Crew Finds Itself in Galaxy’s Eye
Having spent a couple of days kicking its heels in Virginia Beach, Va., waiting for Hurricane Bonnie to blow through, the Columbus Crew tonight finds itself up against another kind of storm at the Rose Bowl.
It faces a Galaxy team that has won four games in a row, has a 20-6 record, has clinched a spot in Major League Soccer’s playoffs and needs only seven more points to secure first place in the Western Conference.
In other words, a Galaxy team that is riding higher than the surf that crashed onto the Atlantic beaches this week while the Crew waited in vain for its U.S. Open Cup Final match against the Chicago Fire.
The game was to have been played Wednesday night at the new Virginia Beach Sportsplex, but the threat posed by Bonnie first caused postponement to Thursday night and then rescheduling to an undetermined date.
The Open Cup is the oldest soccer tournament in the United States, dating from 1914. It is open to all teams, but until MLS clubs started taking part, it was little more than a competition for amateur and semi-professional teams.
As such, it was largely ignored.
The Dallas Burn won the Cup last season and, with the Crew and Fire advancing to this season’s final, the tournament had generated more interest than usual.
But the weather interfered this week, and the only thing that the postponed Cup Final achieved was to disrupt Columbus’ preparation for a league game that is much more important to the Crew than it is to the Galaxy.
Coach Tom Fitzgerald’s team, featuring such current and former U.S. national team players as goalkeeper Juergen Sommer, defender Thomas Dooley, midfielder Brian Maisonneuve (injured) and forward Brian McBride, is two victories away from wrapping up a place in the playoffs.
The team has won two in a row and has been inspired by the play of Trinidad & Tobago national team forward Stern John, the A-League’s rookie of the year in 1997 before joining MLS, and Jamaican national team forward/midfielder Andy Williams out of Rhode Island University.
At 12-12, the Crew’s performance has been more inconsistent than Fitzgerald would like. Columbus is third in the Eastern Conference, might overtake the New York/New Jersey MetroStars for second place, but can’t catch conference-leading Washington D.C. United.
Off the field, however, this has been an exceptional year for the Crew and its fans.
That’s because voters in Ohio approved construction of a soccer-specific stadium that will seat 22,500, with minimal distance between fans and players.
MLS Notes
Nancy Lay and Sandra Hunt will referee their first games today as MLS joins the NBA as the only professional sports leagues in the United States to feature women game officials. Lay will work the match in Dallas between the Burn and the New York/New Jersey MetroStars, and Hunt will handle the Fire’s game in Chicago against the Kansas City Wizards.
