Yes, it’s exciting when a team, any team, scraps back from the ropes. Just picking up a point that your team appears sure to squander can make the difference between kicking off a run of bad results (Chicago). Conversely, it can make the rut in which your side currently languishes look dauntingly like the New Normal. On a related note, let's tighten it up, MLS clubs; these late losses may be fun, but they're also a sign of sloppiness.

Man of the Match Bakary Soumare
Chad Marshall ran all over and around Soumare all afternoon, which makes this comeback a little more miraculous. To step back for a look with a wider lens, Soumare’s struggles seem endemic to Chicago as a whole this season. What looked like a good and affordable – and therefore great – defense heading into 2009 looks something other than at this point.

The Big Take-Away for Columbus
Because what I saw last night, and due to a couple stray comments from Christopher “Man from Nowhere” Sullivan (that…accent!), here’s the question: is Columbus back? Did they ever really go away? The team I saw yesterday moved the ball quickly and decisively, they played alert soccer (see: Moreno, Alejandro), all of which combined to create chances. Take away the loss to Real Salt Lake and this seems the same good team as last year, only with a defect as opposed to a broader quality issue. So…what’s the defect? Glass-jaw tendencies? The “ol’ momentary lapse of concentration?” Wonder what Lloyd thinks?

Big Take-Away on Chicago
Those goals: call them comic tributes to an absence of situational awareness – e.g. Soumare somehow losing track of something big as Chad Marshall, and several times, while Jon Busch’s mistake hails from something well south of “pub league.” I think that’s strictly pee-wee soccer. Set aside the goals, though, and get to thinking about the general state of Chicago’s defense. Individual slips are what they are, but Columbus – and a few other clubs, judging by the Fire’s goals-against this far – made the Fire defense look a mess. That a couple players looked good whenever I saw them – think Wilman Conde and Gonzalo “The Equalizer” Segares – makes one wonder the extent to which the problems are organizational. More to the point, do the problems start in the midfield? They did today, with the way the Crew overran the Fire midfield until late.

A Couple More on Columbus
- Guillermo Barros Schelotto’s play has to brighten a Crew fans day – especially the way he flew into a couple tackles on defense…and late in the game at that. He’s a key part of a strong midfield, but the complementary parts looked pretty swell too; hell, Eddie Gaven has magically developed the ability off the ball…yes, that Eddie Gaven…it’s funny how often Gaven looked the bull out there.
- There’s a lot to like in how Columbus won the midfield: there’s the scrapping, sure, but it’s a lot of the proverbial “let the ball do the work” approach, passing it around, switching the ball a lot, and generally keeping possession. This held up very well, until…
- Gino Padula’s red card. And, actually, it held up pretty well after it, at least until Mike Banner came on for Chicago. So, was the red card justified? I could tell you a funny story about the distractions that come from having children and how that combines poorly with watching anything live. Thank god for online video, right? So, the card: I get into trouble with thinking along these lines, but that’s something that can be called a red, but shouldn’t have in a game like yesterday’s. Both teams played cleanly, there wasn’t much need to get emotions under control, and so on. It’s a situation in which one can do without…so why not do without?
- The best thing I can say about Columbus is this: when I thought about which players showed well, the majority of them played for the Crew: Schelotto, Danny O’Rourke, Brian Carroll, Andy Gruenebaum, and so on. Emanuel Ekpo didn’t look good Robbie Rogers looked something short of match-fit, or match-intense. But when the majority of your team does well, your team usually does well.

A Couple More on Chicago
- The Crew’s two goals should have stood up – even with the red card to Padula. Until the very end, the Fire's attack swerved from aimless to indifferent. Brian McBride managed to kick-start a couple by checking back down the wings to help usher the ball upfield and John Thorrington somehow made himself available everywhere at once. Getting back to McBride, who would we usually find in the wide positions he had taken? Yep, Cuauhtemoc Blanco. FOX commentator Christopher Sullivan compared Blanco’s efforts to Guillermo Barros Schelotto’s and it was highly revealing.
- Getting back to Thorrington, I believe the man picked up his yellow for PURE INTENSITY. Well, it could have been the foul, but I like to view it as an attempt by the referee to put a check on Thorrington’s unbounded desire to win.
- One last thing on Chicago: add Mike Banner to the list of little adjustments that got Chicago’s engine firing late; the way he terrorized the Crew’s left and added width surely helped open space for those two goals.
- Honorable mention should go to Patrick Nyarko, who genuinely appears promising at forward, and Tim Ward, who has more skills than I ever knew of.

All for now…more to watch.