All the talk was about Lionel Messi the day before the 2023 U.S. Open Cup Final.
Would he play? Will he lead the way, heroically, like he did in that dramatic Semifinal in Cincinnati? Or will a mysterious muscle injury keep him from the big stage? No one could have known that the hero of the most star-studded Open Cup Final in history would be one Griffin Dorsey, MLS journeyman and former Indiana University fullback, juggling barefoot in the Fort Lauderdale grass.
“It’s right up there as one of the best points of my career,” said Houston Dynamo’s Dorsey, thin and tall – with the long flaxen hair of a campus hacky-sack champion, who’d developed quietly over the course of 2023 into one of the most dangerous wide men in Major League Soccer. “It was super special to have scored that goal. I’ll admit that I look back on it from time to time and feel pretty good about it.”
Dorsey’s got every right to be impressed; Messi sure was.
The Argentine World Cup (and everything-else) winner spent that night in street clothes, his injury failing to heal in time despite training the day before. A TV camera, as directed, never left his face while he watched on from the stands. Each tick and twitch of worry was captured. So was Messi’s reaction to Dorsey’s sensational opening goal in the 24th minute that kicked the door open for a Houston Dynamo win and a halted, if only for a brief moment, Inter Miami’s coronation as the biggest thing in the American game since the arrival of Pele to the Cosmos a generation before.
“A buddy sent me the video [of Messi’s reaction to his goal] after the game and it was pretty funny,” said Dorsey, who celebrated that night’s win, Houston’s second Open Cup triumph, with his grandpa. “But we did everything as a team. We went into the game not knowing who was going to play or who wasn’t [for Miami] but that look that was on Messi’s face, it was our plan to have someone put it there.”
The goal was a work of art, with an undercurrent of lung-straining endeavor. Midfield schemer Artur held the ball up at the edge of the penalty area for the advancing Dorsey, surging up the right side on yet another overlapping run. A measured pass led to a thundering finish.
Dorsey seemed to put every ounce of his energies behind the shot. The force of it lifted him off his feet and left him flat on his back. When the ball hit the net, it silenced the raucous South Florida crowd who fully expected to add another trophy to the inaugural Leagues Cup they’d recently won.
“To win that game, someone was going to have to do something like that,” added the 25-year-old Dorsey, born and raised in Evergreen, Colorado. “I’m just happy I did my part.”
He’s become a Dynamo cult hero since those Cup-Final heroics. Internet memes and GIFs claiming him the new GOAT were plentiful. And his improvement, and transformation from fringe player into the most modern and reliable of wingbacks, has him standing out in a Dynamo team crawling with big names like Mexico legend Hector Herrera and Coco Carrasquilla.
Dorsey’s rise has coincided – not coincidentally – with the Houston club’s return to prominence. This, his seventh season in Major League Soccer, is a far cry from his first few. “The transition was hard,” he said of leaving the college game after two seasons and entering the USA’s top pro flight. He earned just two starts in two years with Toronto FC, spending most of his time with the reserves before finally being released in the peak of the Covid-19 Pandemic.
“It was a big learning curve for me,” Dorsey admitted, citing all the challenges everyone else does when making the transition up from the amateur ranks – the game faster, the opponents fiercer and all mistakes punished with extreme prejudice. “I’m still learning. Every year is a chance to improve.”
His arrival in Houston felt like a move unlikely to lead to a star turn. It was 2021 and here was the Dynamo, consistently among MLS’ most mediocre clubs, signing anonymous cover for the wide positions. No one knew then that the two – club and player both – would rise together the way they have.
“He’s a wonderful human,” said Dynamo coach Ben Olsen, who admits he was “crazy” to leave Dorsey on the bench for the first half of last season.
“He didn’t sulk, he’s a great example of a guy saying ‘What do I need to do to get on the field? What do I need to work on?’ Grabbing assistant coaches, doing film work,” said Olsen, who arrived in Houston at the start of the 2023 campaign with the task of reviving a team that reached the MLS playoffs only once from 2013 to 2023.
“At this point, there’s no way I’m taking him off the field,” added Olsen.
“The years in Houston before last year were some hard ones for the club – and I know because I lived them,” Dorsey said of the seasons before Olsen’s arrival when, though he earned regular playing time and was voted the young player of the year, the club struggled through last and second-to-last place finishes. “I know first-hand the struggles we went through. There were serious doubts and it wasn’t great.
“Last year’s successes were a triumph that the team really needed,” he added before checking himself and making sure his point was well heard.
“We want to have sustained success, not a one-off year where we make the Semifinals of the Open Cup or the playoffs or whatever,” he said. “This year is just as much an opportunity to win the Open Cup as it is the Leagues Cup, the league, to reach the Concacaf Champions Cup and every other thing.
“We want to get the name Houston Dynamo wherever we can get it,” he added.
Dorsey’s attitude is clear about having the chance to defend the Open Cup crown he was so integral in winning. “For us as a group it’s an opportunity. A chance to play,” he said. “It’s super exciting. It [the Open Cup] is a tournament that matters here.”
It’s tempting for Dempsey (and Houston Dynamo fans) to get caught up in the glory moment from last year in Fort Lauderdale – lifting a trophy and beer showers while the greatest player in the history of the game watched on. But Dorsey only has eyes for where he and the club can improve.
The future is where his sights are set.
“The reality is that our eyes are focused forward and on the future as much as possible,” he said of Houston Dynamo’s upcoming first step in their Open Cup title defense, at home at the Shell against hungry Detroit City FC of the country’s second division.
“They’re going to come with everything they’ve got,” added last year’s Cup Final hero, a young man who knows just how quickly things can change for the better or the worse. “We’ll have to be prepared for that. We want to take the U.S. Open Cup by storm.”
Fontela is editor-in-chief of usopencup.com. Follow him at @jonahfontela on X/Twitter.