Houston Dynamo FC begin a two-game road stretch tomorrow night as they head to the Rockies for a showdown with the Colorado Rapids at 8pm CT. Colorado sit one place above the Dynamo in the Western Conference standings, and are coming off of a 2-1 defeat at the hands of the Vancouver Whitecaps on the road on Wednesday evening. On Thursday afternoon, Dynamo Head Coach Paulo Nagamura and defender Adam Lundkvist spoke to the media to preview the showdown and give fans and media an insight on the team's ambitions and mentality heading into the weekend.
"The mentality of the group and the commitment from everyone to turn this around has been very good," said Nagamura. "Pleased with the work that we put in this week. Of course, we're playing Colorado who played last night. We know it's always a difficult place to play. So, we'll prepare, we will be preparing and hopefully, that will translate into a good performance on Saturday night in Denver."
The message from both Nagamura and Lundkvist on Thursday was simple - hit the reset button, reassess, and get the group back to basics.
"We kind of lost our way a little bit in the last couple of games," said Lundkvist. "This week has been going back to where we started the season and reevaluating ourselves and trying to get better moving forward. We have nine games left. so we wanted to take all these nine games, one game at a time. We want to improve on that and get better results in order to make this last push and try to get into the playoffs – because it's in our hands."
Lundkvist, who celebrated the birth of his first child last week, went on to say that his time away from the team has given him a fresh perspective on the group. When asked about what changed while he was away, Lundkvist said stated that he returned to the Dynamo "filled with the joy of life" and he aimed to bring an air of positivity to the team. "That's what we need right now," said Lundkvist, "you can see a lot of guys have really changed their attitudes."
"We want to get back to the team we were in the beginning of the season - we were more aggressive, more direct. In the beginning of the season, we also defended pretty well and we need to get back to that. When I say reevaluating it's more about individual level - see what you can do better in order to get better results going forward."
Houston Dynamo FC defender, Adam Lundkvist
Nagamura echoed Lundkvist's assessment of the group, stating that he's told his players that "Don't lack confidence because if you can sustain that and be consistent – you turn things around. I'm confident with the group that we have. We have to be consistent with our work and make sure that we – from my point of view is a few reminders from why we were a better team at the beginning of the year than we are right now."
Fans can catch all of Saturday's action on AT&T Sportsnet Southwest and TeleXitos, as well as listen along in Spanish on TUDN 93.3FM. Following the match in Colorado, the Dynamo close this two-game road trip in Minnesota on national television. Houston returns to PNC Stadium on Aug. 31 to host Carlos Vela, Gareth Bale and LAFC.