{"id":175081,"date":"2026-02-22T04:34:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T04:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/175081\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T04:34:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T04:34:07","slug":"santos-debut-double-leads-houston-rally-to-beat-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/175081\/","title":{"rendered":"Santos debut double leads Houston rally to beat Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"

HOUSTON — – Guilherme Santos scored two goals in the second half of his MLS debut to rally the Houston Dynamo to a 2-1 victory over the Chicago Fire in a season opener on Saturday night.<\/p>\n

Santos found the net for the first time in the 67th minute – with assists from Jack McGlynn<\/a> and Ezequiel Ponce<\/a> – to tie it 1-1. He scored the winner unassisted<\/a> 11 minutes later off a deflection.<\/p>\n

Santos joined the Dynamo after scoring 95 goals in 429 appearances for Brazilian S\u00e9rie A side Santos FC.<\/p>\n

Hugo Cuypers<\/a> picked up where he left off last season, scoring unassisted in the 31st minute to stake the Fire to a 1-0 lead. Cuypers had 17 goals in 33 appearances last season and scored 10 times in 31 appearances in 2024 – his first season in the league.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Bond<\/a> totaled two saves for the Dynamo, while Chris Brady<\/a> saved two shots for the Fire.<\/p>\n

Head coach Gregg Berhalter led Chicago to its first playoff appearance since 2017 last season.<\/p>\n

Up next Houston: Hosts Los Angeles FC on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Chicago: Hosts CF Montreal on Saturday.<\/p>\n

——<\/p>\n

AP soccer: https:\/\/apnews.com\/soccer<\/a><\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 ESPN Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON — – Guilherme Santos scored two goals in the second half of his MLS debut to rally…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[70649,70647,7000,56,58,57,70648,136,731],"class_list":["post-175081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-70649","tag-chicago-fire-fc-usachicago","tag-espn","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-houston-dynamo-fc-usahouston","tag-mls","tag-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}