Crew answers early goal, but fizzles in second half
After a pair of wins, a three-game homestand sandwiched around an international break was filled with promise for Crew SC. Sunday afternoon on national television, the Crew welcomed in Sporting Kansas City, defensive stalwarts of Major League Soccer.
The resulting 1-1 final, in which both goals were scored before halftime, wasn’t disheartening in itself. The manner in which it unfolded was.
“We’re a little disappointed in the result — not because of the score but more the performance, especially in the second half,” Crew captain Wil Trapp said. “I thought we lost a little bit of the grasp of the game.”
The Crew (13-12-4) fell behind early after a rocky start from Jonathan Mensah, one of the team’s three designated players. The center back picked up three fouls including a yellow card in the first 13 minutes, then tracked back
Crew Stadium, or Mapfre Stadium, as they call it now. The Crew was playing before a sun-splashed crowd of 17,089 (announced) and a noisy Nordecke. The Crew was well-rested and relatively healthy and they let the Sporting Kansans walk out of the place saying, “Boy, we’re a lot better than those guys.” The final score was 1-1.
SKC scored in the 19th minute, when Crew center back Jonathan Mensah, in a one-onone situation, tried to clear the box with a bicycle kick — which is kind of like obeying a stop sign by crashing into a telephone pole. Mensah muffed the bike, of course, and KC’s Cristian Lobato — momentarily dumbfounded by the Mensah spectacle — regained his senses and
bunted the ball past Crew goalkeeper Zack Steffen. Mensah then barked at Steffen. That was weird.
The Crew picked things up and pressured the visitors over the last 15 minutes of the first half. The Crew scored one minute into firsthalf stoppage time. The goal, off a corner kick, was a beauty. Recently acquired Pedro Santos served a lovely ball in from the right corner and Ola Kamara beat his man and put a header inside the near post. It was Kamara’s 15th goal of the season.
“The rust that you guys have been warning us about was certainly evident,” Crew coach Gregg Berhalter said.
Wait a minute. Who warned them about the rust? I didn’t warn them about the rust. Who are "you guys"? And what about this: If they were warned, why were they still rusty?
“You could tell we
hadn’t played in a couple weeks,” Berhalter said. “I thought the first half was a good half, a lot of give and take, and then in the second half we lost movement, we gave balls away too easily. When you look at 78 percent passing accuracy in the second half, it wasn’t good enough.”
When you look at 37.2 percent possession in the second half, it wasn’t good, period.
Is it OK to yell things at professionals like, “Win some 50-50 balls!” like spectators do at middle-school games? It was tempting. And when Berhalter tried to change things by reaching down his bench, he pulled Santos and Kamara in the 65th minute and stunted his offense.
Berhalter had his reasons, more or less. He said that, of late, Kamara had not been taking full training sessions (for some unspecified reason). He skipped over an explanation for subbing out Santos. He admitted that the players subbed in, Adam Jahn and Cristian Martinez, did not make an impact. He said wing Kekuta Manneh — a good option to spell Justin Meram, who recently circumnavigated the globe to play for Iraq — was available. He said he wanted to substitute for an outside back instead.
It is true that KC is a fine team, especially when defending. It is also true that the outcome would have been much different had Federico Higuain, who was very good, and Kamara buried a couple of sterling second- half chances. The rub is this: It’s September, and the Crew was at home, and they played like they were somewhere else.