New pickups ready to face former team

Picault, Urruti spent last year with FC Dallas

If Fafa Picault scores his first Dynamo goal Saturday but doesn’t celebrate, Houston fans don’t need to worry that one of their club’s newest players isn’t all-in on coach Tab Ramos’ project.

Picault would just be following soccer tradition: Don’t celebrate against your old club.

In this case, that means Picault wouldn’t be celebrating against FC Dallas, the Dynamo’s biggest rival.

The most Dynamo fans are likely to get, Picault said, is him throwing up an ‘H’ with his hands.

“I’ll definitely be happy, and I’ll celebrate with my teammates after,” he said. “But probably I think I’ll try to keep it chill.”

Last season was the only one Picault played with FC Dallas, but that’s all it took for him to make great memories. The Dynamo acquired him in December for $275,000 in allocation money to make sure the next great memories he gains are in Houston orange.

“It will be nice to see some old faces and staff and be back at the old stadium that I once called home, but I’m on this side now so the more important thing is to go there and fight for my teammates and for the city,” Picault said. “So I’m going there as a Houston player, nothing more, nothing less.”

Saturday’s game, which kicks off at 2:30 p.m. at Toyota Stadium, is the first of three regular-season meetings. The teams play every year for possession of El Capitan, an 18th-century mountain howitzer cannon.

FC Dallas (1-1-1, 4 points) has possessed the cannon the last three years. The Dynamo (1-1-1, 4 points) last held it after the 2017 season when two late goals by Erick Torres in the clubs’ final meeting that year helped the Dynamo salvage a draw.

Dallas won the season series 2-1-1 last year, but the Dynamo hope to turn the tables this year with an overhauled roster that includes forwards Picault and Maxi Urruti, another former FC Dallas player.

With four points from their first three games, the Dynamo believe they’re on the right track to rise from last place in the Western Conference to playoff qualifier. Much of that confidence comes from how well the new players have meshed with the returners.

Still, winning road games will be an important factor in moving up the table. For instance, the Dynamo are tied for eighth place with FC Dallas now, but a loss Saturday could send them all the way down to 12th place out of 13 teams.

“I think everything is coming along well,” Picault said. “We’re starting to learn each other, where we like the passes, each other’s strengths and weaknesses. We have a lot of new guys, myself included, so there are different tendencies that we still haven’t learned about each other.

“And that happens when you bring a few new guys in but as time comes, it’s just gonna gel more, and I think we’re going to be a very good team.”

Understanding the intensity and importance of a rivalry game could be the difference between a win and loss.

Second-year Dynamo coach Tab Ramos has only seen the rivalry up close for one season, but his experience with rivalries throughout his playing career help him understand what they mean.

When he played for Tigres in 1995-96, he was in the heat of the battle in training for their Clásico Regiomontano matchup with rival Monterrey, but a red card and an injury kept him from playing in two of those games.

Ramos did get to experience an old school MLS rivalry on the field when he was with the NY/NJ Metrostars and they faced D.C. United.

He has enough experience in soccer to know rivalries — and in this case, the Texas Derby — is “not just another game.”

“I’m not going to pretend that I fully understand the Texas Derby because I’m not local,” Ramos said. “So all I can say is I’ve been in clubs where that derby is usually the most important game of the season. And so I approach it that way. I’m trying to get myself into the minds of our fans and recognize how important it is to them. And so that’s the message that I’m trying to portray to the players.”