For a team accustomed to pulling games out late, Saturday afternoon’s 1-1 draw was a letdown for the Houston Dynamo.
After all, the third-place Dynamo saw stoppage-time chances from Brad Davis and Calen Carr just miss the target. The near-misses were a good representation of a game in which the Dynamo just could not find a winner.
“We put ourselves in some great spots in the final third, and it was one of those days where our crosses were off enough, our shots were off enough, and it led to a bit of a frustrating afternoon,” said Houston head coach Dominic Kinnear.
The best and most frustrating chance came in the 36th minute, when Carlo Costly missed from inside the six-yard box. Costly, who played an effective 60 minutes, made a darting run through the box and reached Luiz Camargo’s low cross just three minutes after Colin Clark gave the Dynamo a lead. Yet at the moment of truth, Costly sent his shot over the crossbar.
“It would’ve been two goals in five minutes, but it was a missed opportunity,” Kinnear said. “If we score the second, you never know, but the possibility of us winning this game would have been good. As everyone knows, the hardest thing to do is score, but we had our chances to finish with another goal.”
In short, all those missed chances added up to Kinnear's “frustrating afternoon," as the side missed a good opportunity to solidify its playoff chances.
“I think at times we lacked a little bit of movement off the ball and became a little bit predictable,” said Brian Ching. “We did a little bit better in the second half, especially at the end of the game when we were pushing for the points. Unfortunately, we didn’t play well enough in the final pass, the final shot, today.”
Darrell Lovell covers the Houston Dynamo for MLSsoccer.com. Follow him on twitter at @Dynamoexaminer.
