chess pieces. He moved Davis inside, recognizing that the Revs were seizing control by getting more bodies into the central midfield area.
Kinnear moved defender Wade Barrett into midfield, abandoning his favored four-man back line for a 3-5-2 setup. It was a bold move, considering Dynamo started only one game in that alignment in 2006, typically resorting to the tactic only when behind late in a match.
Chances were few for either side during an even second half. Clint Dempsey's introduction for New England did produce a dicey moment or two as the feisty Revolution attacker began sneaking in from different parts of the field.
Things looked suddenly bleak -- even Kinnear admitted so -- when Twellman got behind the Houston defense, one that center back Eddie Robinson had guided so expertly to that point. But Honda MLS Cup MVP Brian Ching, mustering every ounce of will he could, got on the end of Brian Mullan's hopeful and deflected cross to the far post.
Ching's expertly directed header found what surely was the only slice of goal that big Matt Reis didn't have covered. And Ching's agile ability to adjust to the deflected cross made the strike even more special.
"That's been the mentality of our team all year long," Ching said. "You fight to the death, or fight 'til you pass out."
Everyone will remember Ching's stunning, magnificent equalizer. But they shouldn't forget about his hustling play just before overtime, a vital defensive intervention from an implausible source that kept the game level.
Ching tracked Twellman after a long free kick from the right, reaching the ball at the back post just before the Revs attacker, who surely would have beaten Onstad from so close.
It all added up to a brilliant exclamation point on a memorable season. Ching's time of turbulence didn't end with the eastward upheaval. In the euphoria of a post-game celebration, he seemed to forget about missing time this season with a knee injury, and just barely fighting his way onto the U.S. World Cup squad with a big splash in the spring.
"Best year of my life," he said. "Going to the World Cup, starting the year off so well and finishing with this."
Kinnear and his players all wanted to talk about Houston's impressive fan following, built in just 11 months. They seemed particularly proud of the organization's substantial percentage of Latino fans.
"When you look at ... the ethnic makeup of our crowd, that's what Houston is, and that's what the franchise is now," Onstad said. "Those are the supporters we count on. Those are the supporters who helped us come back when we were down, 2-1 to Chivas, and when we were down to Colorado."
Kinnear's third championship in MLS is actually his first as a head coach -- his first two coming as an assistant to Frank Yallop with the Earthquakes. You couldn't tell it by his moves on the field. They were spot-on, especially those brave selections in the penalty kick tiebreaker.
If Houston had fallen in the tiebreaker, Kinnear would have been vilified on the message boards for choosing two unlikely shooters to commence the process: Kelly Gray and Stuart Holden. But, like pretty much everything else the Dynamo did this year, it ultimately worked to perfection.
"In the last month, I think I've brought a calm to the team," Kinnear said a few minutes into the postgame news conference, having gathered his bearings. "I didn't panic. I don't know if that's from experience, but I had confidence in the guys."
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.
