Houston — The Houston Dynamo had trouble adding up points as visitors in 2018, but have since changed their approach, or “chip,” according to team captain Boniek Garcia, and are ready to face the Colorado Rapids for their first away game of the season Saturday.
Last season, the club ended with a road record of 10 losses, five ties and only two wins, which made it impossible for the Dynamo to get a playoff ticket.
“It’s going to be a very important task, very important challenge for us because it’s our first game away,” head coach Wilmer Cabrera said of the Saturday match. “We have the goal to qualify to the playoffs, and if you want to qualify for the playoffs you have to have a good balance with your teams, playing at home and playing away.”
Cabrera has been very open about the lack of road wins, and has made several changes in diffident areas that he feels will play in favor of La Naranja.
“We are going to make some tweaks, some changes, and we hope that it’s going to be positive for the team and at the end [of the game], it’s what we want,” said Cabrera.
Houston had good momentum playing home games to start the season and getting two wins and one draw, but is now coming off an international break. Although the squad lost five players during the break, Cabrera doesn’t feel the week off will affect them severely.
“We will see what happens after all this. We are going to analyze that and we are going to see if the FIFA window affected us or if it helped us,” Cabrera said.
The Dynamo players seem to be on the same page as their coach.
“Without a doubt, I think that since last year, we have not had the strength we needed to get results out there [on the road],” Garcia said. “I think that this year we have to change the chip and be able to get results as visitors.
“I think that the team has had intensity, there was good handling of the ball during the past games and that is what we have been working on during the week, and we hope to maintain that level during the entire season.”