After having a three-match winning streak snapped in Chicago, the Houston Dynamo finish a two-match road trip against Minnesota United on Saturday night in St. Paul, Minn.
Houston (3-2-1, 10 points) dropped a 2-1 decision to the host Fire on April 6 as Brian Gutierrez scored the game-winner in the 78th minute off a pass from Swiss international Xherdan Shaqiri.
The Dynamo, who yielded a penalty kick score to Shaqiri in the 10th minute, had rallied to tie the match in the 65th minute on Ibrahim Aliyu’s team-leading third goal of the season.
“A tough loss but we’ll move on,” Houston coach Ben Olsen said. “The effort was there. We created the right chances. It just wasn’t our night.”
The Dynamo enter the contest in a three-way tie for fifth place in the Western Conference with Los Angeles FC and Sporting Kansas City, and just one point behind the Loons and Real Salt Lake, who are tied for third with 11 points.
Minnesota (3-1-2, 11 points) comes in off a 1-1 draw with visiting RSL on April 6 as forward Tani Oluwaseyi tied the contest in the 86th minute by tapping in a crossing pass from Finnish international Robin Lod. The Loons finished with a 25-10 edge in shot attempts and bounced back from their lone loss of season, 2-0 against the Philadelphia Union.
The 23-year-old Oluwaseyi has turned into a super sub for the Loons, scoring two goals and two assists in just 134 minutes of action, and has helped to pick up some of the offensive slack with star midfielder Emanuel Reynoso still missing after failing to attend his green card meeting in March in Argentina.
“(Oluwaseyi has) done brilliantly,” Minnesota United coach Eric Ramsay told the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “I spoke to him and made it clear that’s obviously not going unnoticed; his general energy, enthusiasm, the way he comes on, the way he changes games. No. 1, the way he presses before we get to the goal contributions.
“Obviously he’s an important for us at the moment. And we just need to make sure that we have a nice balance between how we use with Teemu (Pukki), who can both on their day be a real threat at this level.”
Minnesota leads the all-time series with Houston 10-6-4, including a 3-0 road win in their last meeting last July.
–Field Level Media
