The team whose ownership group abandoned San Jose ended its first season in Houston with an improbable championship.
THE OMENS WERE THERE for all to see, gleaming beacons of the same hue worn by the players, fans and even executives of the newest first-year team to claim an MLS Cup title.
Buses, cars and SUVs pulled up near Pizza Hut Park to disgorge thousands of fans adorned in jerseys, scarves and caps. Raevan Valadez, Miss Teen Texas 2006, wore a evening gown shimmering with the color of the day. Dynamo head honcho Oliver Luck sported a Creamsicle-colored blazer that would irk representatives of a certain football bowl game. During the match, from a section of uniformly bedecked fans came a canister out of which billowed smoke of appropriate color.
Some Houston Dynamo players had expressed qualms about their orange jerseys, which were a drastic departure from the stylish deep blue they'd worn while winning a pair of championships in San Jose. On this day, though, all agreed the jerseys — when saturated, splotched and stained with sweat, ice, beer, Gatorade and champagne — look mighty fine.
Not all of the omens were color-coordinated. A video clip played on the stadium scoreboard before and during the game featured a rousing Mel Gibson soliloquy from ''Braveheart.'' The guys wearing orange were certainly primed for the final battle, as they'd been scaling obstacles and repelling challenges for the entire year.
''Warriors is the best way to describe these guys,'' said Brian Ching, who scored an equalizer 111 seconds after New England had taken a 1-0 lead in overtime and nailed the clinching penalty kick. ''We had to come back against Chivas [USA] and Colorado in the playoffs and we did it again today.''
The first league team to change cities carried off MLS Cup 2006 by beating New England, 4-3, on penalty kicks following a 1-1 tie to top off a postseason rife with comebacks. Nearly 11 months before, Anschutz Entertainment Group ended a memorable yet ultimately futile decade in San Jose by uprooting the team and vanning it 2,000 miles east.
''That's why I say the credit belongs to the players,'' said Coach Dominic Kinnear, a longtime northern California resident with the deepest ties to the area he had to leave behind. ''All the stuff on the outside — the move, the heat, everything these guys went through — could have affected them. It never did. The guys were awesome.''
TURNING POINT. Houston finished second in the Western Conference behind Dallas with a record of 11-8-13, and in the playoffs trailed Chivas USA, 2-0, midway through the second half of the first conference semifinal.
If any turning point in this championship season is to be found, this is it. ''We knew as soon as they scored that second goal we had to score, so we could come back on 'em at home,'' said Ching. ''Losing by two goals killed us last year.''
Last year, San Jose won the conference title but fell behind in the first leg of their playoff with Los Angeles, 2-0. Ricardo Clark scored midway through the second half; down only, 2-1, the Quakes were in a good spot, at least until Landon Donovan stunned them with a breakaway goal with three minutes left for a 3-1 win. San Jose poured on the pressure in the home leg but could only tie, 1-1. Season over.
''Last season was fresh on everybody's mind, basically, because we're pretty much the same team,'' said Ching. ''We learned from it and matured from it.''
Seven minutes after conceding a second goal to Chivas USA, Houston got one back. Brian Mullan charged up the right flank and drove a cross that Ching headed into the net. This time, Houston held firm and nearly equalized but was content to leave with a deficit of only 2-1, which it overturned at home, 2-0, though not until the second minute of stoppage time did Ching nod in that second goal.
Dwayne De Rosario wriggled free on the left flank and crossed to the far post, where defender Eddie Robinson fought off an opponent to head the ball down for Ching to lunge and nick it into the net. Robertson Stadium, awash in a crowd of 17,440 fans swathed mostly in orange, reverberated. The daring DeRosario, the rugged Robinson, and the chiseled Ching — all vital to the team's success all season — had thrilled those fans once again.
''First thing I want to say is, contrary to popular belief, I did not make that assist on purpose,'' said Robinson. ''I was just trying to keep it play. I wanted to get it on target, but the worst thing I could have done is head it over the goal. Luckily, he was the one to react first.
''The biggest thing that kept everybody in good spirits and kept our team together has been the support. Anywhere and everywhere you go, the second you mention you're on the team, people say, 'Oh, we're so excited to have you here!'''
A week later, Houston rallied again. Colorado took a 1-0 lead in the fourth minute on a Jovan Kirovski penalty kick awarded when defender Adrian Serioux batted down a corner kick. The Dynamo needed just seven minutes to tie the game and 10 more minutes to claim a lead it wouldn't relinquish. A raucous crowd of 23,107 celebrated a 3-1 win that meant several thousand of them would be traveling to Dallas the following weekend.
MOVING ON. Leading up to the final, Kinnear and his players tried to balance their gratitude to their new fans with fond thanks to those they'd left behind. A month after MLS Cup 2005 and about a week before Christmas, Anschutz Entertainment Group ended years of rumors and uncertainty by announcing the move to Houston.
''Whatever the other guys went through, it was tougher for the Dom,'' said Robinson. ''It was a really tough decision for him, whether he was going to do it. With the team he's built and the relationship he's built with a lot of the guys, I'm sure he felt it was something special. But it was definitely very hard for him.''
Kinnear says the decision would have been a lot tougher had his parents been alive. His mother died in 2004 after a lengthy illness caused by an inoperable brain tumor, and his father died a few months later. He also lost a brother to a brain tumor.
''Our opening game, I stopped in the parking lot as I was driving up to the stadium, and sat in the car for a while,'' recalls Kinnear. ''It was a really emotional time for me, because I know they would have been there for this first game. For me, it would have been easier if my mom and dad, and my brother, were still here. Because they weren't, it was harder to leave, because my wife has family as well.
''They would have said, 'You have to go. It's your job.' All of us hated to leave San Jose, but we like to think now we have two sets of fans: here and back in California.''
Officially, MLS retained the team name and colors, and deemed the Dynamo a new franchise. Ching's wife stayed in California to finish pharmacy school, and a few families didn't complete the move until the school year had finished. Most staff members refused to leave California, as did Kinnear's assistant coach and childhood friend, John Doyle, who had played with Kinnear on the Fremont Celtic youth teams coached by Dominic's father, Hughie. Goalkeeper coach Tim Hanley made the move, only to return to California midway through the season.
''We didn't have a bunch of new, young players just out of college,'' said Kinnear, who took three young children and wife, Colleen, to Texas. ''Our guys had wives and families and houses.''
Aside from midfielder Mark Chung, who retired, and defender Danny Califf, who found a job in Europe, the players headed for Houston, where the housing is cheaper but the heat is fierce. The regular season had barely begun when every day seemed like the day before, only warmer, thick with oppressive temperatures and heavy humidity.
Players shed five, six, or seven pounds a day during training sessions. Laden with padding and gear, goalkeeper Pat Onstad sweated the most. Team trainer Bruce Morgan, one of the few staffers to make the move, didn't have ready remedies for excessive, rapid, daily loss of fluids.
''I'm glad one of our sponsors is Gatorade because we really needed their products this season,'' says Morgan. ''There's just not much time to replace all that fluid on a daily basis. At home, I set my thermostat at 80 degrees, and when I walk in the front door, it's refreshing, that's how hot it gets.''
Robertson was packed for the opener, and Ching scored four goals in a 5-2 rout of Colorado watched by 25,462 fans. Crowds averaged in the mid-teens until July and August, when the heat is unbearable and just walking can be exhausting. As temperatures cooled a bit and the playoffs drew near, the numbers and noise escalated.
''You step on the [Robertson] field before the game and you think, 'Man, it's burning in here,''' said Robinson. ''You're ready to go.''
Kinnear had to adapt methods and procedures more because of the heat than a larger playing surface at Robertson, which is four yards wider (70) than the cozy confines of Spartan Stadium.
''We had to limit our practice time maybe a month and a half into preseason because guys get tired easy,'' said Kinnear. ''People say, 'When can you use it as an advantage?' and I'd say, ''Whenever we become immune to heat and humidity.' I think it almost evens things out, because it really drains your energy.''
FINAL VERDICT. In sunny, windy conditions at Pizza Hut Park, New England came into the final tainted by its showings in the 2002 and 2005 championship games, both overtime losses to Los Angeles in which it failed to score. Clark was suspended for a second yellow card incurred against Colorado; Clint Dempsey's sore right ankle relegated him to the substitutes' bench.
Serioux, a defensive midfielder for the recent portion of his career had come to Houston from Red Bull in a trade. Kinnear had moved him to the back line but with Clark out Serioux went back into midfield and Ryan Cochrane lined up alongside Robinson in central defense.
The teams had played 1-1 ties in their two regular-season meetings (Cochrane had scored in one of them) but even that modest scoreline seemed implausible as time ticked away in regulation, and then the first overtime, and then the second extra period.
Onstad had denied Taylor Twellman in the first half with a reflex save of a point-blank header but had no chance to stop Twellman's second good chance that the Revs striker drilled just inside the far post eight minutes into the second overtime.
Barely more than a minute later, as the Revs basked in their satisfaction, a Mullan cross deflected off Avery John and looped into the goalmouth, where Ching peeled away from Jay Heaps to head cleanly past Matt Reis.
In penalty kicks, each team missed one of its first four attempts before Ching converted for a 4-3 Houston lead. Onstad saved a weak shot by Heaps, and the team utterly committed to the team concept had prevailed again. Kinnear had changed from his normal 4-4-2 formation to mirror the Revs' 3-5-2 and free up De Rosario, who nonetheless did a lot of work off the ball to nullify the attention of two opponents.
''It's not just me, it's everybody on this team,'' said De Rosario, who came on as a sub to score the winning goal for San Jose in the 2001 final and replicated that role with an assist in MLS Cup 2003. ''If they put players on you, you have to create space for the other players with your movement off the ball. I ran so much I was getting cramps in the second half, but that's all right. I feel very blessed to win another championship with this team.''
Family members and friends jammed into the Houston locker room to laugh and cry and sing amid the sprays of champagne and beer. Before they cleared out, the soaked and spent players gathered for pictures and as the cameras buzzed they belted out a rather disdainful description supplied by Rapids coach Fernando Clavijo: ''We are so predictable! We are so predictable!''
Their reliance on pressure and flank play and sacrifice were certainly not a secret. Stopping them is another matter, yet few could have predicted this ending to a tumultuous season.
Daylight was almost done by the time regulation, overtime, penalty kick, and award presentations had concluded. Some fans streamed to their cars, others gathered around grills or chased bouncing balls. Faces turned west to savor a radiant Texas sunset illuminating a low sky and cloud-kissed horizon with that same triumphant glow.
MLS Cup 2006 was all about the orange. And attitude.
(This article originally appeared in the December 2006 issue of Soccer America Magazine.)