The Columbus Crew has battled adversity all season. After Saturday night’s loss to the San Jose Earthquakes the Crew will be doing the same in the postseason.
The Earthquakes came out very aggressive, scoring three first half goals. Two of the goals came courtesy of Landon Donovan and that effort would be more than enough as they defeated the Crew 3-1 in front of 20,833 visitors at Crew Stadium.
The win gives San Jose three points; a tie is worth one point. To advance to the second round five points are required, meaning another Crew loss or tie Wednesday at San Jose will end its season.
Crew coach Greg Andrulis was not pleased.
“It has to be awful coaching. We thought we had a good week of preparation but it obviously sucked,” Andrulis said. “I’m not surprised (of the San Jose outburst) they’re a team that gets after it and there’s no reason for our team to be surprised and now that we got the (expletive) kicked out of us maybe we can get back to business.”
Earthquake coach Frank Yallop was feeling lucky.
“I felt we needed to come in here and try to get an early goal. We managed to get the early goal and kind of had them off guard,” Yallop said. “I still felt the Columbus Crew had a number of chances and on another day they can go in. (We are) still happy with the points but it’s not close to being over.”
Crew forward Jeff Cunningham thought the team may have been affected by the long layoff.
“There is no other reason why we would give up three goals in the first half. One goal is OK; (we) lost focus for a minute, but we made three critical mistakes within (the first half); that’s not normal,” Cunningham said.
In the fifth minute of the match the Earthquakes’ Donovan leaked out and scored on a long pass from Troy Dayak. It was his first career playoff goal putting the Earthquakes up 1-0.
Mid-fielder Manny Lagos would then score what proved to be the winning goal in minute 31 increasing the San Jose lead to 2-0. For good measure Donovan would add his second goal of the game putting the Earthquakes up 3-0 in minute 46 right before halftime.
Both goals were assisted by Manny Lagos.
San Jose’s first half offensive flurry ended with a 3-0 lead, leaving the Crew shocked as they headed to the locker room.
The Crew showed signs of life in the second half as they outshot San Jose 13-2 but were only able to come up with one score.
In the 54th minute Robert Warzycha scored the Crew’s lone goal off a penalty kick, cutting the deficit to 3-1, where it would stay.
Warzycha would just miss another goal in the 63rd minute off the right post, a minute later Dante Washington missed off the crossbar.
San Jose goal keeper Joe Cannon made a diving save on a Brian West strike late in the game, disrupting the final of three excellent scoring chances for the Crew.
Cannon had four saves in the night.
After the Crew started the season 1-2-3 Greg Andrulis replaced Tom Fitzgerald as head coach. Since then the Crew has gone 12-5-3, a remarkable turnaround that will need to be duplicated in the postseason.
“We showed a lot (of) character, I think all year we’ve done our best when our back is against the wall and you can see the imprint right now,” Andrulis said.
