Welcome to tonight’s Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup game between the Houston Dynamo and Miami FC of the NASL. The weather in Houston tonight is warm with a temperature of about 83 degrees. We just had some pretty heave showers so the pitch is wet and the humidity is high. It shouldn’t rain anymore, but the wet pitch could impact this game. Expect to see lots of balls played through the air.
While both teams certainly want to win tonight’s game, the Dynamo seem to need the victory a bit more as they continue to try to regain their best form of seasons past. Dynamo Head Coach, Dominic Kinnear feels the team should win this evening and could even win the entire tournament. ‘I think we have a good opportunity to make a run here,’ Coach Kinnear said. ‘This is the easiest trophy to win in America. It’s four games over a certain period of time. If you catch form and catch some luck, you could acquire a major trophy here. There’s a good chance.’
Here are some other thoughts on the tournament and tonight’s game from a few of Houston’s players.
Tally Hall, goalkeeper: ‘We think we can win the tournament, so that is our goal. We want to do better than last year. It was a fun ride to get to the semifinals, but disappointing in the end to battle that hard and get a loss…It’s really important (to play). There’s just different things with distribution and in the game that you can’t really train, so to get games just helps me to be well-prepared for playing in the MLS.’
Adrian Serioux, defender: ‘It’s an important game — every game is important. Even though it is a team that is a league below us, they usually step up. But we want to win any tournament we are in, and we are definitely going to go out there and try our best to get a result.’
Dominic Oduro, forward: ‘We have one of the deepest teams in the league. Hopefully, we can show other teams who we are, and hopefully we can prove that tomorrow. Every player given the chance will want to prove something. You always want to impress in games like this. We want to prove to the coach that we deserve to be in the first team.’
Here are the starting line-ups for both clubs for tonight’s third round clash of the U.S. Open Cup.
Houston Dynamo
==Dominic Oduro==Cam Weaver====
===Luis Angel Landin====
=Sammy Appiah=Franciso Navas Cobo===
==Richard Mulrooney=Adrian Serioux=
Eddie RobinsonRyan CochraneCraig Waibel
==Tally Hall=====
Miami FC
==Abe Thompson==Paulo Araujo Jr.===
===Bryan Arguez======
=Christian Gomez=Cristiano Diaz==
===Edward Santeliz===
=Euzebio NetoJP RodriquezKyle VerisZach Kirby===
===Caleb Patterson-Sewell====
The players are warming up and the game is set to start in just a little while. Stay here for updates throughout the game.