YOUR 2020 MLS CHAMPS THE COLUMBUS CREW

mickeyratmickeyrat up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,409
edited December 2020 in All Encompassing Trip
Charter club. Champs in 2008. Last ownership was actively trying to move the team. Fan driven campaign to keep the team here resulted in a partnership of local ownership with help by the Haslans of the Browns....

the very next year , postive personnel moves has resulted in a championship in a pretty trying year. What a great way to end the last full season at Mapfre Stadium, the first soccer specific stadium in the US. Look forward to next year in the new stadium and to carry this momentum forward.

Good job guys.....



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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Post edited by mickeyrat on

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  • mickeyratmickeyrat up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,409
    The MLS Cup win could provide future opportunities for not only the Crew, but for Columbus. https://www.10tv.com/mobile/article/news/local/save-the-crew-columbus-mls-cup/530-9688b6ff-bf48-4818-893b-c3e7412dc9c8
    _____________________________________SIGNATURE________________________________________________

    Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
    you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
    memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
    another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
  • mickeyratmickeyrat up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,409
    https://www.dispatch.com/story/sports/mls/columbus-crew/2020/12/17/crews-second-mls-cup-championship-one-ages/3919873001/

    Michael Arace | Old Crew Stadium sings a sweet, sweet swan song

    Michael Arace
    The Columbus Dispatch
    Mapfre Stadium and its ghosts certainly seemed to play a part in the Crews victory in the MLS Cup on Saturday

    A few thoughts while we wait, and wait, for the parade ...

    • Dr. Pete Edwards, co-owner of the Crew, made an interesting point in the days before his team hammered the Seattle Sounders to win the MLS Cup at Mapfre Stadium last Saturday. Edwards harkened back to January 2019 — when the new owners took over an operation that was left gutted by the frat boy who used to run the place from San Francisco.

    The Crew opened the 2019 season with a 4-1-1 run. Then, for a host of reasons, they fell off a cliff and won just one of their next 15 games. They looked like Cincinnati FC. Or FC Cincinnati. Whichever it is. You know what I’m saying.

    “In the beginning, we didn’t even have a front office,” Edwards said. “We thought we had a good team, but then we had some injuries to key people. Thank goodness our core guys were healthy over the last 10 games, the last couple of months. Without that, I don’t think we have enough confidence to do what we did this year.” 

    The Crew closed 2019 with a 5-2-6 record in their last 13 games. They didn’t make the playoffs, but they began to believe in themselves. And then they went out and paid a team-record $8 million transfer fee to acquire attacking midfielder Lucas Zelarayan from Tigres UANL, a storied Liga MX team based outside of Monterrey, Mexico. 

    More:Details unveiled for Crew Stadium neighborhood development

    From July 17, 2019 through Dec. 12, 2020 — when they blew the defending champion Sounders off the field to win the Cup — the Crew went 21-8-11 with a goal differential of plus-27. I don’t know what their xG was.

    That they did this while missing Zelarayan, central midfielder Darlington Nagbe and goalkeeper Eloy Room to injury for long stretches is a testament to the depth that team president Tim Bezbatchenko and coach Caleb Porter have been able to pad into the roster.

    That they won the championship despite missing Nagbe, who is crucial to the Crew’s possession game, and winger Pedro Santos, the team’s best player on many nights this season, is a credit to Porter’s ability to muster his forces with confidence.

    Nagbe and Santos were quarantined for the final. The Crew also was without center back Vito Wormgoor, who had ankle surgery in July. Lest we forget, before Wormgoor was lost to season-ending injury, the Jonathan Mensah-Wormgoor backline were death to opposing offenses. Big ups to veteran Josh Williams, who was especially outstanding in the semifinal and final rounds.

    • It is a verity of shortened/disrupted seasons, in any sport, that the best coaches tend to rise amid the special circumstances. Dick Williams, Joe Gibbs and Jacques Lemaire immediately spring to mind. This fall, under unprecedented conditions, Porter was the best of his peers.

    The Crew’s victory over Bruce Arena’s New England Revolution in the Eastern Conference final, and their romp over Brian Schmetzer in the Cup final, may not soar to the heights of Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony. But they’re up there with Berlioz’s “Symphonie fantastique,” or Nirvana’s “Nevermind.”

    • It took some brass for the Porter to start Aiden Morris in Nagbe’s spot in the final. Nagbe has been a key piece of two (now three) championship teams. Morris turned 19 last month. He not only became the youngest player to ever start a Cup final, he also picked up an assist that will live in Crew lore. And he played with joy.

    Morris’ mother tweeted a picture of him from 2017, the year he became eligible to drive: He was standing with his Crew Academy teammates, behind a “Save the Crew” bedsheet sign, in the stands at Mapfre Stadium. The picture was taken before a playoff game. It is the very definition of “Homegrown.”

    • It’s well obvious that Bezbatchenko and Porter picked the right guy when they identified, recruited and paid a hefty transfer price for Zelarayan, who had two goals and an assist and was MVP of the Cup final. I’d never thought I’d say this about anyone, but Zelarayan had a better championship game than Guillermo Barros Schelotto did in 2008. Goodness, but Guille is no longer incomparable. I need a minute.

    Majority owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam, who also own the Cleveland Browns, finally experienced an ultimate victory. I’m only speculating, but if Bezbatchenko and Porter identify a special piece that fits with their scheme, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Haslams re-open their wallet for another designated player with a Zelarayan-like price tag. Wouldn’t you, if you were in your mid-60s and got a taste of that rarest of champagne? The new stadium is scheduled to open in mid-July. 

    • The Crew won’t play many home games before the new stadium opens, but it’ll play a few more at Mapfre before the old erector set is downsized and wrapped into the practice facility/community park. But Saturday was the real swan song for Lamar Hunt’s $28.5 million gamble on the league’s first soccer-specific stadium, which opened in 1999. (The price tag on the new place is north of $315 million.)

    Anyone else get the feeling that old Crew Stadium was like the 12th man during this crazy run to the Cup? Like Lamar was working some magic? Like Kirk Urso’s spirit was activated. Like Sigi Schmid picked a side, and it wasn’t Seattle’s?

    The Crew went 12-1-0 in their home park this season. Granted, their playoff fortunes might have been much different had they gone on the road — but they didn’t. And it felt like the old Fairgrounds, home of MLS’s first chartered team and the spiritual center of the U.S. soccer, had a little something to say before it fades into history. It didn’t even need a crowd to say it.

    marace@dispatch.com


    _____________________________________SIGNATURE________________________________________________

    Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
    you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
    memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
    another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
  • mickeyratmickeyrat up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,409

    Away from family the entire season, Jonathan Mensah captained Crew to MLS Cup

    Jacob Myers
    The Columbus Dispatch
    Crew defender and captain Jonathan Mensah hoists the championship trophy after Columbus beat Seattle in the MLS Cup on Saturday

    When Jonathan Mensah left his home in Ghana for the start of the Crew's 2020 preseason, he did so with the expectation that his wife would come to Columbus at some point during the year.

    The couple had lived apart during the Major League Soccer season since he signed with the Crew, in 2017. 

    The late-winter arrival of a pandemic that affected every facet of life nixed that plan, however, including her appointment at the American embassy to apply for a visa to live in the United States.

    Having at the time recently been named team captain by coach Caleb Porter, Mensah had additional responsibilities to the Crew and faced the reality that he wouldn’t see his wife perhaps until late December.

    So when Mensah pointed to the sky and cried after helping guide the Crew through a season that ended in commanding victory over the Seattle Sounders to win MLS Cup, he no longer doubted that the past 11 months away had been worth it.

    “I had no choice but to go out there and just perform for the team, even though I was going through all these kinds of stuff off the field,” Mensah said after the Crew claimed its second championship in team history. “I didn't allow that to kind of bring me down or shut my focus. I just go out there and help my team.”

    Mensah has etched his place in Crew history alongside Frankie Hejduk in captaining the club to an MLS Cup title. The 30-year-old center back did so in his first year as captain and asserted himself as one of the premier defenders in MLS.

    Finishing third in voting for the league's defender of the year, Mensah was the catalyst of a defense that allowed only five goals through 13 games and had the most shutouts (12) in MLS in the regular season and postseason combined. 

    MORE:Crew announces roster, contract decisions for 2021

    Mensah was as much of a leader as he was a model of consistency. He played in every minute of every game this season, which affected his performances toward the end of the year.

    But when it mattered most, in the postseason, Mensah led the Crew in clearances in the conference semifinals (five), conference final (10) and MLS Cup final (eight) en route to three straight shutouts.

    The Crew rewarded Mensah earlier this season with a multi-year contract extension that will make him the cornerstone of Porter’s back line for the immediate future. 

    “Seeing Jonah Mensah become the player that he's become this year, for me (he is) the best defender in the league, a warrior, a captain, an unbelievable leader,” Porter said after winning his second MLS Cup.

    Mensah couldn’t control his emotions after winning a championship to conclude a season that had unfathomable challenges and required Mensah to be a presence on the field through all of it, including losing star players Darlington Nagbe and Pedro Santos for the final due to COVID-19.

    Porter said after the game that Mensah is very close with Nagbe and wanted to win the game for him. That was evident seeing Mensah carry Nagbe’s jersey around the field during the immediate celebration at Mapfre Stadium. Mensah said all he really thought about was that the team could reciprocate the love the fans showed them during the Save The Crew movement.

    “What we could do to pay them back was to win this trophy for them," Mensah said. “So thankful that we have this amazing fan base behind us and we did this for them."

    Mensah said he plans to return to Ghana soon and spend time with his wife before returning for the 2021 preseason. When he does, he’ll attempt to become the first captain to win multiple championships with the Crew. 

    jmyers@dispatch.com

    @_jcmyers



    _____________________________________SIGNATURE________________________________________________

    Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
    you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
    memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
    another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
  • WobbieWobbie Posts: 29,382
    fuck yeah!

    even tho the MLS is far from “major” :wink:
    If I had known then what I know now...

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