Road trip to Dallas

Yesterday, the family took a trip to Pizza Hut Park for the first time. It was good to see live soccer again for the first time since last year, although both teams looked rusty. There was very little rhythm, very little creativity, and few passing combinations. The massive gusts of wind probably had a lot to do with that, and it also messed up the freestyle team from Toronto that performed at halftime. We sat in the NW corner, row 9, section 102, directly across from the Texian Army.

FCD probably had the more dangerous opportunities, while the Dynamo probably had a bit of an edge in the possession dept. Neither team worked through the midfield much. It was a game determined by individual spurts of genius and physical play.

Having said that, Chabala's first professional goal was one of the examples of good teamwork, starting with Davis passing through to Oduro who laid it off for Chabala who did a sliding strike on goal. Two minutes later, Hainault left his mark, Atiba Harris, who then proceeded to make a run, got the ball on the left flank about 25 yards from goal, did a quick cut in to wrong-foot Boswell, then made a sweet curving strike past Onstad.

Oduro proved again that he's got speed but no touch or form. Waibel looked scary even walking around the sidelines. ERob went down with an injury in the first half. That forced us to burn a sub (Cochrane) and also stinks because ERob is now sidelined like he was all last season.

As for the stadium, I liked it from a soccer standpoint, but not from a design standpoint. Here's what I thought:
The bad:

• From the outside, the stadium had all the appeal and uniqueness of a strip center. It was, frankly ugly. Dynamo stadium needs more appeal from the outside. It needs to sell the team to the outside community and needs to tie into the architectural vernacular of the region.
• On the inside, the stage provided a huge, lifeless zone, not that there are enough FCD fans to fill up stands if they had stands there.
• Pavilion roofing would be nice to hold in the acoustics and shield from the sun, which has to be oppressive in the summer.
• Needs viewscreens on the south side of the stadium for folks to view the replays down there.

The good:

• The field is absolutely gorgeous.
• The surrounding practice fields and youth tournament fields are also gorgeous.
• It was cool having a pub, Firehouse subs, and other restaurants within walking distance of the stadium.
• The whole area might have been sterile, but it was also clean.
• The seats were comfortable and had cup holders. We weren't worried about knocking over drinks, although the lady in front of us nearly put her elbow in my daughter's cup.
• The south-goal seating were bleachers, which is perfect for a supporter's group wanting to make noise, but seats ruled the sidelines, where the "mainstream" fan sits.
• The luxury seating is probably a good revenue generator, which is good for the club, but didn't adversely affect the affordable seating.
• Nice viewscreens on the north side. We were right by the screen on the NW side and could see every replay with ease.
• Two words: free parking!

I can't believe FCD has their own stadium with free parking, and they get only 8,000 people to their home-opener versus their in-state rival. The club is just sad, and their supporters are passionless. The stadium erupted when FCD scored, but other than that, the Texian Army was louder than the FCD group, which just stood there, frozen, watching the game; not even waving their flags. The only chant I heard was after the game, when some adolescent flag-waver on his way out of the stadium passed my family and shouted out to no one in particular "Go back to Houston! Get out of here!" Pathetic, really.

At least the host fans were very well-mannered. But there has to be a middle ground between passionless and volatile.