The Western Conference Championship + 30 minutes to get the Galaxy in the Cup

While I've been following the Dynamo all season, I have kept my comments to the various blogs (particularly Benardo Fallas and Glenn Davis) and haven't spent time on mine. Worse: I've attended only one game this season. That's primarily because my weekends are spent coaching my son's Divison 2 team, and that's proven very time-consuming.

The past two months have been painful because the Dynamo drifted into a malaise, and their game looked tired and uninspired. Even so, if they had won only one more game they would have earned the Supporters' Shield. This is actually the prize I wanted the most this year. When that went to The Crew, I shifted my hopes to the MLS Cup.

I was pretty pessimistic about our chances to get past the Sounders, but the excellent result at Seattle made me hopeful, and the Dynamo ended up closing out the series in style with an awesome extra time goal by Ching.

We match up fairly well against LA, so I was more optimistic than I was about our Sounders series. Several Dynamo and non-Dynamo fans suggested that the Dynamo would have to beat LA and the refs (and Don Garber and ESPN...) in order to get through to the final. I thought these fans were either paranoid Dynamo fans, or spiteful Galaxy-haters. Turns out they were right.

The Dynamo controlled the game in the first 18 minutes, other than a couple of dangerous forays early on by LA. After the blackout in the 18', the Galaxy asserted control. The MIO worked their way into the game again, but halftime took off their edge and the Galaxy again controlled the game after the break. Thankfully with the 2nd blackout in the 55th minute, the game became the Dynamo's again. They controlled the final 30 minutes or so, and looked like the only team on the field for long stretches. Then they get the only goal of the game off a Hainault header after a LA player takes out Ching and another LA player. Houston wins 1-0.

Except that the ref decided the Dynamo shouldn't have let the LA player take out his teammate and Ching. So no goal. A few crossbars later, and we're into Extra Time. Credit to the Galaxy for playing a solid 30 minute overtime, but it shouldn't have gotten to that. It was an illegitimate act that put an unequal hurdle before both teams. Turns out, you had to have the LA crest on your chest for your goal to count. We weren't aware of that stipulation prior to the game.

The Dynamo have nothing to be ashamed of. They acquitted themselves well for the 90 minute match and proved they were the better team. Fatigue and weak bench support proved to be their undoing when they were forced to play an illegitimate extra 30 minutes.

Question doesn't the Skunk-headed one make enough money to buy some maturity? He whines like a spoiled schoolboy. Does he always whine at every official? Does he always exchange whiny words with the opposition once the competition is over? He did versus Chivas USA, and now with the Dynamo.

It seems to me that the MLS is hurting its credibility with potential American sports fans by immersing itself more and more into the atmosphere of suspicious officiating, like seen with the NBA. I long ago gave up on basketball and I get physically ill whenever I see it on TV. It's an off-season YMCA conditioning exercise that they turned professional with all of the competitive legitimacy of professional wrestling. The MLS seems to be heading in that direction too, with their bush league referees and their rule-bending for the gender-bending Becks and his LA Gals.

I still support the Dynamo. They are the best organization in the MLS and, while physical, play a style of ball that other MLS teams only sometimes toy with. Coach Kinnear is the best in the league, and the players are class acts.

But I have slowly become a reluctant follower of the MLS in general, and have become a more and more infrequent watcher of the league. Furthermore, I worry that personnel changes and aging veterans will make the one bright spot in the league -- the Houston Dynamo -- a second rate team scrapping its way through the league next season as it waits on the next generation of talent to emerge.