Ben Olsen took charge of the Houston Dynamo on November 8, following the end of a disappointing 2022 Major League Soccer campaign from the Western Conference team.
The Dynamo concluded the season in 13th place, with 36 points in 34 games and a record of 10W-18L-6D to miss out on playoffs. Olsen, who stepped away from coaching for two years following his departure from D.C. United in October 2020, saw an opportunity for the team and himself to start from scratch.
"I've spoken publicly about my burnout of, you know, after 10 years at D.C. United I needed to get away and see what else was out there," he said in an interview with 90min.
"But it's nice to be back in the MLS, doing what I'm realizing now, is what I love. I wasn't necessarily sure of that when I was let go of D.C. United, I was pretty convinced I didn't love coaching at that moment. It's nice now to start and create relationships with players again.
"Now, we're starting over together."
The first couple games of the 2023 MLS campaign saw Olsen and the Dynamo struggle, picking up consecutive defeats to kick off the season. But slowly, the head coach began capitalizing on the raw potential he first saw in his new side.
He began experimenting with the formation ahead of every game, honing in on the importance of 'adapting' when tailoring the starting lineup to fit the specific opponent at hand. By trial and error, Olsen continues to build on what works for this Texas team.
"We're starting to slowly kind of define who we are, and when we are at our best," he said.
"Who we are on the field, who we are in the locker room, our culture, our staff, figuring out which players can respond or which players we can rely on in a different position and the versatility. So that's what's so exciting about this. Every week is like, oh, there's something new we're figuring this out. We’re building a really neat project."
The new strategy has propelled the Dynamo to extreme highs and lows this season, defeating reigning MLS champions LAFC 4-0 before falling 3-0 to state rivals Austin FC. The team currently sit in seventh on the Western Conference table with 27 points in 20 games, a notable jump from last season’s 13th place finish, but still Olsen’s side boasts a goal difference of negative two.
Olsen maintains the 'feast or famine' pattern comes with the territory of renovation.
"As far as an actual identity, we're still figuring out, you know, everybody wants an identity, right? Everybody wants to say this is who we are," he added.
"There's 19 new players here. So everything's fresh. But right now, our identity is an adaptive one because we aren’t playing the same way when we go away to Seattle on turf or when we have three games in a week. And there's two days in between a trip to Vancouver and then back to Houston in 100 degree weather. So you have to be adaptive.
"But within that, being adaptive, you have to have some real structure and some principles and some ideas that everybody can hang their hat on when the whistle blows.
"So it's a kind of a balance of that, you know, we've been very sound defensively. If there was one theme that we've had, it was that we've been tough to score on for the most part. There's some games that we fall off, we give up three or four little feast or famine. It seems like, with us, we shut out or it's, it's four goals or five."
Olsen noted the initial stage of the season saw the effects of new players and management in place, but he now wants more from the team.
After 10 years with D.C. United, he’s come to understand how to navigate through the long nature of MLS. The new Dynamo coach noted the nuances of the American league, before insisting he hopes to propel the Texas team forward through the three individual parts of the campaign.
"You have to sustain this and MLS is, it's a long year, you know. To me it's always broken up in the beginning, the middle and the end. Right now we're in the middle, it's hot. This is a five month heatwave that we have to manage players and their loads," he said to 90min.
"The physical part is important, but it's also when you go out and you play in 100 degree weather for, for a few months, it becomes emotional and you gotta manage that component too to make sure that the heat and the elements here are in our advantage and not our disadvantage.
"We had some injuries and we had to grind out some results to get that belief. And then this second period this summer is about holding on to that defensive structure and, and commitment and grittiness, but also now adding in more offensive weapons and more clear ideas on how we're gonna score goals."
The Houston Dynamo will have the opportunity to continue testing tactics and experimenting a new identity with MLS regular-season play, Leagues Cup and the U.S. Open cup. Olsen has three competitions to impose his own style on the impressionable side in the hopes of lifting a trophy.
The honeymoon period is coming to a close, as the second half of the 2023 campaign kicks off.
This article was originally published on 90min as Ben Olsen on Houston Dynamo’s new identity: We're slowly defining who we are.