COLUMBUS, Ohio – After a disappointing 4-1 home loss to the LA Galaxy last week, Houston Dynamo head coach Owen Coyle said there would be changes to fix what went wrong in the lopsided defeat.
Coyle followed through Saturday against Columbus Crew SC, benching regular starters Cristian Maidana, Will Bruin and David Horst and moving to what he called a 4-3-3 with an extra holding midfielder.
But the Houston boss got to see his plan in action for less than 20 minutes. Goalkeeper Tyler Deric, making his 2016 debut after battling injury early this year, was shown a red card for a tackle on Federico Higuain in the Houston box that led to the only goal of the match, from Kei Kamara’s penalty kick, in a luckless 1-0 defeat.
On the play, Higuain seemed offside, but it was ruled that Houston defender Sheanon Williams played the ball backward, keeping him on. Higuain then cut to the right of Deric on the edge of the box and slightly away from the Houston goal before being tripped.
After the match, Coyle expressed mixed feelings about the play.
“The ball ricocheted off of Sheanon,” he said. “If that’s a deliberate pass back … I’ve been here too long to believe that to be the case.
“Is there contact with Tyler? Absolutely. I think it’s a penalty. I’m not going to sit here and debate that. I always try to tell it honestly and very upfront, and it’s a penalty. But Higuain has gone away from the goal and we’ve got two men back on our line.”
Though he admitted the penalty was the right call in the situation, Coyle was largely upset with Deric’s red card, which he called a “double-whammy” against the “one team you don’t want to be down to 10 men against” in Columbus.
“The terminology for red cards is to deny a clear goal-scoring opportunity … which it’s not,” he said. “Higuain is a wonderful player, but I’d be struggling to think that [Lionel] Messi could score with his first touch when we’ve got two men back on our line. So we felt very harshly dealt with to receive a red card from that.”
But Coyle said he was proud of his players. He said the revamped lineup “looked terrific” for the first 20 minutes, and said his team will “be winning week in and week out” with similar performances.
“What I do know is that when we go and win that next game, it will be two or three or four on the bounce,” he said. “We’ve got firepower; we can score goals. We have to get better defensively. … When we bring it all together 11v11, we’ve got no fear of who we play next.”
