Houston Dynamo return home to face Sporting Kansas City
The Dynamo return home after losing two away games for an MLS game against Sporting Kansas City on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Shell Energy Stadium.
Houston (8-9-3) has won its last four home games in all competitions and is 9-1-1 at Shell Energy Stadium. One of those wins came on May 10 against Kansas City in a Lamar Hunt US Open Cup game.
To beat Kansas City (6-10-6) for the first time this regular season, Dynamo will look to repeat their last two home games as they recently became the first Houston team to score four goals in back-to-back MLS home games since 2008.
“We had another full week between games. It’s been nice to get back to a normal rhythm and training sessions and to work on some things that we need to get better at,” said Dynamo coach Ben Olsen.
However, Houston has remained scoreless in its last two MLS games, losing 1-0 to Seattle on July 1 and losing 3-0 to Austin on June 24. Olsen said the team is still a work in progress, working on fine-tuning both sides of the ball. After beating San Jose 4-1 on June 21 and beating LAFC 4-0 on June 10, the club will look to score four goals in their third straight home game for the first time in club history. Dynamo also scored four goals in a 4-1 win in the US Open Cup away win over Chicago four days before the first of two LAFC games.
Kansas City celebrated their third shutout of the year in all competitions on July 1 with a 3-0 win over Vancouver. Three different players scored this time, including striker Alan Pulido, who scored his seventh goal in his last six games. A win would put Kansas City with Houston in seventh place in the Western Conference standings with 27 points.
But Kansas City holds a 1-5-5 record away from home and is nearly two months away from winning its only away game, beating Seattle 2-1 on May 7. Kansas City still have the upper hand with eight wins in their last 13 MLS games against Dynamo since the start of the 2018 season.
“Last time we played them, they asked for the head of the coach, which is ridiculous,” Olsen said of Peter Vermes. “They had a lot of injuries and were just a different team. It’s a whole different animal that comes here. They are confident, play at a high level and with different teams. They seem very clear about what they are doing and they are effective. So we have to do our best.”
Meanwhile, three Dynamo players received yellow cards in last Saturday’s defeat in Seattle, including Micael, who was sent off after his second yellow card in the 65th minute. In addition, midfielder Adalberto Carrasquilla is kept out as he still plays with Panama in the CONCACAF Gold Cup.
The Dynamo still outscored their opponents at home in MLS play, 17-3. Amine Bassi, who leads the team with eight goals in the regular season, has scored in the last two home games. Additionally, Steve Clark made four saves against Seattle and became the 12th goaltender in MLS history to make his 250th regular-season game.
“It’s a difficult team to dominate in midfield but we’ve seen some things that hopefully we can implement and we’ll have a game plan to put that into action and hopefully it works out the day it does works,” said Olsen.