HOUSTON — The Houston Dynamo are hoping the third time's a charm when they visit Sporting Kansas City on Saturday (4 pm ET; TeleFutura).
The clubs first met this year on April 6 in College Station, Texas, in a US Open Cup match that KC took 1-0 in extratime. Then on July 16, they played to an exciting 1-1 draw that earned Houston red cards for Colin Clark and Brian Ching. Sporting's Aurélien Collin tallied the equalizer at the death.
In the rubber match, Houston are confident they have a handle on what they’ll see this weekend.
“There’s not many players on Kansas City that we haven’t seen live, bar Jéferson,” said Houston coach Dominic Kinnear. “We know the way they play, so if we step on the field and do a good enough job of preparing the team, then, individually and collectively, there will be no surprise at this point.”
HIGHLIGHTS, July 16: HOU 1, KC 1
The question is: In a match with major playoff implications, is that familiarity helpful?
“We know them well and they know us well, but in the end it’s a big game because they're a point ahead of us,” defender Andre Hainault said. “Does it help having seen them a lot? Sure. But we know what we need to do and we know the task at hand.”
Replacing Boswell
Houston will have a hole to fill in the middle of their defense as Bobby Boswell is suspended because of yellow-card accumulation. Looking forward, Kinnear will have to examine his options to repair the back line, and there could be some interesting possibilities.
“I think with Andre and Jermaine [Taylor] back, there’s some possibilities there,” Kinnear said. “With Luiz [Camargo] in midfield there’s also the possibility of pushing Geoff [Cameron] back there. It just depends on the overall fitness of the group.”
Regardless of who is back there, Houston are banking on familiarity.
“Whether it’s Jermaine or a guy like Geoff, whoever it is, we’ll have a couple of trainings before and we’ll be fine,” said Hainault, who has been a mainstay at center back. “We know each other well. We’ve been here all season and played together, so it’s nothing new.”
Pitch not a concern
Kansas City’s pristine Livestrong Sporting Park is one of the gems of MLS, but the pitch has taken a beating in recent weeks, both literally and in the media. The field conditions have been a topic of discussion, but Houston — who are no stranger to playing on a bumpy field as they share Robertson Stadium with the University of Houston football team — are not concerned.
“Over my career, I’ve played on a lot of bad fields,” Ching said. “It’s not something we think about, and we’ll just have to deal with it.”
Darrell Lovell covers the Houston Dynamo for MLSsoccer.com
Follow @dynamoexaminer
