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A Supporter’s View: Columbus Crew

2008_016_4If the Columbus Crew offense sleep-walked through its 2-0 loss to the Red Bulls a week earlier, the Crew attack was WIDE awake against Chivas USA as four goals helped Columbus topple the Goats and stay perfect at Crew Stadium.

Guillermo Barros Schelotto erased the memories of his invisible showing last week by scoring a goal and setting up two others, including one on a beautiful laser-like assist to Robbie Rogers. It was the type of beautiful soccer Crew fans are hoping will come all .

SBI correspondent Rich Fidler was at the match and provided us with his take on the wild night in Columbus.

Small crowd at Crew Stadium treated to fireworks

By RICH FIDLER

The Columbus Crew rebounded from last weekend’s disaster in New York City by winning a back and forth battle against Chivas USA at Columbus Crew Stadium in front of less than 7,000 fans – the lowest attendance for a Crew home game ever in their 13th season leading some to question the front office despite the presence of constant rain.

The Crew started the game with their newly minted left-back from Argentina, Gino Padula, and the rustiness showed for the former Queens Park Rangers and Montpellier HSC defender. Padula hasn’t played regular soccer since his time at QPR in 2005 and his turnovers early in the match showed he has some rust to work off and made fans remember another defensive signing that didn’t work out – Mark Williams, the former Northern Ireland central defender.

Alejandro Moreno once again was the lone force up top, but it was the inspired play of Guillermo Barros Schelotto that was the plan of the day.  He scored the first goal when he powered the ball down the middle of the goal.  Nothing fancy for this South American, it was always the plan, as Schelotto told the press after the game he wasn’t looking to get cute and just wanted to power the ball in to the back of the next. 

Schelotto’s brilliance would be evident again when after Sacha Kljestan’s equalizer; the midfielder took a pass from Moreno, deeked the defense and laid it off to Moreno to finish.  It didn’t end there, as his brilliant performance aided Robbie Rogers to score his first goal of the season to give the Crew what most thought was an insurmountable two goal lead at the fortress known as Columbus Crew Stadium.

It was not meant to be as the Crew defense collapsed twice in a 10 minute span.  First  Jesse Marsh scored after splitting the porous central defensive pairing of Chad Marshall and Danny O-Rourke, then as Paulo Nagamura slammed a shot past Hesmer.  It was a stunning response from a team that had been out-played and out-worked the entire second half – and it just goes to show that whatever the Crew got for Marcos Gonzalez in the off-season it certainly wasn’t worth it in this fans eyes unless Rio Ferdinand is on his way to Columbus.

Don’t worry Crew fans, the most entertaining match in Crew Stadium in years wasn’t over yet – as Rogers scored the game winner and secured his own brace by making Brad Guzan, target of much transfer speculation to Europe, crumble to the ground as the ball trickled through his fingers in a laughable display.  It was a stunning change of fortunate, when the Crew actually won a game in the last 10 minutes – as opposed to losing a game the way that had become synonymous over the last 2 years with Sigi at the helm – KC last year, Dallas last year…shall I go on?

The Crew will look to continue the good fortune on Thursday night when they travel to Washington DC to face a team that is coming off a 4-0 drubbing at the hands of Real Salt Lake on Saturday.

Comments

  1. totally disagree about padula. i thought he looked great defensively, and by the second half his passes seemed to be on for the most part. give him a couple games to gel. i think this will turn out great for us!

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  2. “I’m kinda concerned about the poor attendance. What the hell else is going on in Columbus?”

    Put ’em Scarlet and Gray and watch the sheep pour in!

    (I know, I know, the Ohio St soccer team doesn’t draw that many, even for nat’l runner-up).

    Seriously, tho? The news will run 3 Buckeye spring practice game stories, Reds & Indians highlights, Clippers highlights, hockey playoffs (which never include the Blue Jackets), and a NASCAR story. And then, if there’s time, you might get the score of the Crew game. Forget getting any news about mid-week practice, player movement, upcoming games, or the reserve division.

    Columbus is actually bigger than either Cleveland or Cincy, but it’s a one-trick town and that trick is Ohio State. Even the Blue Jackets take a back seat. You’ll get 90,000 people and 5 hours of news coverage for a scrimmage in weather that’s 42 and rainy. For the Crew, you’ll get 6500, which is what they had the other night.

    It doesn’t help that the team has sucked for 3 years. If they start playing better, people will come out there. At the end of the ’05 season, they were actually winning games under Warzycha, and even though they were already out of the playoffs they started to draw more people.

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  3. It was an awful day in C-Bus on Saturday. There attendance last year averaged about 12k+…not very good but not bad considering they weren’t any good. Not much else is going on though. The Blue Jackets and that is about it.

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  4. Exciting win but I am still concerned…So goes Guillermo so goes the Crew. They need someone else to step up with him. I have a feeling he will play very well more often than not but those times that he is “invisible”, the Crew will struggle.

    I’m done being negative! Crew 2008 MLS Cup Champs!

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  5. Go Crew!

    Yes, we really, really miss Marcos Gonzalez. But that said, Danny O’Rourke is light years ahead of Chris Wingert, the human turnover machine.

    As noted elsewhere – I did fill up the running commentary for the game, but I did so after I got home from the game and re-watched it on TiVo. So it’s all there, but it’s, uh, ‘tape-delayed’ 😉

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