Manchester City’s friendly against Houston Dynamo on Thursday may be in danger of being called off following severe floods in Texas and Oklahoma this week, which has left many in Texas without electricity and left roads and streets flooded past the point they are still accessible.
The Blues are currently in Toronto for the first game of their post-season tour, and face a friendly against the Canadian side on Wednesday night. The next day, they were due to make the trip to Houston to face Dynamo in the BBVA Compass Dynamo Charities Cup on Thursday night, an annual match between the American side and an international side, of which all the profits go to charity.
However, with 11 people having been killed by the deluge in Texas and Oklahoma, City may have to miss out on the trip to the Lone Star State due to the commitments being too difficult to fulfil.
Speaking ahead of the game, Houston manager Owen Coyle, who has been in charge at the MLS side since late last year, said “Prior to last night it had been very nice but then it was incredible. I think normally in the month of May five inches of rain falls but there was 10 inches in six hours last night so the whole city has been very badly affected by it. Everybody is trying to make the best of a difficult situation.”
“A lot of the roads have looked like rivers. We normally start training at 10am and we had to put that back to 2pm to try and allow the players get into training. But in adversity people stick together and work ever so hard to put things right.”
While Coyle may not have explicitly stated that the game is in danger, it’s very easy to see it being called off if the roads and the city has been as affected as reports say. Hopefully if it is called off, the game can be rearranged for a later date, so the friendly can still go ahead.
