SAN JOSE, Calif. – The Houston Dynamo finally broke their road winless streak on Friday, after 406 days and 20 regular-season matches.
The funny thing is, it wasn’t a peak performance that got the job done.
“It was not a perfect game, from our side of things,” Houston interim head coach Wade Barrett said. “But it’s a perfect result.”
Despite dodging bullets from a desperate San Jose Earthquakes team for much of Friday night, a goal early in each half – Ricardo Clark in the sixth minute and David Horst in the 50th – was enough to carry Houston to a 2-1 victory. It marked the Dynamo’s first win away from home since July 10, 2015, when they also beat San Jose at Avaya Stadium.
“It’s something that we’ve been working for since a long time ago, but to be honest with you, it was not the best game that we did on the road,” Houston defender Raul Rodriguez said. “It was not exactly the best performance, especially offensively. We lost a lot of balls and we were defending, all the time. I would say, like, 70-75 percent of the time defending.”
In the end, it was a combination of luck and skill that came together for Houston, who had gone 0-15-5 on the road since their last visit to Avaya – a streak that helped cost coach Owen Coyle his job earlier this year.
“The team, right now, needed a win,” said Barrett, who is now 2-3-5 since his debut on June 18. “We’ve been really close in some other results. We’ve played well enough to get a win, and it just hasn’t been there for us.”
The outcome made Friday an even sweeter return for Barrett, who played for and coached under current Quakes, and ex-Dynamo, boss Dominic Kinnear.
“I spent the best years of my career as a player under Dominic,” Barrett said. “He gave me my first chance in coaching. I learned more from him than probably anybody else. He’s been a huge influence. But I am my own coach as well.”
The Dynamo certainly showed some of the opportunistic nature that defined Kinnear’s best teams in Houston. Clark jabbed home a loose ball after Darwin Ceren’s attempted clearance went awry. And Horst popped free on a distant set piece at just the right time to meet Cristian Maidana’s delivery.
All in all, it was an impressive display from a last-place club that could have easily packed things up weeks ago.
“You can easily just let [the season] go, after so many games when you are there and you just need one goal or you are losing the game in minute 90, 92 – that happened a lot to us,” Rodriguez said. “You can just say, ‘OK, just 10 games left, whatever.’ But we did not do that. We were pretty strong, even if it was not a game we controlled.
“We were tough to play against, and I would say that’s something we’ve been bringing every game since the last three months. That’s something great.”
