Raul Rodriguez impresses on his MLS debut
By Nayib Moran
Raul Rodriguez came off the pitch late in the game after he felt pain on one of his hamstrings. The game had required a lot of physical effort, and Rodriguez saw it best to give his spot to David Horst in order for the team to continue protecting the 1-0 lead, that’s how the game ended on Saturday night.
Rodriguez came to the Houston Dynamo from Espanyol, where minutes were scarce with center backs Eric Bailly, Diego Colotto, Hector Moreno, and Alvaro Gonzalez getting all of them.
In Houston, he will be an undisputed starter, and his leadership has been felt instantly.
Head coach Owen Coyle said after the game that there were a lot of great individual performances but what mattered was how the group managed the game. He also pointed out how important this season will be to solidify Dynamo’s defense.
“We want to play an attractive type of football, I think we’ve seen some of it tonight. There’s more to come, but we want to make sure we don’t give up much goals, but if we are, it’s because people have earned them,” said Coyle.
Rodriguez was always signaling to the full-backs Kofi Sarkodie and DaMarcus Beasley, where to move, and the communication with Jermaine Taylor was constant. His presence was felt.
Kofi Sarkodie, who got the assist of the only goal of the game, complimented the football that Rodriguez offers to the Dynamo.
“He’s intelligent, he’s good on the ball, which is probably the number one thing we need in the back. Because if we are trying to play more in the back, he has to have composure with the ball, he’s never losing the ball, so to have that in the center back and for his range on the balls, I think is brilliant,” stated Sarkodie.
Rodriguez had more touches in the first half, 26, than Dynamo’s central midfielders, Ricardo Clark, 24, and Luis Garrido, 21. He finished the game with 54 touches, 4 tackles, 5 interceptions, and 9 clearances.
When he made a bad pass, he immediately reacted to go for the tackle and negate the Columbus Crew from a scoring opportunity.
There’s a lot of correctness and elegance in his game that will be useful for the Dynamo as the season goes on. His passing, but most importantly how he manages to transmit calmness to his teammates on the pitch will be important.
When Raul Rodriguez’s heard of Kofi’s compliments he laughed and said that Kofi has a lot of affection for him. In the Dynamo there seems to be a lot of camaraderie, and that can be seen from Coyle to the guys that have to wash the clothes after the game.
Rodriguez offered a complete post-match analysis.
“Today the team played well. I think we scored the goal during the moment when we were not playing our best, when we were getting attacked the most. We made a great physical effort because we really didn’t have possession of the ball, but the game speaks well of the work that the team has done.
“We didn’t have that much of the possession of the ball; it was a game of moments, in which we were able to steal the ball in the midfield and start a counter, but tonight’s game was one of suffering, not of creating even though our goal was well built. It was a game to suffer, luckily we got the result in front of our crowd,” described Rodriguez.
Against the Columbus Crew, few times Rodriguez lost his battles against Kei Kamara and Federico Higuain. Elevated in the air he cleared out all of the Crew’s centers into the box.
And even though Tyler Deric had incredible stops, Rodriguez provided a lot of balance to the defense. The instructions were always exact, the anticipations were on point.
Rodriguez enjoys his first months in Houston, in MLS, a league of which he enjoys because there are a lot of football ideas that are coming together to one place, the United States.
Deric was named player of the game and predicted that the Kofi-Rodriguez-Taylor-Beasley defense will be hard to beat.
“If you combine those four together – DaMarcus Beasley, Raul Rodriguez, Jermaine Taylor, and Kofi Sarkodie – it’s going to be a tough back to beat,” concluded Deric.
Stats via WhoScored.com
