Houston Dynamo Support Groups Squash the Drama, Unite Forces

Marco Torres

​It's an hour before game time on a late Saturday afternoon and members of the Texian Army and La Bateria congregate in a modest grassy area outside of Robertson Stadium. The Dynamo support groups have been camped out here since 1 p.m. in advance of seeing the home team take on the Columbus Crew.

"We're either very loyal or very bored," says an orange-and-sky-blue clad Texian Army dude in between pulls from a longneck beer. If this were a Major League Soccer playoff match, this Dynamo fan and his fellow diehards would have been here, in the oppressive heat, 24 hours before kickoff.

Marco Torres

​The two groups -- along with El Batallón and Brickwall Firm, who are tipping back a few on the other side of Robertson -- are in charge of making a mutha-effing raucous during Dynamo home matches. For the first time since 2007, the four contingents, comprised of young and middle-aged folks from all sorts of racial backgrounds, post up together at one end of the stadium and go wild for 90-plus minutes.

It wasn't always a cohesive effort, due to some beef between Texian Army and El Batallón that forced Dynamo officials to separate the groups. However, in advance of the new $110 million stadium (scheduled for a summer 2012 opening) that will feature a special support-group section in the lower bowl, front office personnel asked everyone to, once again, merge forces.

The move so far has been a success, according to Texian Army and La Bateria. The latter, who last year broke off from TA but still coexists with the team's longest standing group, admits that there used to be "some drama, but [then] we got rid of the roaches."