I’m sure everyone out there is expecting me to eviscerate Jim Tressel for not ending up 3-0 with enough authority. But seriously, what’s the point? This is how we win folks; I’m not going sit here and criticize Tressel for winning. Wait for Purdue to hammer the Buckeyes – and the Boilermakers will – then I will let some of this pent-up aggravation out.
Instead, I am going to talk about Columbus’ hottest and most surprising team: the Columbus Crew.
The Crew are in midst of Major League Soccer’s second longest unbeaten streak ever. This from a team that I repeatedly declared dead, embalmed, buried and having joined the choir invisible after getting off to a dreadful start back in spring.
As ESPN’s Bill Simmons says, “The lesson is, as always, that I am an idiot.”
The team’s coach, Greg Andrulis, has this team in the playoffs and ready to possibly take a run at the franchise’s first trip to the MLSCup Final. And he’s done it despite the usual mass ignorance of the city’s media – as well as the moaning for his head by a group of Crew fans despite their team playing its best soccer since Andrulis arrived. Needless to say, they are idiots too – but I’ll get to them later.
Andrulis’ decision to replace the consistently inconsistent Jeff Cunningham at forward with midfielder Kyle Martino has to be the most brilliant coaching decision in MLS this season. Martino has bloomed and suddenly might have found himself back in U.S. National Team coach Bruce Arena’s sights at the best possible time: World Cup qualifying is heating up.
Without Cunningham pulling his usual “Planet Jeff” routine of not passing, pouting and never, ever finishing his chances – Edson Buddle has flourished, scoring four goals Saturday against the MetroStars.
Andrulis has also disproved the belief that the Crew couldn’t seem to sign or draft effective players as he brought in U.S. veteran and two-time MLSCup winner Tony Sanneh from Europe and saw him almost immediately score a stoppage time game-winner at San Jose.
Their two top draft picks this season – Chad Marshall from Stanford and Chris Wingert from St. John’s – have turned out to be starters and contributors all season long. Not too many MLS teams can say that.
The offseason additions of veterans Robin Fraser and Simon Elliott won’t exactly be long-term solutions, but who cares? They have played brilliantly, and the time is now for the Black & Gold.
They have the league’s most constantly underrated goalkeeper in Jon Busch and MLS’ best young defender in Marshall.
For the first time in the four seasons that I have watched the vast majority of this club’s matches, they seem to have a complete team, with all elements playing well at once.
As all those sports marketing people would say, the “on-the-field product” is doing well.
Now it’s just a matter of getting Crew Stadium to make some noise and finding some way of getting OSU students to find their way east to watch the games.
It used to be that the off-the-field stuff – the marketing, the best radio package in MLS, and all those goofy promotions at half-time would be doing fine – but once the game got going, there was Mark Williams stumbling around as the Crew blew another late lead.
Now the roles are reversed. The team is playing great but is still running itself as if it is still trying to market around the soccer being played rather just presenting the Crew for what it is: a really good – and really entertaining – Major League Soccer team.
What I am talking about are things like that dumb slogan, “The hardest working team in soccer.” That always sounded to me like a cop-out, saying, “We might not win too often, but we’ll run around a whole bunch.” Also, someone should tell owner Lamar Hunt that Midwestern sports fans aren’t as dumb as he would have you believe. How about not playing bad WNCI music during the brief stoppages in play, or actually marketing this team effectively to people not living in Dublin or New Albany looking for a way to shut their kids up for a few hours?
How about mending whatever happened years ago between the team and Sportsradio 1460 The Fan so that the station occasionally talks about the Crew for more than one hour a week? How about lobbying COTA to extend the bus route down Hudson Street that stops by the stadium toward campus and adding late buses to fans can get back to OSU?
The reality is that none of that off-the-field stuff will likely happen this season. But this is a chance for a real “rebranding” of the Crew from non-threatening suburban entertainment to a fun, slightly more sophisticatedly presented winning soccer.
Finally, a quick word to the diehard fans, and especially the supporters clubs, including the V-Army: Get your act together. I am not usually one to tell fans to stop whining (I usually reserve that for coaches), but it’s time to stop being such dorks and actually recruit some new fans into your group, stop booing Andrulis, and try to make some noise so that the team doesn’t have to play Christina Aguilera when the ball goes out of play. I know your hearts are in the right place, but it might be time for all the desparate groups of hardcore, noise-making fans to come together and take back their rightful place in the north end of Crew Stadium.
Now, as you are reading this, V-Armiers: Stop before you send me the abusive e-mail, and just think about whether you can raise your game just like the players have. I sure hope so.
This brings me to Saturday’s match against rival D.C. United. This is the put-up-or-shut-up game for everyone associated with the Crew. For the team, will this be another brutal United-induced streak-ender like the 3-1 loss in D.C. in June? Will the crowd actually cheer the Crew or just wait quietly until Freddy Adu enters the match?
Who knows? But I know how I will be breaking my Yom Kippur fast Saturday night.
Aaron Stollar is a senior in journalism and hopes those inevitable angry emails he will get from V-Army members are at least reasonably well written and possibly even spelled correctly. He can be reached at [email protected].
