Educated, realistic y a todo color

So how many MLS coaches do you think could give this interview in Spanish? Heck, for many of them, giving an interview in English is hard enough. So here's to Dom, who is, after all, a former Necaxa player.

I have little patience for midseason friendlies in general. I know in the best case scenarios, they make money for the teams and give the staff a chance to assess players coming back to fitness (Bruin and Cruz), as well as those new to or trialing with the squad (Camargo), as well as give fans a chance to enjoy an exhibition.

But truthfully, they just make me a little nervous. Ashe got hurt in a chippy affair against Monterrey two years ago, and his lack of fitness rehabbing that injury showed down the stretch. What was supposed to be a friendly turned ugly and foul-prone. So I will not breathe easy here until Monday when all and sundry come out uninjured and set for a tough and vital series of games.

I was looking at the record this morning, and figuring that 8-8-11 is not that bad in the context of the DLS (dreaded long season) that was 2010. At this point a year ago, the season was well over in all but name, and it was obvious there was little to play for while we all thanked our American stars that there's no promotion/relegation in MLS. This year, Dynamo have lost only eight times out of 27 MLS fixtures and are still very much in the playoff race if (and this has become a laughingly titanic if to be sure) they can figure out that "road" is just a nasty, four-letter word and nothing they have to go crying to their mommies about.

In any event, we'll know just how much optimism or despair to have by the time the team comes back home to play SJ 3.0 (wearing what in all reality should be our two stars) Sept. 17. With road games at Kansas City (Here I Come. RIP Jerry Lieber) and Columbus, the season is here in a two-week, microcosmic crush. Or, as Dom might say in the video above, "Ay, Caramba!"

And regarding the parenthetical expression in the previous graf, Dynamo's historic status vis-a-vis MLS continues to mystify me. Either the two titles won by SJ 2.0 should have come to Tejas with the 1836-cum-Dynamo in 2006 or Dynamo joins the Fire as being the only expansion sides to have won MLS Cup in their first year. Instead, we seem to get neither, which mystifies me. I guess that's just life as an orange-headed stepchild in both AEG and MLS. Maybe we need Andre Hainault to elaborate more on what this is like, en francais of course!