DaMarcus Beasley doubts he'll return for Houston Dynamo next season

DaMarcus Beasley doesn't plan on retiring at the end of this Major League Soccer season, but he doubts he'll be back with the Houston Dynamo in 2017.

Beasley, 34, is in his third season with the Dynamo, following a move from Liga MX club Puebla in 2014. The long-time U.S. international's contract expires at the end of the season and Beasley said he thinks his future lies elsewhere.

In quotes onMLSSoccer.com, Beasley said: "My gut feeling is, probably not. Just because I haven't really had talks with them. If they wanted to renew my contract or give me another one, or whatever, then I'm sure I would have heard from them by now."

But that doesn't mean the end of the line for the versatile player who's made 123 appearances for the U.S. national team.

"Until that's done, until mentally I'm drained, until the legs can't go no more, and mentally I'm out of it, then I'll stop," Beasley said. "But I'm definitely gonna play. Whether that's in Houston or that's somewhere else I don't know."

The Dynamo have had a less-than-stellar season and are essentially out of MLS playoff contention. A fast start quickly cooled and the club also had to deal with the loss of its manager Owen Coyle, who left to take the head coaching position with Blackburn Rovers.

Beasley's season was also compromised by a lengthy spell on the sidelines after undergoing knee surgery in July. Up until then he'd started 17 of the Dynamo's 18 matches and had logged 1,381 minutes -- good for third on the club at the time.

In the four matches since his return, the Dynamo have won twice, lost once and drawn once, but that isn't near enough to close the gap to the playoff places without some serious help from other teams.

In trying to pinpoint what went wrong for the team in 2016, Beasley said: "When you have a losing season everything comes to light. Whether we can strengthen the back, forwards not scoring, giving up too many goals, soft goals. There's a lot of things.

"The mentality of it let us down. How many times were we up a goal? Up two goals? And we end up losing or tying. That's not mistakes, that's mentally. It's all mental.

"Obviously we didn't do enough to make the playoffs, so we need to strengthen.

"You can't have the same team we had this year going into next year. We need to strengthen all areas. And I mean from the back all the way to the front."