The Open Cup Loss - The State of Crew Nation

By: Jeff | April 26th, 2007

Having already noted my complete lack of first-hand knowledge of the Columbus Crew’s performance in their loss to the Los Angeles Galaxy in Tuesday night’s U.S. Open Cup play-in, I spent this morning seeing what I could learn from any of the 5,424 who took in this game live. Where I thought I’d learn about this game alone, I was instead afforded a peak into the sullen, worried corners of as they face down the rest of the season.

That’s not to say the game wasn’t discussed: for instance, the report in the Columbus Dispatch dubbed the game a boring, lazy mess while the local media’s alt-blog, Sensory Overload, dismissed the effort with the ol’ whimper/bang formulation. Meanwhile, the Hunt Park Insider, which is often delightfully verbose, turned in a brief, almost morose, write-up. These paint a grim picture between them, a sense of doomed incompetence even.

The last piece’s foray into the goalkeeper situation (Bill Gaudette, current understudy to Andy “The Hebrew Hammer” Gruenebaum, picked up a knock, thereby raising the specter of last year’s goalkeeping nightmare), speculating as it does on the future, serves as a good segue to how Crew Nation (e.g. fans of the Crew) sees their team right now. Judging by commentary on the BigSoccer thread dedicated to the game’s aftermath, we’re hitting severe depths of frustrated shock: phrases like “total waste of time” and “worst game ever” recur, as does the perception that this Crew team could, in a word, suck. In terms of mutual acceptance, we’re entering a first-date-gone-wrong kind of vibe: as in, it started well enough, at least till an Appletini bender dredged up a junkie/con-artist/backlog-of-illegitimate-children past and, say, could she leave her five “bundles of joy” with you tonight - don’t worry about the names; she doesn’t - maybe borrow a couple bucks, as she’s really got to freakin’ hook up?

Today, it seems the state of Crew Nation is something like double-plus ungood. But that’s the look back. Tomorrow - oh yes, tomorrow - we’ll find the damn sunshine or go mad trying, when we look at the Crew’s upcoming game against DC United.