Damarcus Beasley and the Dynamo celebrate winning the U.S. Open Cup. Photo courtesy of Nigel Brooks
The Houston Dynamo ended a 10 year title drought as a 3-0 win over the Philadelphia Union crowned them the 2018 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup Champions.
Mauro Manotas scored two goals in the 4th and 25th minutes to give the Dynamo the lead at halftime before an Auston Trusty own goal secured the victory in the 65th minute. The Dynamo forward also extended his season total to 20 goals across all competitions - the only player in team history to accomplish that in a single season.
“The team was spectacular,” said Manotas. “The mentality with which we came out was what we needed. When the team is involved and committed, nobody can beat us. Today we showed it.”
The Open Cup title - the club’s first major championship since the 2007 MLS Cup - is the first trophy with the club for all members of the roster as no players remain from that famed group that won back-to-back MLS titles. Ricardo Clark, the last player remaining from that team, was not extended in the offseason.
Manotas, 23, is part of a young crop of players that look to bring success through the next couple of years. Midfielder Tomas Martinez, 23, Defender Alejandro Fuenmayor, 22, and MLS All-Star Forward Alberth Elis, 22, were the other players under the age of 25 in the team’s starting lineup.
Despite the double, Manotas also attributed the win to the return of fellow Colombian and 2017 Team MVP Juan David Cabezas. The 27-year-old Cabezas has missed 25 MLS matches this season and his absence has been felt as the team is all but eliminated from the playoff race.
“The team recognized that it was time to stop committing the same mistakes from past games,” said Cabezas. “It was a beautiful opportunity for us to set a different tone for the season. In the regular season, it has not been easy. Having the championship so close, we said that we needed to put in our all and, surely, would celebrate after. Celebrating is what we are doing now.”
The title is also a first for some Houston area natives. Houston born Arturo Alvarez, 33, Spring’s Tyler Deric, 30, and Wharton’s Memo Rodriguez, 22, are the first Dynamo players with local roots to receive a medal with the team, the latter two being products of the Academy.
For veterans like 34-year-old Oscar Boniek Garcia, the longest tenured Dynamo on the roster in his seventh season with the club, and 36-year-old DaMarcus Beasley the trophy was a long time coming. The four-time FIFA World Cup veteran Beasley picked up his third U.S. Open Cup title - his first club title in eight years - and was one of three players in the starting XI with cup experience alongside goalkeeper Joe Willis, a 2013 winner with D.C. United, and defender Philippe Senderos, who won the 2004–05 FA Cup with English giant Arsenal.
“The players, the coaches put so much effort into trying to win this cup,” said Beasley. “And it’s even sweeter because of the season we’ve been having. Like I said before, this doesn’t save our season, but at the same time, it feels damn good to win this cup, to be champions.”
What is the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup?
In it’s 105th edition, the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup is the oldest soccer competition in the United States. An amateur tournament for much of its history, the Open Cup is a national knockout tournament contested annually by teams in all divisions of American soccer throughout the course of the regular season.
Like the AFC Championship in the National Football League, the U.S. Open Cup is named after the iconic business owner Lamar Hunt. Hunt was one of the driving forces in American soccer and his family owns the Major League Soccer club FC Dallas, who now houses the National Soccer Hall of Fame.
While the MLS Cup is the premier title in U.S. soccer, the Open Cup is still a prestigious championship and one that comes with similar benefits - a $300,000 prize and a spot in the Concacaf Champions League next season.
What does it mean for the Dynamo?
The Dynamo became the first professional sports team to lift a trophy on Houston soil since the 2000 Houston Comets and the first men’s team to do so since the 1994-95 Houston Rockets.
Next year, the Dynamo will play in a third competition - and start the season one month sooner in February - as this title qualifies them to the 2019 Concacaf Champions League. While their opponent is yet to be determined, the team will have to opportunity to have international fixtures against competition from either Canada, Mexico, Central America or the Caribbean.
The lowest spender in MLS, the Dynamo Head Coach Wilmer Cabrera has already stated that the team will need to be appropriately reinforced in the offseason to be able to compete.
So how successful was the recently concluded Houston Texans’ season? Their record was the same 10-7 mark posted a year ago, they won a home playoff game as a year ago, and then were eliminated in the Divisional round as a year ago. Coming off three seasons in which the Texans won a total of 11 games, the 2023 campaign went down as an unquestionably tremendous success. Holding steady in 2024? Let’s go with middling success. While more than a few subscribe to the notion that if you’re not going forward you’re going backward, that’s too cut and dried to categorize the 2024 Texans.
Winning a horrible AFC South simply is not an achievement to brag on. That said, the Texans were leaps and bounds better than the horrible. It’s not very long ago that they were the horrible. The South is the only AFC division the Texans would have come close to winning, but while watered down with regard to impressiveness, it’s not as if winning it is meaningless. Eight times now in their 23 seasons of existence the Texans have won the division. Taking nothing else into consideration, that is quite good. With divisions comprised of four teams, if everything was equal over a lengthy period of time (quality of management, coaching, luck, and whatever else) pure math says each team should win its division once every four years. The Texans eight titles in 23 seasons is better than once every three years. Since the current divisional format was adopted when the Texans began playing in 2002, the Colts have won the South nine times, the Titans four times, the Jaguars just twice. The Texans have won their division crowns in pairs: 2011/2012, 2015/2016, 2018/2019, 2023/2024. They will be clear favorites to make it back-to-back-to-back division championships for the first time.
And now to the flip side of the coin. The Texans are an utter failure at achieving anything beyond winning a Wild Card round game on their home field. Eight playoff appearances, a 6-2 record all at home vs. a Wild Card, 0-6 in the Division round, hence zero spots in the AFC Championship game. The Texans have not come close to winning in any of those six defeats. Their best go of it was their first ever postseason, the 2011 season. The Texans were at Baltimore, and twice in the last three minutes of the fourth quarter took possession trailing 20-13. The first of those possessions featured consecutive T.J. Yates (!) completions to Andre Johnson that got them near midfield. Yates’s next throw was also intended for Johnson. It was a deep ball intercepted by Ed Reed (that would not be the last time Ed Reed was involved in a poor outcome for the Texans but that’s a wholly different topic). The Texans then forced a Ravens’ three and out and took over after the punt at their own 48-yard-line with 45 seconds left. Yates threw four straight incompletions and that was that. Thirteen years later the Texans have come no closer to the NFL’s semifinals. Using the same simple math that dictates a team should win its division every four years, with sixteen teams competing for two spots in the Conference Championship game, over the long haul a franchise should average an appearance once every eight years. The Texans are still sitting on zero. The Cleveland Browns (2.0 edition) are the only other AFC franchise to never get within one victory of the Super Bowl.
Other than the seven point loss to the Ravens, Saturday’s defeat in Kansas City is the only other non-double digit Texans’ playoff loss, and that was a nine point game only because the Chiefs took a safety in the final seconds. Their other six playoff losses have come by an average of 19.83 points. That drives home the fact that the Texans have yet to ever be true Super Bowl contenders.
Waiting for Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, and Lamar Jackson to decline isn’t much of a plan. Will C.J. Stroud evolve into a quarterback worthy of belonging in at least the same paragraph as those three, if not the same sentence? Will Nick Caserio atone for his arrogant and erroneous declaration that it was a “lazy narrative” to point to the Texans’ offensive line play as, well, offensive? Those are two of the bigger questions to which the answers will shape the Texans’ ceiling for 2025 and beyond.The nucleus of a potentially elite defense is there with Will Anderson, Danielle Hunter (for one more season at least), Derek Stingley, Kamari Lassiter, and Calen Bullock. It’s not supremely difficult to get pretty good in the NFL. Greatness is a much higher hurdle to clear. The Texans are pretty good. Pretty good may be good enough to win another cute little division championship banner. Can they deliver great?
Still three weeks to go until the doors open at spring training, but the Astros are always in season for our discussion. New Stone Cold ‘Stros podcasts drop each Monday, with intense negotiations in progress to add a Thursday episode. Click here to watch!