Powerless Metro shutout by Columbus, 1:0
June 30, 2007
What is happening with this team? Tonight, it failed to show up, and only the Crew's terrible finishing subdued the scoreline to what appeared to be a respectable 1:0 margin. In reality, Metro was terrible, failing to control the ball or move it forward.
Two starters from the last match, Tim Regan and Taylor Graham, were cut, so newcomer Kevin Goldthwaite started on the left and Hunter Freeman, returning from injury, on the right. The rest of the lineup stayed the same from the last game two weeks ago.
From the opening kickoff on, it was all Columbus. The Metro central midfield pairing of Claudio Reyna and Seth Stammler was despicable, with Stammler especially poor. In the whole match, Metro had two good offensive chances, one when a cross found Dave van den Bergh one-on-one with the Crew keeper Will Hesmer, but the shot went high, and the other when Clint Mathis was thwarted by the early charge of the Columbus netminder.
On the other side, there were chances galore. Late in the first, Ned Grabavoy somehow missed a one-foot sitter, an example of the Crew's poor finishing that came up again and again. Finally, in the 69th minute, a horrible pass by Stammler was intercepted, Goldthwaite failed to mark his man on the wing, and Freeman was beaten to the cross by Kei Kamara, who scored what proved to be the game's only goal.
Metro finally woke up in injury time, speared by John Wolyniec's relentlessness, but it was too little too late. In a schedule quirk, they now play two more games in a week, and the next one can't come sooner.
Santino Quaranta made his Metro debut late in the second half.
Lineup: Waterreus, Goldthwaite, Mendes, Parke, Freeman, Stammler, Reyna, van den Bergh, Richards, Mathis, Angel. Subs: Quaranta, Wolyniec, Ubiparipovic.
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