With Sporting KC finishing their two-match road trip on Wednesday night at Columbus, I caught up with Crew beat writer for the Columbus Dispatch, Adam Jardy, to preview the match. The match will kick off at 6:30 p.m. CT on Wednesday with live coverage available on KMCI (38 the Spot), SKCTV, ESPN 1510, and La Gran D 1340 AM.
JF: How would you sum up Columbus' season up to this point and their form heading into Wednesday's match?
AJ: Three games into the season it looked like the road to the MLS Cup was coming to Crew Stadium. The Crew looked fantastic, Gregg Berhalter’s system seem to be catching teams off guard and personnel seem to be buying into what he was asking of them and they looked very much like a world beater. Whether it’s the fact that they have been found out or they fact that maybe players were just playing above their level but they have come back to Earth and since then they have played 15 games and have not had one win since their opening 3 game stretch. They have been a very much average team and have scraped together a number of draws despite having a few key players out with World Cup call-ups, injuries and things like that. It seems like they keep treading water but this past Saturday, the loss in New York, the four to one defeat was a first result that they threw changes in there instead of saying maybe this team is going to be okay and maybe they can squeak things out here and there. But now you kind of have a feeling that maybe there are some fatal flaws in this team that if they are not addressed then maybe they will keep the Crew out of the playoff yet again. In a nutshell, that’s kind of how the season has gone. They are still right here, any team in MLS that wins three in a row you will be right back in the pick of things. Crew certainly has not done anything to put its self out of position but hasn’t done a lot to put them in a position either.
JF: What were the expectations for The Crew heading into this season?
AJ: I think it would be different depending on who you ask. I think that internally, if anyone was honest with you they would say their expectations were just be competitive. When you’re dealing with a new system, a new style and a new management, you’re going to have growing pains. They signed Gregg Berhalter for the long haul. They want to win now, but it’s not as if he is working on a one year contract where if they don’t produce right away he’s gone. This is going to be a rebuilding process for a sustainable long-term winner here in Columbus. Whether that happens or not, it still remains to be seen. Internally, I think the expectations were to be a consistent team that plays an exciting brand of soccer. I think for the most part they probably reached that. After missing the post season for the last two years, I think they expect to reach to the playoffs. It doesn’t matter who is in charge or who is on the field, they get tired of losing after a while. To look at them as they stood in the preseason, it’s far to say they would probably be a little better than they were last year. But I think it’s fair to say that most of the teams around them are better. We’re in a position where if they don’t find some upgrades during the summer transfer then its rough to predict them to reach the playoffs.
JF: What did you take way from the earlier meeting (2-0 win by Sporting KC on May 4) between the two sides this season?
A: It was an interesting game. You can see from watching that game the talent level difference and you’re dealing with more depth than Kansas City. You’re dealing with a team that hasn’t been there and now playing at the highest level that the league offers. So to me, if you watch a game like that and you see something that the Crew inspires to be. That’s where Gregg Berhalter is trying to build his team, to get to that level where you can be a consistent, dangerous team like Sporting Kansas City is. So, to me, that was the main thing that I took out from that game was the goal of where the Crew wants to be in a couple of years but they just aren’t quite there yet.
JF: The Crew feature one of the top young players in the league in Will Trapp. What's been his progression in the last year and how important has he been to the club this season?
AJ: It’s interesting with Will because if things could have gone differently you could have seen him somewhere on the World Cup roster this summer. You look at DeAndre Yedlin being there and that Will has played with at the U20 level, I think that had Will be in the line up with The Crew at the beginning of last season, I think he could have very well have been up and been in Brazil. The Crew coaching staff for whatever reason felt it was too much to ask him as a rookie to juggle both with being with the U20’s and playing with the Crew. So he didn’t make his MLS debut until mid-season last year. But as soon as he stepped on the field, you saw the talent and you saw that yes he is young and not the biggest guy on the field but he gets it. He is a very distinctive player and a very smart player. He makes the players around him so much better. We have seen anything this year that changes that. Berhalter has made him the teams' Vice Captain which I believe is the first Vice Captain in the history of Crew. When Michael Parkhurst hasn’t been around, Will Trapp has taken over the Captains' arm band. He is the first homegrown player and the youngest player to ever be a captain in an MLS team. He’s a guy that plays a little bit beyond his years. They’re still tweaking his role on the field little bit. He pairs with Tony Tchani in the defensive midfield and Tchani tends to press forward more and Will helps out the center back for the Crew. So they are asking a little bit more attacking out of him lately and we seen him take a couple chances and push into the final third. I think we might see more of that as the season goes on. Either way, he is a guy that continues to grow and continues to progress. Not only do I think he will be in that 2018 World Cup roster for the United States but he could be at the top as time goes on and someone The Crew should hold onto.
JF: Federico Higuain continues to be a key player for Columbus. What's been his form this season and what's been the reason for Columbus' recent struggles to score goals?
AJ: As far as Higuain and the season has gone, he, in a lot of ways have lead the team. He was off to a fantastic start with some incredible goals and being incredibly impeccable. Unfortunately, for him he has been dealing with a hamstring injury that was going into the World Cup break and three games in a week, he missed the first one with yellow card accumulations, he pulled his hamstring in the next one and missed the following matches after that. This past Saturday against New York, he played a full 90 minute game since May but he’s not fully back to the player he was before the injury when every time he touched the ball you knew something special was going to happen. He is not quite there yet from a health standpoint it will be interesting since he played on Saturday, will he be able to go the full 90 again here on Wednesday against Kansas City. So if the Crew wants to make the playoffs and turn the ship around to get some results, it’s going to come from him. When he is on his game, his is arguably the best player in the league. He does amazing things and makes the guys around him so much better, its incredible what this Crew team would have looked like these last two years without him; that’s a team that has missed the playoffs. Crew fans don’t think it has been all that well if we didn’t have Higuain it would have been bad. So he is a main focal point on that offence and if he was able to step back and play at his level that he has played at all season, he will go a long way with helping the Crew. They’re not scoring goals, its beyond bad anymore. They are who they are and they are lacking from a goal-scoring standpoint. They are very persistent in looking for someone new for the summer transfer window and I know they have looked at a hundred of candidates. They are being very specific on what they are looking for, so until they can bring someone in, they basically have two guys at forward Arrieta and Adam Bedell who is a rookie. They called up a guy from Dayton and it’s a good thing that they did because Arrieta suffered a hamstring injury on Saturday and we don’t know his status yet. But they are incredibly on forwards right now and you have been counting on a guy who has been playing at a lower level and a rookie now. You have to work with that mix and try to make something happen at a forward standpoint. There are a lot of questions when it comes to scoring goals. They are dominating possession and their passing numbers are great, they are getting the ball in a dangerous position but they are just not putting it in the back of the net. It’s difficult seeing that going on with this group. That’s where they stand from a goal-scoring standpoint. It’s a struggle right now.
JF: What do you look forward to seeing from the match on Wednesday?
AJ: Aside from the triumph from the return of Andy Gruenebaum to Columbus, it’s going to be nice to see him again. I am looking forward to seeing how Columbus responds from a devastating loss on Saturday. When you have a game that tactics get pulled in the 59th and let in four goals and for the first time all season your coach comes out to say “I’m disappointed and that was our worst performance all year.” There is a lot of soul searching and a lot of staring in the mirror right now from the guys on the Crew roster. So I think I know how Sporting Kansas City is going to come out and play, trying to possess the ball and trying to take The Crew out of it and the stadium out of it. To me, the question is going to be, can the Crew recovers quickly with such a short turnaround from such a difficult lost. Can they turn the page or is this a tipping point from this season where we go they were holding water for awhile but then after that New York loss, the wheels fell off. I really don’t know how The Crew will show up to play like on Wednesday night. So to me that’s probably the most interest question for Wednesday, how will the line up is the Crew going to field and what sort of fire are they going to have.
