Some people wouldn’t consider it a good time to drive over nine hours round trip to watch their favorite club lose for the fourth straight time to their archrival. I am definitely not most people.
Traveling to an opposing teams’ stadium is on average a far less adversarial experience in the United States as compared to other countries. But I always wanted to be part of an away day like they have in all of the European football leagues.
True Life Tales of the American Away Day
Given how spread out Major League Soccer is across the U.S. and Canada, the only “away day” that was remotely feasible by car was seeing my beloved Houston Dynamo play FC Dallas on a Friday in late June. FC Dallas, the Dynamo’s rival both league-wise and geographically, sits approximately 300+ miles to the north on Interstate 45.
I got hooked on the Dynamo by watching them defeat Chivas USA 3-1 on a Saturday afternoon in their inaugural 2006 season after the club moved to Houston from San Jose, yet I had never seen them in person anywhere but in Houston. It was a failing to be sure, but one I intended to rectify; never mind that this was a team with a history of poor road performance against a team that’s recently had the Dynamo’s number.
My cousin John joined me on this trip as he had been an equally fanatic Dynamo supporter alongside me since the team came to town almost a decade ago.
The drive between Houston and Dallas is noteworthy because of how UN-noteworthy it is. You can drive in the state of Texas and see thick forests (East Texas), rolling hills (Central Texas) and land so flat and desolate you can see the curvature of the Earth’s surface (the North Texas ‘Panhandle’). But this drive only affords you a mixture of Houston suburban sprawl, a 2 lane tree-lined highway and the scenery of assorted Texas Prisons and the Buc-ees Travel Center (which features an unmatched Peanut Butter/Chocolate Rice Krispie Treats).
The signs for Centerville, Buffalo, Jewett, Alma, Mexia and other little towns blend together. You briefly ponder existence in a little outpost minutes from the intestate, but miles from anywhere. Even arriving in Dallas is not the end of one’s travels, as FC Dallas (despite their name) is located an hour north in the exurb of Frisco.
Picture a stock big city suburb with neatly-planned buildings featuring a number of indistinguishable chain restaurants, big box stores and the feeling that there was nothing here 10 to 15 years ago. The greater Frisco area and FC Dallas’ home pitch: Toyota Stadium, do deserve high marks for being well laid out and featuring ample free parking.
The Frisco hospitality gets lower marks. Although I can’t say John or I went to bed that night thinking about the “Dirty [expletive] Houston” chants directed our way, it wasn’t the highlight of my trip. Eventually the two of us located the Dynamo fan tailgate where we looked forward to getting our game tickets and not getting cursed at for the transgression of wearing orange.
Everyone who made the trip kept a sunny outlook, though deep down none of us had any illusions about the most probable result and recent success (or lack thereof) the Orange had against their north Texas rivals.
The previous two match-ups, both at Houston’s BBVA Compass Stadium, ended in 4-1 FCD victories that both of us unfortunately saw in person. The more recent of the two contests, on May 1, saw FCD dominate the Dynamo with help from their South American attacking duo Fabian Castillo and Mauro Diaz. To say Castillo and Diaz ran circles around the Dynamo defense that evening probably doesn’t do their performances justice.
Since both those players were available and the Dynamo were also without Honduran duo Oscar Boniek Garcia and Luis Garrido, the outcome seemed grim and certain. Yet it was hardly relevant as we commiserated eating and drinking around a converted school bus blasting Tejano music at levels never heard in this corner of suburban Dallas.
The tailgate itself was a mix of the various Dynamo supporter groups: the Texian Army and El Batallon, as well as miscellaneous people like myself who considered themselves fans of Houston’s MLS franchise but weren’t official members of either group. One common thread among all the people at this tailgate was an air of no self-consciousness. There were those who fancied themselves young professionals and there was a gentleman with his ample stomach protruding from a bright orange Dynamo t-shirt taking an alcohol-aided nap on a grassy median. All parts of humanity had adequate representation among our group.
During the march into the stadium a torrential downpour began. As a Texan (and particularly as a Houstonian) you come to expect such rain, but are never adequately prepared for it when it does happen. This delayed kick off almost an hour.
The rain delay gave time for an impromptu Dynamo fan sing-a-long under the covered area near the Toyota Stadium West entrance. Hamstrung park security also decided to leave the Dynamo supporter groups standing outside the stadium gates for no logical reason while there was lightning in the area and many fans inside the stadium already.
After a delayed entrance there was even a brief moment of fan bi-partisanship as both fan bases watched the US Women’s National Team finish out a 1-0 win over China on the stadium’s video board and broke out in a “U-S-A!” chant.
The Dynamo supporter groups were seated together in the South end, with approximately two sections containing fans clad in Orange and two or three FCD fans who seemed to think it was their divine right as holders of those tickets to provoke the opposing fans in their midst. Credit to the 15-20 other FCD fans who sat in our section and behaved like grown-ups.
Side note: it is probably a good idea as a fan of any soccer team, in any part of the world, not to make your express purpose at a game thrusting your pelvis and taunting other grown men at the result of a soccer game. Or, if this is the kind of thing that gives you jollies perhaps you should buy tickets that are not directly in front of opposing fans. It will make the game less pleasant for all concerned. Okay, end of tangent.
The Toyota Stadium surface looked to be in perfectly acceptable shape when the game finally kicked off at 9 pm, especially considering the amount of rain that had fallen earlier. There were the kinds of slips and falls from both teams that were indicative of a surface that had taken some recent punishment from Mother Nature.
Despite a couple of half-decent Dynamo chances off corners, early on FCD looked like the more confident team going forward. Unfortunately Jermaine Taylor and David Horst have been at best hit or miss as a center back partnership and this has killed the Dynamo defense over this season and the last.
So it was not terribly surprising when Fabian Castillo put a tricky ball off Taylor’s heel and gave the home team a 1-0 lead. The gut punch of an own goal did not have the effect of re-focusing the Dynamo.
Castillo continued to torment his opponents, and in the 42nd minute won a ball while battling Dynamo defender Raul Rodriguez (who ungracefully fell out of bounds) and ended up finishing an undeniably beautiful give-and-go with Mauro Diaz right in front of the goal to make it 2-0.
At that point the three of us (a Dallas-based friend had met us at the game) could only helplessly stare. This 2 goal deficit might as well have been 200. There was not going to be a comeback tonight and there was certainly time for the deficit to get much worse.
The rain from earlier had slowed down some, but was still such that sitting down was not an option at this point since I was wearing the only pants I had decided to bring on the road trip.
The second half brought less enthusiastic singing from the Orange supporters and slightly more enthusiastic play from the visitors. There were not many noteworthy performances from the Dynamo players, but goalkeeper Tyler Deric got precious little help from his defenders and kept the deficit at two. Dan Kennedy also looked very assured in goal for FCD when the Dynamo actually managed the occasional chance on goal.
When the final whistle sounded my limbs and throat were sore and I had just witnessed another frustrating defeat. But in many ways I had done everything I set out to do. I sang myself hoarse, traveled halfway across the state while getting drenched to support my favorite club.
That evening finished with me and John gawking at our nice, but excessively modern loft hotel and in awe at the combination Bar/Pizza Place/Dance Club we stumbled into looking for late night food in Plano, Texas.
As we drove south of Dallas, pancakes in our stomachs and another four plus hours ahead of us on the road, John remarked how both Houston and Dallas do not want to admit that we’re pretty similar cities in that we’re both insufferable to non-Texans and thus deserve each other. That sounded as true as anything I’d heard in the previous 24 hours as we headed south.
Photo by Scott Halleran/Getty Images
