Over the course of the 2007 Major League Soccer season, Houston Dynamo put together the single-best defensive performance by a team in league history. In Saturday's Western Conference Championship, it was just more of the same that led the Orange to MLS Cup 2007, shutting down the Kansas City Wizards in a 2-0 victory at Robertson Stadium.
Dynamo did not allow the Wizards a single shot on goal throughout the entire game. The staunch defense gave their forwards time to find the back of the net, which forward Nate Jaqua did in the 35th minute when he headed home a corner kick. Dwayne De Rosario then finally sealed the contest in the 81st minute.
De Rosario cited his team's stalwart defense as the reason the Orange now have a chance to defend their title, seeking to become the first team since D.C. United in 1996 and 1997 to win back-to-back MLS championships.
"I thought our defense did well in terms of limiting [Kansas City's] forwards," he said. "[They] did a great job of really keeping the pressure away from our final third. One or two times, of course, Eddie Johnson will get his chances, but they weren't dangerous chances."
Houston head coach Dominic Kinnear also noted that the Dynamo defense did a great job of negating the Wizards attack's strengths.
"We wanted to make sure that [our defenders] were aware of where [their forwards] were when we had the ball, so that if we turned it over we were in the right position," Kinnear said. "When the ball turned over, our reaction, our responsibility to defend was almost automatic, and you can't ask for anything better than that."
While Kansas City was only limited to three total shots on the night, it was also more of the same that led to Dynamo's first goal on the game. Houston has been dangerous all season on set pieces, and have long been known as a dangerous team with crosses, and that's where the first goal came from: Jaqua's header from a Richard Mulrooney corner kick.
"Our game plan was to go out there and get the first goal," said De Rosario. "We did what we do best, which is getting the cross and finishing it."
After the halftime break, Dynamo really closed down the Wizards and weren't greatly threatened.
"We wanted the focus to be the same: being organized and disciplined in the back, but we didn't want that to stop us from going forward. We felt like if we got a second goal after halftime it would go a long way towards taking the pressure off of us," said left back Wade Barrett. "I thought that the guys did a fantastic job maintaining focus and organization, which is definitely not an easy thing to do in the second half of a playoff game."
But the goal didn't seem like it would come. De Rosario and Jaqua got loose on a 2-on-1 on the counter, but Wizards defender Jimmy Conrad deflected away De Rosario's cross-field pass -- though he nearly put it into his own goal.
"I was a little disappointed trying to slip the ball into Nate, so I told myself next chance I get, I'm just going to hit it, and that's what I did," De Rosario said.
De Rosario's strike nine minutes from the end then sealed the match and sent the Orange into a second consecutive MLS Cup Final against the New England Revolution.
"Our goal these last three games has been to out-work the other team and I think we've done that," said defender Eddie Robinson. "And that is going to be our main objective going into the MLS Cup, to outwork New England which is going to be tough because they have a bunch of guys who work their tails off."
But for right now, all of the attention isn't yet on that game -- they're still reveling in the resounding success of their final home game of the season.
"No thoughts [about the final] right now," said Kinnear. "Tonight and tomorrow, I just want to sit down, smile, and applaud these guys."
Casey Michel is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
