Momentum swaying was the theme on Wednesday night, and unfortunately for the Columbus Crew, the pendulum didn’t swing in the Black & Gold’s favor.
Trailing within 90 seconds of kickoff, the Crew rallied and equalized in the second half. Then again, the home side trailed and responded with an equalizer. Yet, despite controlling play and the momentum of the match, Columbus had to settle with a 2-2 draw against Nashville SC at Lower.com Field.
Following the result, head coach Wilfried Nancy called the Crew’s current condition a “cycle,” where the side has controlled games and created chances, but that hasn’t led to three points and climbing the Eastern Conference standings.
“This is a cycle in this moment where we are – not struggling; it’s not the word because I think that we did a good game, regarding the way we attacked, we had the momentum and we were close to score,” Nancy said. “This is the way it is for the moment. We have to stay strong. I'm happy and it's a weird feeling because we did really good stuff. We deserve more, but that's not the case.”
The Black & Gold’s first equalizer arrived in the 69th minute courtesy Diego Rossi. Steven Moreira attempted a long-range shot toward the bottom-left corner. The strong effort was parried into the path of the Uruguayan, who scored his team-leading eighth goal of the campaign.
But the visitors took the lead once more in the 78th minute when Columbus was confused on a throw-in.
“To concede a goal like we concede the second goal, if we want to aspire to something, no, we cannot do that – not a goal on a throw-in like this and they play quick,” Nancy said. “We knew that they can do that. Yeah, I'm upset and I'm not happy with the second goal that we took because again this is something that cannot happen.”
Again, the Black & Gold rallied, and three minutes later, the home side equalized via an own goal. Pushing to break into the 18-yard box, Daniel Gazdag played a ball to the left flank toward Malte Amundsen, whose driven cross was finished by Jeisson Palacios – into his own net.
Nancy says he has mixed emotions about the match.
“It's difficult because we did well. We did everything,” he said. “We had the possibility. Again, like I said, I repeat myself: We attack in different ways, but we had the third goal several times. We do this season a good job defensively, but the last few games, we are a bit average, I would say, not in term of the consistency to defend [but] in terms of key moments.
“I knew that we were able to come back, and I knew that we were close to win the game. At the end of the day, we got punished on the second goal. It cannot happen, simple as that.”
There’s no time to dwell on the draw, though.
The Crew return to action on Saturday night when they face Inter Miami CF in a rematch of last’s months meeting in which the Crew lost 1-0. Columbus sits fourth in the Eastern Conference with 28 points from 16 games. Miami is sixth with 26 points from 15 games played.
