Crew beat FC Dallas 4-1 in an exhibition in Phoenix. Kei Kamara notches the hat trick and Eddie Gaven grabbed a goal and an assist (on the game's first goal he made a beautiful chip pass to send Kamara in on the keeper). It looked like mostly the Columbus first string against Dallas' 2nd and 3rd. Kamara had four or five really bad first touches (killing promising buildups), but was otherwise way too much for Dallas' defenders. Scored a nice goal getting way up to head in a cross, and then in the 2nd half absolutely ripped a left footed laser past Burse into the far corner. Looked like a man amongst boys. Eddie Gaven also looked great in the first half playing sort of a withdrawn role right behind Kamara, doing the #10 job quite well. Can count the number of lost possessions for him on one hand, and completed a whole bunch of forward passes down the wings and even through the middle. Best touch of any player for either team. Ngwenya was dangerous on the left flank but only threatened, never actually came up with much for the final product. Aaron Chandler struggled on the right, turned the ball over a lot, and never really was able to come up with anything to beat the defense. O'Rourke is built like a sherman tank but did not pass well. Ezra was Ezra in the back and made a couple of nice plays to keep Dallas from threatening too much. Gruenebaum started and had little to do but made one fantastic kick save to stop Dallas' only scoring chance in the first half. In the second half Oughton and Grabavoy came on and both played well, particularly Grabavoy. Andy Herron came on for Kamara and was the smae black hole he was with the Fire, he had Grabavoy in alone to his left for the tap in and decided to shoot and missed wide. Chad Marshall managed to play seven minutes in the second half before limping off hurt, I didn't see any contact on the play where he went down. Burch didn't play long for whatever reason, but I thought he looked pretty good at left back, with the exception of trying to dribble out of his own end once and losing the ball. Gaudette nearly let in a soft goal when he let a driven cross slip through his hands, but I think O'Rourke managed to clear off the line before it rolled in. It's hard keeping track of two teams at once, so that's the best I could do. A lot of fun to have MLS here and maybe Phoenix's longshot chance of getting a team might have been helped by the experience. The Grand Canyon University bleachers were more or less filled though it wasn't as if the place was bursting at the seams or anything.
in that Arizona game recap from the Arizona Republic newspaper it has quotes from Brad Evans and talks about him: Columbus played without former Phoenix Mountain Pointe standout Brad Evans, who is suffering a hamstring pull. He's set to begin his first MLS season when the season opens on April 7. "That's a good turnout for how it was promoted," said Evans, who was drafted out of UC Irvine. "It can only grow from here." "It's unfortunate that Brad couldn't play," said Columbus coach Sigi Schmidt, who liked what he saw out of his club, which is in a rebuilding mode this season. "I thought we really played well in the first half." http://www.azcentral.com/sports/azetc/articles/0219mlssoccer0219.html why are we in rebuilding mode? we should be trying to actually win something this year.
Notice how "which is in a rebuilding mode this season" is not part of the quote. It could be that the reporter is making this judgement, not Sigi.
Another good example of COLUMBUS Crew fans getting all the info on their team from somewhere other than the team or local paper. Interesting
Don't you understand that's the way it is? The dispatch is worthless, and nothing's been heard from the team since Wuerth was blamed for the losing season.
The Dispatch had Mitchell in Florida last week though he doesn't seem to be traveling with the team. Today's paper just had a small recap rather than an article.
Firing Jeff Wuerth seems to have really done the trick, eh? Shrewd move, Crew. Your team sucks donkey dick, so you can your veteran PR guy thus making sure that your team disappears from public view completely. Apparently if you can't improve the team at least you can hide them from the fans.. What an inept outfit this is from top to bottom. No wonder the Crew is the league joke. If they had any shame left, they'd be embarassed that in order to follow the Crew you have to go to other team's websites. But it's been obvious for some time that the Crew is completely shameless.
Don't worry everyone, at this rate there won't even be a team to support within a few years. Then everything will be fine.
It'll almost be a relief. Being a Crew fan is too goddam hard, and you end up feeling stupid for putting in the effort.
Dallas' PR people didn't have much to say about the game, and they're usually pretty good. Not to rain on your negativity here, but the Crew seem to have the nucleus of a good, young team.
There will be no optimism in the crew forum! My optimism is in rebuilding mode but here's a shot at optimism. I hope Kamara keeps this going and this hat-trick isn't a one time performance out of him. I hope Sigi gives him a shot in 07'. I for some reason believe that Kamara could be the man to partner with Herron. Kamara has a better athletic build then most of our other striker options. I hope Sigi who seems to love Garey more then Kamara, will give Kamara a chance to build some confidence because he could be a exceptional striker. But we will probably see Kamara score a couple of times in 07, then get benched for the rest of the year and become frustrated, and finally will show up totally out of position on the wing at the end of the year like he did a couple of times last year. Basically a repeat of 06'.
Of course the Crew now has an article up, with a lineup(yes, Gaven does appear twice). No sign of a report from the Dallas side of things. http://web.mlsnet.com/news/team_new...tent_id=83972&vkey=pr_coc&fext=.jsp&team=t102
The dispatch is also slashing it's insight page, stock listings and cutting 2 inches from the paper so that it can focus on - are you ready? - a cooking channel collaboration with ONN. Whatever non-buckeye coverage is left in that paper will be gone before 20 years is out.