Saturday, June 18, 2011

Not better than Reliant.

Jose de Jesus Ortiz has given us some bad sports analysis over the past couple of years. His beat reporting is typically not much better, gushing, overly positive, un-objective you name it.

Today's piece on the new Dynamo soccer stadium continues that trend....

(Soccer notebook: Stadium should earn city matches. Jose De Jesus Ortiz, Chron.com)
The Dynamo is building a beautiful soccer stadium on the East End. Sure, it would be silly for the federation to bring a qualifier against Mexico to Reliant Stadium. It would make tons of money, but there wouldn't be much of an advantage because of the massive Mexican fan base around here.
A large portion of that soccer-loving Mexican and Mexican-American fan base would readily pack the Dynamo's new stadium to support the U.S. against any other CONCACAF team, such as Jamaica, Costa Rica, Panama or Canada. We couldn't guarantee pro-U.S. crowds against El Salvador or Honduras because those communities are quite large here.
The idea that the new Dynamo Stadium, at less than half the capacity of Reliant, is MORE attractive to US Soccer is ridiculous. Sure, it's probably the line that's being pushed forward by the team, but it's not something that has a place in any serious analysis of the game.

Reliant Stadium is the big soccer draw in Houston, a nice little stadium in Downtown's East End isn't going to change that, no matter what the Dynamo's mouthpiece embedded at Chron.com says.