Crew Back in MLS Play Against Lowly New York
Coming back to MLS play for the first time since August 15th, the Crew (10-3-9, 39 pts) are on the road again, this time facing the Red Bulls of New York in Giants Stadium tonight at 6. Since the 15th, the Crew has played in two non-MLS games, in CONCACAF Champions League games. They split those two games, a 2-0 win over the Puerto Rico Islanders on the 18th. The second stop of the 2 games wasn’t a pretty result for the Crew, a 5-0 beat down laid by Cruz Azul. “Anytime you take a loss like that, you want to think about it and learn lessons from it, but at the same time you’ve got to put it away quickly and luckily we have a game [today] that we can hopefully right the ship on,” goalie William Hesmer said of the loss.
On the other side of the field, the Red Bulls got their first victory in over three months last sunday against Dallas FC. New York (3-16-4, 13 pts) traded goals with Dallas until the Juan Pablo Angel sealed the deal in the 88th minute. “Obviously it’s a great day today for us,” Angel said. “We managed to win after a very difficult year and I hope [Sunday's win] gives us a great boost going into the last stretch of the season. We have seven games left and I guess if we play like this we will probably have a little bit of a chance.”
The last win before the 23rd was on May 8th against San Jose, a 4-1 win at home. Since then, the Red Bulls have accumulated only 5 more points. “I think we all knew we had it in us,” NY coach Richie Williams said. “We are not a 2-16-4 team. We know we are better than that.We just had to bring it out and we brought it out [sunday].”
The match-up of the Crew and Red Bulls is the same teams that met in the 2008 MLS Cup, in which Columbus defeated New York 3-1, winning the cup for the first time in franchise history. These teams have met previously in 2009, a 1-0 win for the Crew on June 27th at Crew Stadium. Success for the Crew in Giants Stadium has been few and far between, not winning there since the inaugural match between the teams in 2003, going 0-7-3 in the process.
This will be the last meeting between the two in Giants Stadium, with NY moving to Red Bulls Arena in Harrison, N.J. next year. “I think everybody in the league is happy to see us move on from Giants Stadium, to be honest,” goalie William Hesmer said. “The field conditions, the atmosphere — it’s never been conducive to what this league is about in small, intimate stadiums and fans right on top of you. The more we can move away from the really bad turf fields the better off this league will be.”
