Despite a number of vocal protestations from players (and one might presume coaching and even some front office staff), the Houston Dynamo removed the “interim” tag from Wade Barrett as another season of failing to make the playoffs in Houston came to an end.
Unfortunately for Barrett, they also removed the title of Head Coach.
Barrett had worked hard to endear himself to his team during his short time as the the team’s head coach letting the team of veterans organize themselves and not micromanage every detail.
It wasn’t quite reciprocated. Barrett hadn’t gotten much from the Dynamo is his abbreviated tenure and Houston never credibly threatened to leave the bottom of the Western Conference barrel.
It’s worth wondering if Barrett ever had a chance. In a move that flew under the radar last year, Wilmer Cabrera was given the reigns of the Dynamo’s USL team and, upon the conclusion of the USL calendar, Cabrera’s contract stipulated that:
..In addition to his duties as head coach of the Toros, [Cabrera] will serve as an extension of the Dynamo first team technical staff during the preseason and following the conclusion of the USL season.
Whether Cabrera being given the top spot was always a certainty or that Barrett simply didn’t inspire certain decision-makers is ultimately a moot point now as the Dynamo has far more pressing concerns such as that while Wilmer Cabrera may be the fourth head coach in team history, he’s also the third person to have some variation of that title since late May.
2012 never felt further away when the headstrong, veteran, grind-it-out style of the Houston Dynamo to consecutive MLS Cups appearance. Let’s not even get back in the nostalgia machine for when the Dynamo were winning titles.
Wade Barrett is a smart, talented, and very likeable fellow. He’s sort of coach you like to see succeed. It’s hard to feel like he got a fair shake. It doesn’t help his cause though that Cabrera himself was subject to a very unfair situation of his own when he got his chance of Chivas USA. He had only been there for three months before the sale went down. At the point it was just supposed to a “re-brand.”
Of course there was no re-brand, rather it was a purge of the Chivas USA roster, coaching and front office staff, and youth academy. Cabrera faced a very difficult situation but got the players to buy in enough that a large season surge pulled Chivas USA to 7th place, their second best finish over the team’s final five years of existence.
It’s one thing to overcome adversity if a key player is down or the team has lost a few matches. It’s quite another when the league buys you and then you realize your would-be saviors aren’t angel investors, rather corporate raiders who realize the sum of your parts has greater value than your franchise as a whole.
Like some people complain how romanticized the doomed valor from the Charge of the Light Brigade is, it’s easy to point to Cabrera’s only season as a head coach in the league as a successful one, at least morally, given the morbid circumstances. But it’s one thing to say you coached the team to their best finish in five years. It’s quite another when that same record is only good enough to finish seventh in the Western Conference.
Cabrera happens to be a licensed helicopter pilot and as the season came to a close Chivas USA was falling to Earth at a remarkable speed earning one single point over a twelve game period. Cabrera, though, somehow managed to right the ship guiding Chivas USA to wins in three of their final four games.
Cabrera, with a pedigree of developing talent (being the USMNT U-17 head coach), was targeted by Technical Director and General Manager Matt Jordan to seek him out to coach Rio Grande Valley FC (RGV)
While Cabrera’s year in Edinburg, TX may have provided some institutional knowledge of the Dynamo, in many ways, Houston will be a bigger challenge than Chivas USA. Cabrera must win over a divided locker room–and a fanbase–that felt strongly that Barrett deserved the job.
After all, outside of the media, no one was pining for El Chelis to return to the Chivas USA locker room.
Cabrera, for his part, has said and done all the right things to try to quell the drama and present a picture of a united team and reports are that a peace has been broached with the team and leadership.
Houston has a lot of bananas which can, to use the words of Leo Buscaglia, only be the second best orange. The truth is except for perhaps one, it feels like all of Houston’s spots are up for grabs next year. That’s not good.
The team has been rebuilding for a while now with seemingly no plan in place. This is distressing for a league urges franchises to choose instead reload.
Cabrera had kept his cards close to his vest as he has hit the various circuits only spouting vague generalities such as wanting “possession with purpose” (as opposed to purposeless possession?) and putting confidence in players, and as he recently said in a Facebook Q&A: “We have to create some sort of formation where players can make the difference because we have to. There are no other options.”
No other options sounds like the best way to surmise Houston’s offensive core. Giles Barnes is gone. Mauro Manotas collected six goals in his ten starts, but three of them were from one game. Will Bruin hasn’t scored since June. Erick “Cubo” Torres is out of loan.
Moreover, Cabrera is a developer of talent. His words don’t sound like those of a man inheriting a squad that where half the roster is 27 or older because very likely much of them will be moved in the off-season.
It’s the end of an era in Houston. They will get younger and closer resemble a homegrown, youth-oriented structure such as that found with Cabrera’s former roommate, turned cross state rival Oscar Pareja.
