Columbus Crew 1-1 FC Cincinnati: A(n Inconclusive) Clash of Titans

AAhhhhhh! Stop-motion!

I skipped a write- up for FC Cincinnati’s 1-0 win at Toronto FC for a couple reasons, its lack of educational value among them. Saturday’s 1-1 draw at the Columbus Crew, on the other hand, checked all the boxes the Toronto win couldn’t, chief among them: seeing how Cincy stacks up against a consensus best team in Major League Soccer. So, let’s get into that..

About the Game
When it comes to getting off on the right fight in a rivalry game on the road, it’s hard to beat scoring the first goal. Cincinnati took that big first step early (6th minute!) when the put a beautiful bow on a shit-show in Columbus’ area with a Kevin Denkey tap-in at the back post. The buildup featured some other encouraging details – e.g., Luca Orellano working Columbus’ left like a masseuse, Evander chipping in with a rare bicycle-kick assist – leaving Cincy fans asking what was there to love about the goal but everything? The host’s long (thoughtful?) response started from that point and, in some ways, lasted until the final whistle. Cincinnati gave as good as they got – particularly through the first half – but, per the final, official stats, they also spent much of the afternoon managing the pressure Columbus piled on. My notes (not the best, fwiw) didn’t flag any great looks for Cincinnati after Pavel Bucha’s well-placed rip toward the left upper 90 of Patrick Schulte’s goal around the 20th minute, so the balance of their highlights came on the defensive side of the ball. Given the venue and opposition, there’s nothing wrong with that; I’d go one further and say I saw plenty to admire, particularly among the last line of defense (to a personal preference, I like to see Matt Miazga step up and Miles Robinson clean up behind him). The full highlights show most of Columbus’ finer moments in both the first and second halves, including a few that, but for the hands/feet of Roman Celentano, would have given them an equalizer or the win (though, mysteriously, it skipped a free, if somewhat tricky header that Jacen Russell-Rowe should have put away). For what it’s worth, I got some bonus comfort out of the fact that it took a penalty kick to beat Celentano and loving embrace that as an indication that Cincy has its shit together in defense and they have decent back-up for the “regular” starters – Miazga, Robinson and Nick Hagglund (who, apart from getting gently, yet justly screwed on the handball that lead to the penalty kick, played a good one). In the here and now, that was good enough to smuggle a point out of Columbus, keep two more from Columbus’ points total, and Cincinnati a nose ahead in the Eastern Conference standings 14 weeks into the season.

All in all, this game pitted two good, well-coached, well-constructed teams against one another and, for the most part, played out on those terms. The main thing I want to see after sitting through that is what Cincinnati looks like when they host the return leg in mid-July. While I didn’t mind seeing them cede possession at a 2:1 fire-sale in Columbus, seeing them get on the ball and dictate periods of the home leg would give me a little more faith in their capacity to do that kind of thing when circumstances require it. I’ll flesh out that thought a little more below, but first…

MLS Eastern Conference Check-In, A Word at the One-Third Mark

What I have to work with...

Welcome to this broad and necessarily shallow check-in on where things stand in Major League Soccer’s Eastern Conference about one-third of the way through the 2025 season. To set expectations a little:

I watch just one Eastern Conference team every week – FC Cincinnati – and most of the additional (somewhat) in-depth watching I’ve done involved teams that they played on the upcoming weekend. So, no, I’m not coming at any of this from some all-knowing, all-absorbing perch.

Against that, I sincerely believe that a lot of the week-to-week global coverage I see from this league (almost all of it from Official Organs) has a pernicious tendency to read too much into the last game played – i.e., Content, particularly the stuff around failure and progress in players, formation shifts, etc., tends to over-value the latest details, often at the expense of considering broader details like, say, did your team look like some hot-rod shit last weekend because they ran over Montreal at home? Basically, all of the everything below looks at the same things, just over a longer arc. That follows for necessity, for sure, but it’s also about patterns, particularly when it comes to results, where they happened and against which teams and in what condition.

Just to note it, I constructed the information boxes that top each section for each team from the (current) Conference Standings (that link will be stale by Sunday), the much-reduc’d Form Guide (still mourning the loss, contemplating egging MLS HQ…so long as that’s not a felony, because I can’t have another), and applying a filter one team at a time to the official stats page. (Just to note it, MLS has gutted its non-app content. Jesus fucking Christ, the home pages for must teams are like shopping malls circa 2022, i.e., tacky little ghost teams haunted by advertisements to no one.)

The teams below are listed in their order in the Eastern Conference standings and whatever comments I provide come from a combination of things I’ve read, both in the Official Organ and strays caught on Bluesky, watching highlights and longer chunks of games when I had to, or told myself I had to, and watching MLS Wrap-Up – which, to the credit of all concerned, has improved now that they have stuff to chew on.

DC United Scouting Report: This One's About Aspirations

Is the future so bright that I need shades?

What started as a mediocre season for DC United has spun out of control in recent weeks – to the tune of making them the worst defensive team in Major League Soccer. The question a gently-hobbled version of FC Cincinnati answers on Saturday is whether they run with the Club du Foot Montreals of the league, or with the Orlando City SCs, or the…jesus, San Jose Earthquakes. To start with the basics…

DC United
1-3-3, 6 pts., 9 gf, 17 ga (-8); home 1-1-2, away 0-2-1
Last 5 Results: DWDLL
Locale/Strength of Schedule
v SKC (2-1 W); v MTL (0-0 D); @ ORL (1-4 L); v CLB (1-2 L); @ SJ (1-6 L)

Notes from the Field
Because I didn’t think the debacle at San Jose would yield much useful data – just from the seven-plus minutes of the highlights, DC gifted San Jose the first two goals, got in one another’s way all over the field, and broke the basic rules of holding a good defensive line on goals four and five – I spent most of my time (about 45 minutes) watching their home loss to Columbus Crew SC. Based on that review, head coach Troy Lesesne still has DC defending high and playing to force turnovers all over the field (i.e., they hunt the ball), Christian Benteke remains their key player/salvation (he’s scored over half their goals so far), and, besides that, it’s mostly a lot of semi-headless running around. They kept the game versus Columbus tighter (bravo), but they still did plenty of getting in one another’s way and players that compel one to say, “look out for this guy,” of “one of the league’s best” are in short supply. Despite all of the above, DC posts respectable top-line numbers – e.g., they’ve reliably posted shots in the double digits and get around a half dozen on goal every game (the Columbus game was the exception) – and the defensive numbers rarely looked egregious…though the 4.0 goals allowed/game over the past three games would appear to suggest some issues…

Notes on Formation & Personnel
Despite the above, Lesesne has stuck with the same line up/personnel combo over the past four games, with only a couple adjustments barely worth noting (prime example, for reference). The back four in his inevitable 4-2-3-1 has included David Schnegg at left back, Lucas Bartlett and Kye Rowles for center backs and Aaron “I Hope He Likes Living in DC” Herrera as the preferred right back; a youngster named Derek Dodson has acted as understudy and started in the San Jose disaster. Matti Peltola has paired with Hosei Kijima at the two in every line up I reviewed, while the preferred three appears to be Joao Peglow (their assist leader, fwiw, at two), Gabriel Pirani, and the high-effort, ever-combative Jared Stroud (Dominique Badji, who is too old for this shit, started over him at San Jose). Benteke tops off the formation at the one, aka, the loneliest number (number). Again, Columbus played one step ahead of DC on both sides of the ball and, gods willing, Cincinnati will do the same, but both the game at Orlando and the game at San Jose present as implosions – i.e., decent performances utterly undone by repeated, catastrophic mistakes.

MLS Weakly Returns: Week 1 & Scouting Reports for the (Two) Home Team'(s)' Week 2 Opposition

Me going into every preseason, free 'n' easy.

To repeat a familiar refrain, mistakes were made. Who can say by whom?

The original model – which was probably imagined more in service of clicks than coherence – had me putting up weekly league-wide posts that included scouting reports on the following week’s opposition for the Portland Timbers and FC Cincinnati. Because that’s a terrible idea, on its face, next week’s scouting reports on the Week 3 opposition for Portland (Nashville SC) and Cincy (Toronto FC) will get rolled into the same post as the review for their Week 2 games. But, since I’m rolling with Plan A for this post, you’ll find scouting reports for the Week 2 opposition for the Timbers (Austin FC) and Cincinnati (the Philadelphia Union) at the bottom of this post.

With that, let’s get back to the Week 1 results, which will start with one Featured Game of the Week from each Major League Soccer conference. As much as I hope to keep that feature, I will also burn it all the way down if I can’t squeeze it between life, other ambitions, and trying to remain sane and whole in a world full of flaming idiotic bullshit. Ahem.

Another concept that died on impact with reality: posting one review each for the Eastern and Western Conferences.

Western Conference Notes
Featured Game of the Week
San Jose Earthquakes 4-0 Real Salt Lake (Viewing: 15-30; 60-till the goals dried up)
This didn’t look nearly as bad as the final score in real time, something borne out by the top-line stats. Moreover, RSL rotated pretty heavily to preserve their legs for last week’s and this week’s CONCACAF Champions’ Cup games against Herediano – I’d turn to local reporting for a clearer read on how that much mattered – which means that, like a handful of teams (but not Sporting Kansas City, not any more), their heads might have been elsewhere. This eye-catching blowout comes with a couple caveats, in other words, those start with “it’s Week 1, y’all” and end with maybe tapping the brakes a little. Also, dig those away jerseys, Utah’s finest. My take on San Jose lands somewhere between giving them real credit for a strong opener (which comes with a side of quietly and sympathetically pulling for them) and rolling my eyes at a click-bait headline about “The Bruce Arena effect!” The ‘Quakes didn’t play against the ball as much as the possession stats suggest and connected smartly enough when they did go forward. The win featured a familiar standout, Cristian Espinoza, who lined up as a wingback in what everything I have available dubbed a 3-5-2 (the broadcast kept identifying him as a “right back”). He ended the game with two assists – one of them a dime dropped from a mile away (SJ’s third, scored by Ousseni Bouda) – but the balance of the damage followed from indifferent defensive cover from RSL’s midfield – e.g., San Jose’s first and fourth goals (and was that Diego Luna drifting off mid-defending in both cases?). RSL played, y’know, soccer well enough, and even created more chances (some quite good), but plenty of those 21 shots came from too far out to trouble the ‘Quakes ‘keeper, Daniel. A fair amount of credit for that goes to San Jose’s defense – Rodrigues looked as good as anyone on the field (and Bruno Wilson looks like everyone’s best friend; seriously, watch the goal celebrations) – and a little improvement could go a long way for them. So, again, this one’s hairy with caveats, but…noted.
Why This Game?
Every team that finished below the Timbers in 2024, but improves in 2025 stands out as a potential obstacle toward them reaching the playoffs. Think zero-sum meets relative, and let me know when you know what that means. I’m also not clear on where I think RSL will end up, so the possibility they may trend down for 2025 provided another draw. Related, I think Herediano kicked them out of the CCC earlier tonight.

A Proposal for League-Wide Coverage in 2025 & My Romantic Engagement with Every Team in MLS

Google "brides." Genuinely fascinating.

After more late-night deliberation than a proud man would confess to, I have arrived at a league-wide coverage model for 2025, Major League’s Soccer’s (alleged) 30th season. [Ed. – I think they just want a “big” anniversary before Messi fucks off to retirement.]

I hereby commit to following the Portland Timbers, as always (over hill, over dale, through rain, sleet, and snow, in a banana republic, or a constitutional one, forsaking none by my wife, vacations, and the occasional nap), but I hereby also recommit to FC Cincinnati (no, really this time; it’ll be different, baby!). Before anyone casts even the first whisper of aspersion, I renewed that vow before the (exciting!) domino effect dogpile of trades that ultimately sent Evander to Cincy.

I also hereby commit to watching a minimum of 60 minutes of all games involving any team that will play either Portland or Cincinnati the following MLS Match Day. That will allow me to share notes on not just what I saw in that game, but also how those teams have done in the weeks heading into the game before the most important game of their season, i.e., any game played against Portland and Cincinnati.

The posts featuring notes from the game(s) Cincy and the Timbers just played, plus (brief) notes on their opposition for the following week will go up on Sunday or Monday of every week.

I also hereby commit to watching a minimum of 45 minutes of two Featured Games every week. For the first 127 Match Days (yes, this is arbitrary), Featured Games shall involve only intra-Conference games – none of that inter-conference shit – and I will watch one game from each conference. I may stick with that \over the second half of the season, I may not; that's when the spirit takes the wheel.

Notes on those games, the teams involved and how they’ve looked in the weeks prior will top a pair of posts that will go up Wednesday evening and I’ll round those out with stray things I pick up from anything else I can get to between Sunday and Monday, plus whatever Matt Doyle (or his substitute analyst) churns out after the relevant Match Day (why do I feel like I should be capitalizing that?).

Capping the "Getting Reacquainted With [_______]" Project & Barely Tying It to the Timbers

A ballet had the most metal one.

Since the middle of December 2024, I’ve posted mini-histories of every team in Major League Soccer under the title of “Getting Reacquainted with [Your Local Team]”…of varying quality, based on the evidence and feedback I’ve received online. That project had a variety of motives – among them, actually getting reacquainted with what every team in MLS has done over time, but also last season and how that looked against their history – but there was one motive to bring them all and in the darkness bind them: holding them all up as Ghosts of Christmases Yet to Come for my local team, the Portland Timbers.

I’ll close this post with links to all of those mini-histories, and feel free to pick through them as your personal ghosts so move you, but a couple lessons from all that half-assed reading stood out:

1) there are patterns for a fair number of teams in MLS, even if they’re not linear, and seeing those patterns harden in seasons ahead wouldn’t surprise me in the least;

2) I still believe, however naively, that there is enough flexibility in the supply side of the equation (i.e., a planet’s-worth of under-appreciated players) and still/just enough leveling in the league’s roster rules to allow teams from smaller markets to keep putting together a team good enough to compete in MLS, even against the big-market/glamour teams – e.g., Los Angeles FC, the Los Angeles Galaxy, (for now) Inter Miami CF, and (maybe? one day?) New York City FC and Red Bull New York. Once you pull those three cities/five teams out of the sample (shouldn’t Chicago be in there, if only for some countries? And what about DC now?), that leaves plenty of MLS markets where the first question that follows an agent’s pitch to a player is, “Where is that? In America, yes, but where is that?”

There are other ways for MLS teams to exist, operate and succeed, of course: teams like Atlanta United FC and Toronto FC are sloppy drunken spenders, which allowed them to both do it (i.e., win trophies) and almost immediately undo it; FC Dallas and the Philadelphia Union (mainly, though they’re not alone) have player pipelines that pump out a steady stream of young talent, a situation that helps them on the field, if only until they get an offer they can’t refuse and have to pull key pieces out of a good roster. Even those distinctions only matter at the margins, because MLS teams by and large compete on some uneven form of the same terms. How many times were you reminded about The Los Angeles Galaxy lost decade as they made their run to MLS Cup 2024? Then there are the teams from “where is that?” America like Columbus Crew SC and the Seattle Sounders and, sure, even Atlanta (wait for it*), who have won half the MLS Cups over that same period.

Getting Reacquainted with Columbus Crew SC, MLS's Kings of the Inside Straight

An inside straight, in human form.

Thumbnail History
They may come from a(/the greatest) flyover state, but the Columbus Crew, now Columbus Crew SC (a name that launched a thousand typos, e.g., “Columbus Screw”), have long had a knack for signing exotic players. Like any MLS side, they’ve signed plenty of guys who fit the working-class image of their original crest (faceless, yet somehow still leering construction workers) – e.g., Brian McBride stands out there, but they also got good seasons/mileage out of Josh Williams, Chad Marshall, Jonathan Mensah and, perhaps to a lesser extent, Artur and, briefly, Aidan Morris – but they put their stamp on league history through guys like Guillermo Barros-Schelotto, Lucas Zelarayan and, most recently, Cucho Hernandez. That little sprinkling of fairy dust came later. Toiling under the shadow of the early greats, DC United, the Los Angeles Galaxy and, to a lesser extent, the Chicago Fire and Sporting Kansas City, the Crew spent most of their first decade bumping against their achievements. They yanked a Supporters’ Shield out of their asses in 2004, but they also missed the playoffs five times between 2000 and 2007 and felt the sting of the Wooden Spoon in 2006. A mere two seasons later, though, Columbus became the smoothest, smartest team in MLS. Coached by Sigi Schmid, guided by Schelotto and back-stopped by a (hey!) working-class defense and midfield built around Marshall, Brian Carroll, and Brad Evans – incidentally, all players who went on to anchor expansion teams – the Crew picked up a double in 2008, plus another Supporters’ Shield in 2009. They’d cracked a unique approach to the designated player code: finding great talents that few people States-side had heard of. And it paid off smartly until it abruptly did not – or at least until they re-learned the old trick. Between 2012 and 2022, Columbus missed the playoffs as many times as they made them and, despite being the home to the first (and, fair point, super-basic) soccer-specific stadium in MLS history, Columbus barely survived a bid to relocate the team after the 2018 season. The fans pulled together to fight that off and, a couple seasons later, Columbus reclaimed their crown as the best team between the coasts in Major League Soccer. They won two more MLS Cups – one in 2020 (aka, The Weird Season) and again in 2023, both games at a saucy stroll – and they might have had one more trophy had they not screwed themselves over in MLS Cup 2015 (see: Clark, Steve and Valeri, Diego). For all their failures, and they’ve had a few, Columbus does have a bless’d eye for spotting talent. Checking Columbus' all-time roster and scrolling down is a genuinely worthwhile exercise, if just to see all the names that (arguably, in some cases) became more famous on other teams around the league. Per the Joy Points Scale, this is the third most-successful team in MLS history and all of the various powers-that-be that have guided them through damn near three decades’ worth of history deserve credit for accomplishing everything that they did in a…let’s go with unexpected market.

Total Joy Points: 46

MLS Round-Up: Some Word Association on the Cusp of Decision Day

Ooh. Something about Orlando coming up.

With some strays called in – e.g., Columbus Crew SC (expectedly) picking at the bones of the New England Revolution (4-0) and Los Angeles FC sniping the Vancouver Whitecaps in second-half stoppage (2-1) - and nothing left to play but Decision Day, an urge to get things organized one final time before we take ‘em one game at a time (aka, the playoffs) kicked in. The rest of you do this in the privacy of your own mind, and you’re almost certainly better off for it. And yet, here we are…

Don’t expect deep analysis in anything below and I didn't flag more than a couple players by name. Also, judge me, if you must, for giving up early on doing league-wide coverage literally every season, but I still haven’t landed on a way of actually cover Major League Soccer that 1) I trust and 2) doesn't feel like rehashing the same shit everyone has plowed over three times or more. I’ll take another swing in 2025 – i.e., tinker with the methodology, maybe lower the bar for “trust,” etc. – but the best I can offer for 2024 is recollection of half- (or less-than-half-)remembered videos and highlights, a review of undeniable trends, both long- and short-term, and a succession of hiccups percolating up from my gut.

In nuts-‘n’-bolts terms, I’m gonna list every team in MLS, by conference and in their current order, from top to tail, and give a brief read on where they are now and their season as I understand it. Hot takes will come as my gut gives ‘em, otherwise…allons y!

WESTERN CONFERENCE (hey, that’s my home conference!)
Los Angeles Galaxy (1st in West, 2nd overall)
The somewhat rare team that can pull apart the opposition, arguably as good in possession as they are in transition. Vulnerabilities include a middling road record (6-6-4) and a middling defense, but the Galaxy have real talent all over the attacking third (given a preferred starting XI) and they can score from as many places. They’ve been lethal at home all season – only LAFC beat them there (and the last of their three home draws came in mid-May) – and they can beat any team on their day. They’ll have to win on the road to do it, but the Galaxy have a real shot at MLS Cup.

MLS Round-Up: A Saucy Reset

This one’s going to be a blunt instrument a series of statements, a fair amount of it without showing most of my math. Suffice to say I had wee epiphany about why I bang on into the wee, foggy hours...

With the end of the season on the horizon, I wanted to post a read on the state of play since the…let’s call it gently(?) deceptive Leagues Cup wrapped up. Some of this follows from a personal failure to fully appreciate just how close we’ve come to the regular season – eight games left on the outside, and that’s only for four teams (Columbus, New England, LAFC, and Vancouver). It’s just six (nine teams, I think) to seven (16 teams?) for everyone else, which means shit got real two to three games ago depending.

Below, I lump all 29 teams into the following five categories, defined briefly below to make sure you catch my drift:

Contenders
The teams that look like they have a reasonable shot at reaching MLS Cup, whether by form (East) or conference (still East, but mostly West; more below).

Playoff Team, Dark Horses
The teams that, if they fix this issue or that one, have some hope of knocking off one of the contenders and reaching MLS Cup. That said, the relevant issue makes it pretty damn unlikely they will not. [NOTE: The relevant issue is not brought up much, or at all, below. Feel free to check out!]

Playoff Team, Plausible +1
Teams with a respectable chance, maybe even a decent one, of winning a game in the 2024 MLS Cup Playoffs, brought to you by Audi (probably?), but I wouldn't expect much and/or shit from there.

Bubble Teams
Teams that, regardless of their present merit and future upsides, still has real shit to do if they want to reach the 2024 MLS Cup Playoffs, brought to be Hello Fresh!

The Dead
Teams that I feel confident will fall short of the embarrassingly low bar that MLS has set for reaching the 2024 MLS Cup Playoffs, brought to you Les Schwab Tires.

MLS Week 26: (Loose) Notes on the Re-Entry & Laying Down Some Markers

WHAT IS HAPPENING?!? (Japanese game show, btw)

I didn’t watch nearly as much Leagues Cup as I’d wanted to (a single tear rolls fitfully down my cheek as I type) and for reasons I can’t quite put words to. I watched a good share of highlights, did the requisite oohing and awing over the prettier goals, but the sense that what happened there doesn’t translate to Major League Soccer’s regular season in any comprehensible way crept in somewhere around the time my Portland Timbers got a St. Louis shove out of the tournament in the Round of 32.

No small part of that follows from the Leagues Cup format itself. The three-team, two-game group stages makes for a weird/unforgiving format, for one – e.g., the Colorado Rapids and the San Jose Earthquakes qualified for the Round of 32 with 0-1-1 records, while Minnesota United FC and Real Salt Lake failed to qualify on 1-1-0 records – and that the Liga MX teams haven’t really started their season and also play a total of zero games at home gives even the shakiest MLS teams a leg up in one-off games…

…not that that stopped me from poring over the results, clocking who lost to who, and when, and running that against the…possibly eccentric document I created to track results, also it’s not me, I’m not losing my goddamn mind, because the Form Guide doesn't get the damn visuals right.

At any rate, with games of MLS Week…26 now playing on the streaming service that lives in your TV, I wanted to reconnect with where the regular season left off and what, if anything, the Leagues Cup said about where it may go between today and Decision Day. The observations below lean more into trends than details (i.e., no, I didn’t know about that minor knock that may make [Team X’s] your home team’s second stream (high potential!) No. 8 play a little south of his best), and it mostly kicks around loose impressions to be confirmed by later results, aka, the immovable facts that decide the fate of all and sundry. As stated in, I’m just trying to wrap my head around some things to get back in touch with what I’m watching.

This starts with an Eastern Conference overview, but will wrap up on how I’m feeling about the Timbers’ chances after the Leagues Cup. With that, let’s roll…

MLS Week 23 Snapshot: Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes Where They Largely Don't Matter + Up From the Depths!

Best sidekick eva! Woo-woo!

Just like that, I’m on a roll. League-wide posts two weeks in a row. Woo-woo!

The preamble for this series/concept went up in last week’s post, so I’m going to just refer anyone who wants to know the “why” of this post back to that one. To give the short version, these aren’t detailed posts for two related reasons:

1) the details generally don’t matter; unless…

2) they either rhyme with or emphasize trends that have been going on for a while.

That doesn’t mean I’ll never flag details – i.e., three of the talking points below are only in here because I spent more time on a result that tickled my fancy – but these posts will mostly traffic in trends. Fans of deep cuts can always mosey over to Matt Doyle’s weekly columns (which I only skimmed this week; on a schedule), or lose as many hours as they’re willing to burn in the distinctly non-local MLS Season Pass archives, but it should take more than some random dude scoring a banger (e.g., Cristian Dajome, for a still-woeful DC United team) to make this short-list…which, for the record, is still longer than the specs said it would be. Dammit.

With that in mind, let’s dig into the notes for MLS Week 23 (again, yes, this is Week 23, look at the current standings (effective for reference only through Wednesday morning, July 17, which a bunch of games get played). Here are 10 Things That Happened on or Before MLS Week 23:

1) Nothing Happened to the Supporters’ Shield Race, Ignore MLS Content
I don’t have a sense of the overlap between the people who find this tiny corner of the internet and who subscribe to the MLS Kickoff newsletter, but Monday’s edition dug into race to the Supporters’ Shield – specifically, all the league-topping teams that lost games last weekend. The list includes, FC Cincinnati (waylaid by Charlotte FC! (see below)), Real Salt Lake (drummed out of Providence Park (see below)), the Los Angeles Galaxy (who couldn’t get going at FC Dallas (see below)), and, in the one game that actually felt like it mattered, Los Angeles FC, who got all but drawn-and-quartered against Columbus Crew SC in LA. Here’s the thing: that didn’t change anything about the relative position of any of those teams. Not one of them. Did a couple distant rivals gain ground on all of those teams? Sure, but only one team looks like it has a real shot at catching up with the pack…hold on...

The Ten Most Interesting Things That Happened in, on, or Before MLS Week 21* (Really. I Did the Math.)

To kick this off with some programming notes:

1) Any and all preview posts I write will go up on reddit from this day forward. It’s the only way I can think to a) rein in the length, and b) keep myself from getting too far over my skis.

2) Portland Timbers match reports will continue go up in this space until a) the heat-death of the sun, b) my own death, c) I move those over to reddit with an eye to reining in their length and keeping myself from getting too far over my skis, or d) I lose interest and close this blog for the 10th(?) time.

3) I have spent literal years figuring out how to both minimize and maximize my soccer/MLS-watching time – which, unless you either get paid to do it or have absolutely nothing else you want to do, truly is an economic exercise.

Up next, a new concept and/or gimmick, depending how you look at it.

Pursuant to Article No. 3 of the preamble, any random fan with a job, a wife, two kids, a cat and a dog (fine, two cats, no dogs; also, one of my all-time favorite movies!), and another hobby can know only so much about the triumphs, sorrows and general goings-on of the 29 teams currently competing in Major League Soccer. With that in mind…and I think I’m still on the preamble…

This post officially launches the [Number] Most Interesting Things That Happened in, on, or Before MLS Week [Number]. Over the first…currently going with 10 weeks of the regular season, it will be Five Things, Week 10-30 (or 25; we'll see) will be Ten things, and Week 30-34 will go back down to Five Things – unless circumstances force me to keep that number higher, which, honestly, I don’t believe they will.

Columbus Crew SC 2-2 Portland Timbers: I'm Beginning to See the Light, Here it Comes, Woo-Oooh-Oooh

Here it fucking comes....

I don’t believe in moral victories, as a rule, and I’m not going to take that route for this review. To be clear, that doesn’t mean that the Portland Timbers didn’t play a damn good and wonderfully entertaining game tonight. In fact, the fact they punched even with, for all their present faults and fatigue, a consensus-best team in MLS raises Portland’s 2-2 draw at Columbus Crew SC into disappointment territory. Coulda, shoulda, woulda, etc.

Going the other way, consider how disappointed Columbus fans feel tonight and, to float a guess I may or may not confirm the The Massive subreddit tomorrow, how flaming pissed they are at everyone’s favorite ref, Ted “Drunk” Unkel. In a press conference after the Timbers’ frustrating home draw against Los Angeles FC last weekend (who's ready for the encore?), head coach Phil Neville voiced some hope that calls would break his team’s way over the run of the season. I’m not saying that process tilted toward justice tonight, I’m not saying I care, I only know Felipe Mora either had more time on the ball tonight or he got the call when he got knocked down (if by sleight of body, here and there). After that, Unkel called the usual game that only he sees through whatever contacts he’s wearing…like a goddamn random number generator with a pocket full of reds and yellows, I tell you…

Most and best of all the things about tonight’s game, yes, Roman gladiator guy, I was entertained. Both teams rewarded their fans with two top-shelf goals a piece – more on that later – the game had a lively one-team-giveth-the-other-taketh-away tension, and, typing strictly as a homer, the Timbers played their second solid game in a row. It’s not showing in the standings – hello(!), 11th in the West – and I hope to see the Timbers get all three points next week at LAFC with the desperate fervor of a 10-year-old battling against all the odds and even more doubts that the Tooth Fairy still pays a fiver-per-tooth, but I’m closer to believing the Timbers have a competitive team than I’ve been since that little flutter of hope the Timbers had during Miles Joseph’s short, interim reign. Hell, I’m willing to shout that all the way back to 2021.

To their credit, Portland exceeded the broadly conservative approach I laid out in my scouting report. Even better, they granted my wish for more robust defending over an opening 20-25 minutes that saw them go up 1-0 on top of frustrating the bejesus out of the Crew.

Columbus Crew SC Scouting Report: We Have Seen the Enemy and All I Can Say Is...Shit.

Yes, that is Wilfred Nancy.

Full disclosure, I haven’t spent much time on Columbus Crew SC this season. Didn’t see the point. They’ve been getting results…until recently (but they also got arguably the biggest result) and the roster remains…stacked. At any rate, I have done some scouting and here is my report.

Some Basics

Columbus currently sits at fourth in the Eastern Conference (7th overall, fwiw) on 13 points and a 3-1-4 record. They remain stoutly unbeaten at home (3-0-1) and stubborn on the road (0-1-3; also, the loss at Charlotte FC has been dismissed as, in a word, bullshit) and boast one of the deepest and, currently, healthiest top-to-bottom roster in MLS and, in Wilfred Nancy, they have a head coach that gets the neutrals drooling. One can’t really blame the local fans for being content to the point of cockiness…and yet there are some questions.

They’re winless over the past four league games and arguably dropping points when they shouldn’t e.g., at Charlotte (loss), at a badly-hurting Nashville SC (a draw), and, insofar as you buy them, v DC United (draw). If you dig in a little deeper, you see a fall-off from 2023’s killer attacking pace of 1.97 goals/game; with just 10 goals scored in league play all season, they’re puttering around at 1.25 goals/game and, if you hit the link about contentment above, you’ll see creeping concerns that things ain’t the same without Cucho Hernandez. Then again, most signs point to him returning to the lineup after a wee suspension for some kind of tomfoolery.

The Lineup(s)

Unless I’m mistaken, Nancy has yet to deviate from a 3-4-2-1 formation, even when he rotates the squad dizzy as he did last week at Real Salt Lake. Were I a betting man – which I’m not, on the grounds that me putting money on anything means the opposite will happen – I’d expect Columbus to play the same lineup they did for their March 10 game against Chicago.

MLS Week 6 Review, an Early Assessment of the Standings

EXTREME Seal Experience was the best I could do...

Between nearly every team in Major League Soccer having five to six games in the bank (Don's Golden Boys, Miami, have seven), a week off coming up for me, and another so-so self-destructive game by my Portland Timbers this past weekend (and should that read “so, so destructive” or “so-so, destructive”?), I’ve decided to use this Week 6 review to take stock of where things are all round. As for the point of it all, it comes from a thought exercise around where Portland fits into the big picture of the Western Conference – i.e., how much room for experimentation/failure they’ve got. The same exercise should work the same for your local team, too, so I went nuts and fleshed out some data for the Eastern Conference as well.

I think the format and information speaks for itself. Every team in the league is listed below and blurbed over in the order of the present standings, along with their record and top-level statistics. The next line talks about how closely I’ve watched the given team this season – there, G = watching a 50+ minutes of a game plus checking the box score and H = reviewing the highlights and checking the box score – and, as you’ll see, I ignore multiple games entirely (they’re not paying me, I’m getting too old for this shit; now picture me swinging on a vine with an explosion in the background). The final section in each blurb gives a vague, overall impression of the team I’m what I’m basing it on.

With that, time to dig in, starting with the…

Western Conference

1st - Los Angeles Galaxy

Facts: 12 pts., 3-0-3, 13 gf, 9 ga (+4), Home 1-0-2, Away 2-0-1

How Well I Know Them: HGHGG (i.e., two highlights reviews and three game reviews)

The Overall Impression: Balanced, capable, and they’ve got a third-hand kind of attack to throw the punch you can’t see coming: everything I’ve seen and read treats the Galaxy as legit. To anyone arguing they haven’t played a tough schedule, I’d counter with everything looks tough to a team that’s missed the playoffs four of the past six seasons. Barring traumatic injury [Ed. – NOTE: Read this though into literally every entry below.], the Galaxy may not finish this high, but they look like a great bet to finish high – i.e., the top 3.

MLS Week 4: Brief Notes on Many Things & Trends A-Birthin'

No, really. I'm doing this for you.

Grand Narrative

First, we are inching closer to the most wonderful time of the year – i.e., the tipping point in every season where pundits, be they professional or amateur, can start leaning more into top-line stats and the standings, and less on reviewing stupid amounts of video. Sometimes that’s all a body needs to know….we’ll see whether I embrace that come mid-season or if I keep it up with the masochism.

As for Major League Soccer’s Week 4, it served up some wild ones – e.g., Chicago’s late, late win over Montreal and the Galaxy’s last-gasp salvage operation against a…spirited St. Louis team…has anyone tested their Gatorade, because, my god. And yet both of those feel like happy little blips (because both games were fun!) against some early trends in the early season. To go in the order they played ‘em, in an ominous sign, Miami became the first team to fully solve DC’s hyperactive puzzle, Columbus keeps rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ and look at those strong early starts by Vancouver and Minnesota. Coming from the opposite side, Jesus Christ and hide the children, how are both Orlando and New England San-Jose-Earthquakes bad?

With that, it's time to pick through some details, if briefly and with a distressing absence of embedded video, but I have something to say either about everything that happened or the teams involved. Before getting into it, a quick reminder on the symbols you’ll see after each result below (all of which include a link to The Mothership’s game summary for the relevant match):

* more or less skipped it, coasting on the fumes of past impressions.

(H) – I watched the highlights and checked the box score to update the opinion.

([Numbers]) – those represent the parts of the full game I watched, plus box scores.

That’s it for the preamble(!). The formula really is tightening and, if all goes as planned, I’ll be down to watching all of two games each week, plus 45-60 minutes of just three others by MLS Week 10 or 12. With that, let’s dig into what I saw and the sweet nothings all that whispered into my ear.

MLS Week 1 Preview, Getting Hyped on Thin Gruel

Solid show, btw.

At the risk of defeating the point of this post, I’m going to start by acknowledging that none of what’s below matters at all. By allowing nine (fucking) teams from each of its two conferences to qualify, Major League Soccer has made a conscious choice to devalue the regular season to a point where I wonder why anyone bothers to tune in before August. How well a team does through, say, April could be rendered meaningless by a cratering collapse or raging success in September; I can’t stress enough how much the results from MLS Week 1-20 just don’t matter. I've reached the sad place of pining for the 2024 Leagues Cup, because I think it's my first, best chance to feel anything of consequence before September. Stakes, people. They matter...

So, why do this? I mean apart from the fact that I just really like watching soccer?

First and foremost, I’ve chosen this as a hobby. Second, in the same way a sword-maker sharpens the sword over and over until it can cut through trees (apparently; Blue Eye Samurai lays waste to trees of all sizes as if that was the point of the show), seeing MLS’s 29 teams 34 times before they arrive at games that actually matter, aka, the playoffs, gives you a pretty clear bead on which of those teams have a shot in hell at lifting MLS Cup. That number has been whittled down to, at the very most, four or even three teams over the past couple seasons, which, again, highlights just how many meaningless games are played in this league plays year after year…and yet, is that so different than what the majority of teams experience in the English Premier League every season? Hold on…maybe spectator sports writ large are the problem?

To make this even weirder, this will be the only league-wide preview post I do all season. The current plan is to post weekly Vibez Checks at the end of each “MLS Week,” which (swear to God) will be just a loose rundown of what I saw in the games and what I see for patterns in the results. On the research side, I see myself watching two full games every week – one involving the Portland Timbers, the other involving their next opponent – long chunks (45-60 minutes’ worth) of the three games that most interest me, plus whatever else I get to after that. Unlike past seasons, I really do want to keep all this on a “vibes” level – i.e., expect the random name drop (as in, “holy shit, this guy’s killing it”) and general notes (as in, “Atlanta’s on a streak that bears watching”), as opposed to in-depth blow-by-blow coverage from this game or that or deep dives into the latest analytic stats on the market. Gods willing, people who find these posts will get a breezy read and the jokes will land.

To the extent this post has a purpose, it’s about hyping me up for First Kick 2024. Some of the commentary doubles as soft predictions for what I expect from each team, but I’m also approaching all that from something like a headline level (and the intelligence gathered from this incomplete series). With that, let’s look at what we’ve got on the platter.

Getting Reacquainted with Columbus Crew SC, the Team That Pulls Rabbits Out of Hats for Fun

Smoke Lucky Strikes

[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]

Thumbnail History
If nothing else, Columbus Crew SC provided a fair chunk of the start-up talent that the Seattle Sounders leveraged to leap-frog them on my patented “Joy Points” scale (see the end of the post for methodology*); hell, Chad Marshall was central enough to both teams’ success that I’m counting him twice. But, to backup: the Columbus Crew came in as an MLS original...man, does anyone else miss the old “leering construction worker' crest? Ahem. The Crew started undistinguished – i.e., they made playoffs, only without going anywhere – before hitting what, despite a wild-hair Supporters’ Shield in 2004, can only be described as a rough patch. They missed the playoffs five times between 2000 and 2007 and even picked up a Wooden Spoon two seasons after that wild-hair Shield. From that point forward – and, damn my amnesia, it continues to the present day – Columbus has developed a pattern that goes something like so: they bring in an attacking ringer – e.g., Guillermo Barros Schelotto, Lucas Zelarayan or Cucho Hernandez – that raises a broadly competent core to glory, only to have that latest model run out of actual steam after two or three seasons. To drive home the point, in the twelve seasons since their first, best run (see immediately below) – starting in 2012, basically - the Crew have a 50/50 hit-rate for just making the point-season. Despite That’s not all bad, clearly, seeing that they’ve won two MLS Cups over that same period (2020, aka, The Weird Season, and 2023) and they went into a third final as the seeded team…where, honestly, they got lightly screwed, even if they did half the screwing themselves (see: Clark, Steve and Valeri, Diego). I’m saying that as Portland Timbers fan, for what it’s worth…

Best Season(s)
For all their slips, Columbus has fielded some genuinely impressive teams – and I very much count the 2020 and 2023 Cup-winning teams among them – but those late 2000s teams that they built around Schelotto just…did things to teams that, often, left them on the side of the road staring at the sky with a headful of nightmares. That team paired an MLS Cup with their second Shield in 2008 and they added a third Shield in 2009. Those other Columbus teams absolutely kept them on the map/board, but it was the 2008-12 team that put them on it.

Long-Term Tendencies
A bit surprising in that they don’t show a ton of wild deviations from average when it comes to goals scored and allowed. Odd outliers aside – e.g., a couple of the seasons they missed the playoffs, the double-winning season in 2008, and 2023’s freakish attacking stats – Columbus generally stick at or around average of goals scored and allowed. Heck, they had a four-season stretch from 2010-2013 where they hit MLS’s middling sweet-spot – i.e., they either scored or allowed the average number of goals - six out of eight times. Even so, a soft pattern sticks out in all that: in most of the seasons when they missed the playoffs, it was problems with scoring that kept them out. The defense throttled their dreams a couple of times – e.g., 2000 and 2016 – but Columbus has a history of fielding good and strong defenses, and to the tune of being at or well-below average (10 times!) in 22 of 28 seasons. In other words, small wonder they sweat the attack.

Identity
A magician pulling rabbits out of a hat.

Joy Points: 21, or good enough for 5th place all time (based on an admittedly warped scale)

10 Names to Know (with regards to Zac Steffen, I stiffed the goalkeepers)
Brian McBride (1996-2003)
Whenever I think of McBride, I see him with either a swollen eye or a bandage wrapped around his head. Though famous for headed goals and hold-up play, he could wind up a decent shot too. McBride played like a warrior and scored 62 goals along the way. One of MLS’s first “homegrown” stars.

Not pictured here (if you know, you know.)

Stern John (1998-1999)
He came, he saw, he scored goals at a fucking ridiculous clip (44 in 55 appearances, wha….?). John played just two seasons in Columbus [EDIT, corrected to read 1998-99; thanks, commenter!]; and did he even finish both?), but he’s a good legend from early MLS history. Again, Columbus is to good players what Sudbury is to unbelievably attractive women.

Jeff Cunningham (1998-2004)
Nearly as effective as McBride in his time with Columbus, but a totally different player, Cunningham started his career/MLS legend with them. He combined a soft touch with next-level speed, a lethal combination for both MLS 1.0 and 2.0 defenses, and that’s why he’s still fourth all-time for career goals scored in MLS – and without a challenger in sight.

Eddie Gaven (2006-2013)
While Columbus would later become famous for the attacking ringers mentioned above, they also have a strong record with recognizing young talent within MLS and letting them thrive. For all that he looked like a strong breeze could carry him off, Gaven fells like a prototype for one of those forever-buzzing, catch-me-if-you-can midfielders that disrupt defenses. And he played and grew throughout Columbus’ best seasons (as nominated above).

Chad Marshall (2004-2013)
Simply put, a brick wall with a screen tied to the top that catches 90% of anything that threatens to fly above it. An incredible defender for two teams, but he started with, starred in, and anchored the Crew’s defense through its first glory years.

Guillermo Barros Schelotto (aka, GBS) (2007-2010)
For me, Columbus won the race to sign the first, best designated player in MLS history. But for the shaggy hair, he looked more like a math teacher than a professional athlete. The league had seen decent attacking mids before, but none of them opened the game for everyone around them quite the way GBS did.

Frankie Hejduk (2003-2010, ambassador till death)
I did a “who’s Mr. Sporting Kansas City” for the last post in this series, but it’s Hejduk for me. The rare eccentric in a league that either can’t find them or somehow discourages them, a surfer in Central Ohio, etc. But Hejduk backed it all the way up on the field, both for Columbus and the U.S. Men. And I hear he still shows up at the stadium. Just wonderful…

Federico Higuain (2012-2019)
The next in Columbus’ frankly remarkable succession of attacking wizards, he continued the GBS tradition of providing regular goals and assists (I remember him for his free-kicks). He was similar down to the build, but also played in a more-evolved MLS – which may explain the mind-blowing fact that Columbus never won a trophy with him.

Jonathan Mensah (2017-2022)
A successor to another tradition, Mensah may not have been as dominant as Marshall, but I can think of no better way to explain how highly I rate him besides saying that I’m still shocked to this day that they traded him. Still, he anchored a defense that won Columbus a Cup. Which tends to be enough for them because…

Lucas Zelarayan (2020-2023)
They keep finding players like, say, Zelarayan, aka, a midfielder that could fuck up a defense at least three different ways (e.g., off the dribble, free-kicks, and waltzing through a defense with a teammate). If there’s a greater mystery in MLS than how a team from Central Nowhere U.S.A. keeps finding players like this, I don’t know what it is. To be clear, I don’t mean that “Central Nowhere” thing as an insult – I was born in Cincinnati and went to high school in Pullman, WA for fuck’s sake – but to acknowledge that Columbus, Ohio has a limited international foot-print.

Where They Finished in 2023 & What the Past Says About That, If Anything
Third-place in the East with a Santa’s sack full of goals, a lopsided goal-differential and, ultimately, their third MLS Cup. Not bad, in other words. Once you see the pattern, last season lines up nicely with…call it the last 20 seasons of Columbus’ history. Again, they have a history of finding great-for-MLS players, which continued with Cucho Hernandez and only got better with the addition of Christian Ramirez and Diego Rossi, and the historically strong defense held up, if with a big, elegant assist from the central midfield pairing of Aidan Morris and Darlington Nagbe. More to the point, after watching them all but flow through the Eastern Conference playoff bracket – again, for the record, FC Cincinnati is my second team (see birth-place) and that loss left scars – they didn’t so much win MLS Cup 2023, as run it. To circle back to the pattern, I believe this current roster has a couple strong seasons left in it – so long as the F.O. can keep it together and Wilfred Nancy in charge of it. I’m not much on coaches as transformative figures, but I only have to look at Columbus’s 2021 and 2022 to believe that he’s got something special in his noodle.

Notes/Impressions on the Current Roster/State of Ambition
Even with Columbus’, again, remarkable track record with signing good ‘n’ fun players, they hired (just learned this) hometown(-adjacent) wunderkind, Tim Bezbatchenko to keep that conveyer belt moving. Their history says a slump will come again, but they’ve put on some damned tall stilts to keep ahead of it.

* Joy Point Index
Winning the CONCACAF Champions’ League: 5 points
Claiming Supporters’ Shield : 4 points
Winning MLS Cup: 3 points
MLS Cup Runner-Up: 2 points
Winning the U.S. Open Cup: 2 points
Winning CONCACAF Champions Cup: 2 points
MLS Is Back Cup: 2 points (yeah, yeah, I’m a Timbers fan; still, that was a tough one)
CONCACAF Champions League Semifinalist: 1 point
Making the Playoffs: 1 point
Missing the Playoffs: -1 point
Missing Playoffs in 1996-97, 2002-2004 (when 80% of the league qualified): - 2 points

Wooden Spoon: -3 points

FC Cincinnati 2-3 Columbus Crew SC: The Tragedy of Alvas Powell

From googling "tickle palace."

I don’t know what to call that besides a game that leaves you muttering, “c’mon, not like this.”

Last night, FC Cincinnati ended the best season in its – and I want fans and pundits to linger on this next word – brief history with a devastated and dizzied 2-3 loss at Tickle Palace against its dread rival, Columbus Crew SC.

First and foremost, nothing hit the gut half as hard as the blunt fact that Columbus deserved the win. Outside 15 minutes somewhere during the first part of the second half (sorry, I work real estate law), Columbus ran at a Cincy defense that toggled between adjectives all night: sturdy grew to heroic, before a quick journey through desperate yielded to a word I slipped into the conversation above, i.e., dizzied. One of the twits in the broadcast booth called the Columbus’ first goal a turning point, but I’d argue that the second pointed to where the game would ultimately end up. The only question was whether Columbus could get there before the final whistle turned the game over to soccer’s infamous tiebreaker, aka, the test of wills we all call a coin-flip, aka, the penalty shoot-out.

Columbus beat the whistle, of course, and Cincy didn’t look any better on the third goal they allowed than they did on the second. Or the first, for that matter. They didn’t just get outplayed last night; Cincy got beat. Thinking about what that does for the rivalry is the only positive I can take from the loss…

…going the other way, how dim that fire burns against what could have been had Cincinnati won ugly on the back of Aaron Boupendza putting a little more mustard on his best shot of the night? Back in the real world, Patrick Schulte came good in that moment and, I think most observers would accept that justice was served. However much it hurt to send Timmy upstate…

On a purely personal, slightly petty level, I have a notepad full of tantalizing questions that just went to waste – e.g., do you start Aaron Boupendza or Dominique Badji in the MLS Cup that will never happen? Or, if Obinna Nwobodo can go, do you start him or do you honor continuity and Yuya Kubo’s (sturdy?) service over the past two, three games? And to what percentage of a Nwobodo does that answer apply.

All those questions just got kicked to 2024.

Columbus Crew SC 3-0 FC Cincinnati: The Thing Before the Thing You Worry About

Too much of this, honestly...

It wasn’t the result, or even the final score, so much as the manner of the defeat that made FC Cincinnati’s road to the end of the regular season looks a little longer yesterday...I mean, can we just call this thing, hand them the Supporters’ Shield and start the playoffs? (If not, why not?) Most signs pointed to a Columbus Crew SC win – i.e., they hosted, they're good at it/there, etc. Cincy’s more or less complete inability to affect the game? Hell, I don’t know. Maybe some guy at the back laid down $500 on Columbus’ 3-0 win, but I doubt that particular bet drew much action by the time the opening whistle blew.

Columbus opened the scoring early (15 minutes in) when all the work down the flanks paid off by prying open gaps in the middle. Credit to the Aidan Morris (who I will never underrate again) for the efficient, high-quality finish – seriously, think about how many times you’ve seen that same opening either blown or collapsed, or, more often, the ball sky over the bar – but more credit to the Crew collective for putting in the work that made that opening.

They took even less time to score the second – a (clean) penalty kick called for an Alvaro Barreal handball (justified, if harsh; not clear on how much he planned it and he didn’t gain much by it in any case; also, arrgggh, you'll have to consult the full highlights to see the fucking call) – but not much had changed between Columbus’ first goal and that 23rd minute moment. Columbus stuffed (at least) 75% of Cincinnati’s builds and Cincinnati stopped (approximately) none of Columbus’. The hosts played out of the back at will, not infrequently by having Steven Moreira just carry the ball out of the back and across one line after the other. They passed it out other times, mostly without bother, and that’s the first segue.

Cincinnati defended very, very passively...for most of the game, honestly, offering only a shaking fist’s worth of resistance to Columbus getting into their half. A counter-punching strategy isn’t a wild call against a team that likes to use the ball, but it does absolutely require, y’know, the counter-punch. Apart from a half-desperate foray in the fifth minute built between Luciano Acosta, Aaron Boupendza and Brandon Vazquez one strained individual effort at a time, Cincy struggled to land anything. They scratched out a couple more moments – Boupendza almost poked a wrong-footed shot (hold this thought!) past Columbus’ Patrick Schulte, but he didn’t put anything on it a stiff breeze couldn’t have and the Crew SC defense scrambled admirably, in waves even. Stats, like Shakira’s hips, don’t lie.