When Manchester United winger Anthony Elanga’s 80th-minute equalizer hit the back of the net on a Champions League night at the Wanda Metropolitano in February, Houston Dynamo general manager Pat Onstad worried the goal would play spoiler not just for the 60,000-plus Atletico Madrid fans in attendance, but also for the meeting he hoped would cement his first marquee Houston Dynamo signing.
Advertisem*nt
Instead, Atletico standout and Mexican national team captain Héctor Herrera extended an invitation to Onstad after the game; he wanted him to join him at his house. Later, when a bottle of red wine was brought out as they sat in Herrera’s living room, the defensive midfielder cracked a one-liner that eased any concerns about his mood.
“This must be the bottle Chantal doesn’t like,” Herrera joked, referring to his wife.
The meeting at Herrera’s house was the culmination of weeks of recruitment by the Dynamo that included Zoom presentations and calls with Houston coach Paolo Nagamura. Onstad left Herrera’s home that night with a game-worn jersey as a parting gift and the determination to not to get back on a plane to Texas without a signature. A few days later, in the lobby of Atletico’s hotel, Herrera signed his designated player contract with Houston.
The signing, made official with Herrera’s presentation to the media on Friday, is arguably the biggest in Dynamo history.
Herrera, a two-time World Cup veteran, gives the Dynamo a link to the more than one million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans who live in the fourth most-populated city in the U.S. Herrera has won domestic trophies with Porto and Atletico, and has made more than 50 UEFA Champions League appearances.
Onstad and technical director Asher Mendelsohn were hired by new Houston Dynamo owner Ted Segal with the task of turning around a franchise that won MLS Cup in 2006 and 2007, but has not been to the playoffs since 2017. In many ways, the opportunity to acquire Herrera was reminiscent of when Toronto FC inked Michael Bradley and the Philadelphia Union signed Alejandro Bedoya.
“Those are two great examples of guys who came and really kind of leveled up the clubs,” Mendelsohn told The Athletic earlier this year. “And not just on the stat sheet. … It’s across the board. And we felt like that was what this moment was like for us, and where we were in our lifecycle — in terms of coming in and trying to change the culture — coming to a club that hadn’t made the playoffs in seven of the past eight years, that’s a valuable piece for us.”
But Herrera can’t be the only element in the turnaround.
It took just a few days at the Dynamo’s training facility for Onstad to feel a sort of reawakening.
He knew, of course, that the club was special to him. The announcement of his hiring called him a “club legend,” and it was not an exaggeration. He started both MLS Cup finals for the Dynamo and played more than 20,000 minutes for the organization. (He also won an MLS Cup and Supporters’ Shield with the Earthquakes prior to the team’s relocation to Houston.)
Advertisem*nt
Prior to his return, Onstad spent the previous dozen-odd years working for different MLS clubs. He played and then coached with D.C. United, worked in his native Canada with Toronto FC as chief scout and then coached and worked in the front office with the Columbus Crew.
If Onstad thought the connection with Houston had dimmed over that decade-plus away from the club, however, it didn’t.
“Yes, I care about the club and I have a history with the club, and I felt that way when I interviewed,” Onstad said. “But I don’t think I realized how much I actually cared for the club until I got in the building, and then realized kind of where we were at. … I do take a lot of this stuff personally, in terms of where we’re at.”
Where the Dynamo was at was not good. Houston had made the playoffs just once in eight years. Over the previous five, they had gone backwards — from that lone 2017 playoff appearance to ninth, 10th, 12th and then 13th in the Western Conference, respectively. They languished not only near the bottom of the standings, but also the bottom of the spending chart. The Dynamo ranked 24th of 27 teams in salary spend from 2017-2021; the only three teams ranked below them were expansion sides that had existed for only a portion of that window. One 2019 expansion club, FC Cincinnati, ranked above them.
“It’s a team that was broken,” Onstad said. “And there needs to be a massive culture change when you’re in that sort of organization.”
The new Dynamo owner, Segal, was a massive first step. He arrived promising to invest more in the team and the community. Among his first hires was Onstad, who brought with him Mendelsohn. The two worked together under current U.S. men’s national team manager Gregg Berhalter with the Columbus Crew. Both, like most around MLS, considered Houston to be a sleeping giant, in no small part because of the market and the potential of the academy, which had largely underperformed considering the size of the metropolitan area — 7.5 million people —and the success of FC Dallas a few hours north.
Advertisem*nt
Already, Onstad said their scouting staff is uncovering players they hadn’t seen before in the local market. The second team is also better utilizing academy players and starting to create a clear pathway to the first team;the Dynamo have already signed their first player from the MLS Next Pro side to the MLS team.
“There’s a lot of untapped potential here,” Onstad said.
In their first days together in Houston, Onstad and Mendelsohn worked quickly to identify how they wanted the team to play. They undertook a coaching search with that model and landed on Nagamura, the former Sporting Kansas City midfielder, to lead their team.
Onstad also hopped on a flight within days of his hiring for a scouting trip to Mexico. That decision sent a message.
The Dynamo, despite existing in a market that was less than a six-hour drive to the Mexican border, and with the third-highest Mexican population in the U.S., had largely ignored the neighboring soccer hotbed. The club fielded just two Mexican-born players in its entire history: Luis Ángel Landín, who played 16 games across 2009-10, and Erick “Cubo” Torres, who was signed as a DP in 2015 but managed just one good season, when he scored 14 goals in 2017.
Onstad said the changing dynamics of MLS — teams’ ability to sign higher-priced players using the U-22 initiative, targeted allocation money and designated players —made Mexico an even more important market for Houston.
“It’s embracing your neighbors,” Onstad said. “It’s a two-hour flight. It’s faster to get there than it is to fly to Seattle or New York. I think it’s important for us that we start making connections and, for us, we look at it as a country that we should be able to be kind of the leaders of recruitment in that country. We should be the place where, when a Mexican player says ‘I want to go play in MLS,’ they say, ‘I want to play with the Houston Dynamo.’ And that’s where our goal is. And that’s why I tried to start right away, and hopefully we keep building on that.”
Onstad also knew signing a player like Herrera would send a pretty strong message in that regard.
Bienvenido a H-Town, @HHerreramex 🦊#DejaloTodo pic.twitter.com/fpMBvxxOSn
— Houston Dynamo FC (@HoustonDynamo) June 29, 2022
When creating the blueprint for their initial roster buildout, Onstad and Mendelsohn identified two positions that could help the team in the short-term: a forward and a central midfielder.
Herrera, of course, fit pretty well to fill one of those spots, and he was quickly atop the list of options. It didn’t take long for rumors of the Dynamo’s interest to pick up — both in the media and between intermediaries behind the scenes — and Herrera’s agent got in touch with the club to start a conversation. The Mexican star was interested in coming to Houston.
Advertisem*nt
“He’s been to the city with the national team, he’s played here, he loves the city,” Gabriel Moraes, Herrera’s agent, told Onstad and Mendelsohn. “He’s very interested, it’s the type of place where he can see his family living. He wants to be in a big city, he wants to be in an international city. But what’s your guys’ project?”
Quickly, the Dynamo put together presentations of what they hoped to build in Houston. They wanted the club to look more like their city, to develop a pathway for young players to get into the first team and to build that bridge into the Mexican market. They wanted to play attractive soccer and believed they had a coach, Nagamura, who could put the right system in place. Clear belief in that system would also give them a vision for how to navigate the transfer market, and to maximize their dollars in a salary-capped league — much the way they had worked in Columbus with a more limited budget under then-owner Anthony Precourt.
The key to the deal, Onstad said, was the conversations between Nagamura and Herrera. Onstad said the two had multiple calls to talk about the team, how Nagamura saw Herrera fitting into the squad and Nagamura’s philosophy about how he wanted the team to play.
The Dynamo currently sit in ninth place in the West, but just two points out of a playoff spot. Herrera will be eligible to play his first game on July 9 against in-state rivals FC Dallas. Herrera will be one of a handful of big-name transfers to join MLS in this summer window, along with Giorgio Chiellini and Gareth Bale at LAFC, and Lorenzo Insigne in Toronto.
The Dynamo feel confident they know what they will be getting on the field in Herrera. The midfielder played 18,000 minutes in his domestic leagues over the previous 11 seasons in Mexico, Portugal and Spain. He had played another 6,500 minutes for Mexico since 2013, including eight starts in eight World Cup games El Tri played in that time. Who Herrera is as a player is well established. The true impact of the signing, they hope, will be putting Herrera at the center of the locker room. He’s considered indispensable by Mexico coach Tata Martino and known for his leadership qualities within the national team. There is a belief that his personality, as well as his consistent, hard-working approach in the center of the pitch, will set a tone for the rest of the roster.
“There’s very few moments in the league where you get a player who is coming back who can give your club a paradigm shift,” Mendelsohn said. “ It’s not just about the performance that they’re giving, but it’s about coming in with their background, their investment in what you’re trying to do, and to just raise the standard of the whole club and raise the level of the club.”
The Dynamo hope Herrera can fulfill that expectation, and that maybe the next time Herrera and Onstad uncork a bottle, it’s of the bubbly variety.
(Photo: Jamie Sabau-USA TODAY Sports)
