Houston Dynamo crash out of playoff contention | OneFootball

Written by Juan Pereira / Foxtrot Media

Strong Start

When Felipe Andrade scored the opening goal in Houston’s 2025 season home finale against San Diego FC, fans felt a bit of the spark that was there when the Dynamo won the U.S. Open Cup in 2023 and broke their single season points record in 2024. For a moment, it was back.

As the first half dwindled down, that feeling started to go. The team wasn’t and hasn’t been playing in the way that Ben Olsen programmed this team to perform for the past two seasons. Possession was lacking, and the defense was lackluster.

Even though they went into the half leading, anyone who’s watched football (or soccer for my American audience) knew that a goal was coming for San Diego.

Familiar Feeling

And somehow, the way it happened was even wackier than anyone could have imagined. Just 5 minutes into the second half and after a dangerous ball inside the box seemingly went out of play for a corner, VAR called over the main referee for a closer look at an apparent foul in the box. Unsurprisingly, the ref awarded San Diego a penalty and the visitors drew the match.

Fans could only laugh, groan, and desperately cheer as the Dynamo went on to miss chance after chance.

And after that barrage of opportunities from Houston, San Diego scored in the dying minutes of regulation. Then, out of nowhere, substitute Sergio Santos scored to give the dead Dynamo some chest compressions.

Freefall

But, in the 90th minute, San Diego cut off the life support with another goal, because of course they did. Nobody could have written a better script to describe this season than what we saw on display at Shell Energy Stadium.

The fans, who had stuck around for the entire match and screamed their hearts out, started to leave in droves, and who could blame them?

The icing on the cake of course came in the 102nd minute, when San Diego scored their fourth.

Visualization of the game. Source: Sofascore.

The constant back and forth was the perfect descriptor of this Dynamo team. Some moments felt like turning points, only for the team to collapse one week later.

The result? No playoffs for the first time in Ben Olsen’s tenure, and a return to the mediocrity that has defined the team’s recent history.

Who knows if 2026 will be any better.

From the Coach

“As players and coaches, we know that we all have to get better, which we are honest about,” Ben Olsen told me after the match in the postgame press conference. “We are going to go to work in the offseason, and we are going to fix it. We are going to put together a team that will make the postseason next year, and we are not going to be in this place because we have a clear pathway.”