It’s hard to say which end to the 2018 Houston Dynamo season set off more alarm bells for Senior Vice President and General Manager Matt Jordan: Missing out on the MLS playoffs, largely the result of an injury-riddled midsummer swoon, or winning the U.S. Open Cup at home, the team’s first title in 11 years. The latter also placed Houston into a third competition for 2019.
The Dynamo, who flew out to Guatemala City on Sunday in preparation for Tuesday night’s CCL opener against CD Guastatoya, is somewhat of a new-look team heading into 2019. According to Jordan, that’s a strategy born of both 2018 season endings.
“It was a really positive step forward for us to win the U.S. Open Cup and qualify for the Concacaf Champions League,” Jordan said during an interview Friday. “That was an important step for us as a club, but in saying that, we weren’t happy with the way that our late league season went, and we knew going into the offseason we had to be aggressive to prepare for matches and three competitions.”
Jordan was particularly concerned about shoring up the defense, what he calls the spine of the team. That concern brought about two of the team’s key offseason acquisitions: Slovenian international centerback Aljaz “Kiki” Struna and Argentine defensive midfielder Matias Vera. Those moves, according to Jordan, contribute to an overall goal of being “two-deep” at all positions to weather the additional games that CCL competition brings, as well as to avoid the injury-related disruptions that plagued the Dynamo last season. Vera provides cover for Juan David Cabezas, whose absence during a key stretch of the season underscored his importance to the Dynamo’s on-field cohesiveness.
Jordan attributed the team’s regular-season dip in form, which dropped the Dynamo to a ninth-in-the-West finish after making the conference finals the year before, to a few factors that made up a “perfect storm.”
“We hit a rash of injuries and had a really difficult time when we were basically having a game every three days, getting into the end of July and August,” Jordan said. “And if I’m being fair, we had some really challenging referee decisions that went against us, and we had, you know, a couple of critical matches where we didn’t play well.”
He added that while “it was really difficult for us to recover” from the bad midseason stretch — which saw them go without MLS wins between July 7 and Sept. 15, netting just three draws and seven losses in a 10-match span — he also noted the team’s resilience through the bad patch helped it find victory in the Open Cup.
“I think that unity was the key factor in us winning the Open Cup,” Jordan said. “You see a lot of teams, when they’re not strong or when their staffs aren’t together, that get dismantled in those difficult moments. But I was really proud that we stayed together.”
The Tommy McNamara acquisition, according to Jordan, was part of an effort to bring in players with MLS experience who still have something left in the tank. Though McNamara spent four formative years with NYCFC, coming to Houston via the MLS Re-Entry Draft, he’s familiar to both head coach Wilmer Cabrera, who drafted him into MLS in 2014 when he was coaching Chivas USA, and to Jordan, who shares Clemson University ties with him.
McNamara joins Marlon Hairston, still just 24 years old despite coming off five seasons with the Colorado Rapids, and Chris Duvall, a 27-year-old right back with five years of MLS play under his belt (most recently in Montreal), as in-their-prime options for Cabrera.
While it’s been important for Jordan to prepare for the upcoming season with defensive and midfield reinforcements, he also found it necessary to keep the Dynamo’s attacking core intact for as long as possible. He acknowledged that players like Alberth Elis and Mauro Manotas have the youth and upside that will make them attractive to suitors from other leagues, but also knows the longer he can keep them in orange, the better their prospects will be for 2019.
Jordan said Manotas, who last season became one of MLS’ most proficient goal-scorers, is a “reference point” for the team.
“He’s a player with an outstanding attitude who wants to continue to improve,” Jordan said. “And I think what’s unique about Mauro is that he’s a natural goalscorer. He can score goals in different ways; that’s the true mark of a goalscorer. . . He’s a big part of our team and our plan moving forward. It’s important, also, we continue to put pieces around him that will help him be successful.”
Houston’s preseason matches included a draw and loss against Sporting Kansas City in Tucson last Wednesday, part of a tournament that also saw the Dynamo beat the Seattle Sounders and duel Minnesota United FC to a scoreless draw. While Jordan’s encouraged by what he’s seen in the run-up to tomorrow night’s CCL opener, he knows that Guatemala City is where the season starts in earnest — more than 1,000 miles south and several weeks earlier than most of the Dynamo’s MLS competition.
“I think we’ve built what we believe is a really good two-deep roster in every position,” Jordan said. “This is the moment in which everybody is going to be relied upon, and that’s, for me as a general manager, really rewarding, because you just see all the hard work in the offseason that we’ve done as a group finally being on the field.”