Opportunity comes a knockin’, again, no one answers
By: TrivDaddy | October 1st, 2007Sitting behind the south end goal at the end of the second minute of Sunday’s match-up against the Galaxy, my hopes ran high for this club. They were exactly where they needed to be. The Galaxy are now on their heels down 1-0, the Fire tied yesterday, and a good group effort to seal this game would put the Columbus Crew in charge of their own destiny…again. Previous games this month with bottom rung play off contenders ended with 1 tie (at home) and two loses (one of which was at home.) But now, the Crew had the break they needed, maybe not deserved, but needed. Just 88 long minutes to go. The Galaxy needed only 14 more minutes to seal the fate of this Crew squad and handed them a 2-1 loss after all was said and done.
What was rather interesting was the game that soon appeared after the Crew’s first goal. I have seen it before while driving home from work. Usually, it is played in the spring time at the local Catholic schools that I pass by in the afternoon. It’s called kick ball, and the Crew had a fantastic display of it on Sunday. The number of balls played into 50/50 situations was absolutely dumbfounding. These were not balls played into space on the wing to have some open Crew mate run on to them. This was, down the throat of the D, man-to-man marked or even double coverage, 50/50 kick ball. No one wanted to settle the ball in the middle of the field. A flick of the head would be good enough for the squad the first half of the game and a descent portion of the second half. By the end of the game, the Crew had settled down to play more possesion soccer and it started paying off. They out shot the Galaxy almost 2-1 and had four more shots on goal. The corner kicks were completely lopsided with the Crew having 8 to the Galaxy’s, oh, wait…they didn’t have any corner kicks.
After the hope and the belief that this squad could not only make the playoffs, but take control of their destiny, it was too good to be true. Now, Chicago is in control and will have to slip up…again… to allow the Crew any hope of squeezing into this tight playoff race. “A couple of chairs were thrown. We’re angry we let the people down, It was a great opportunity. It was a missed opportunity.” said Frankie Hejduk during a post game interview. They see what happened, they understand the missed opportunity that this game was. Now, even the Galaxy are searching to get back in this race.
There was opportunity knocking on the door of Crew Stadium. However, the ones that answered the door were the LA Galaxy. Will the Crew have another chance to answer? Only if the Fire trip on the way first.
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