When Wessam Abou Ali put the Columbus Crew ahead six minutes into the season opener, the match felt like the perfect start to the new season and the club’s time under head coach Henrik Rydström. Intensity was high, as was the quality.
But Saturday night’s match won’t be remembered for how it started – it’ll be the finish. The Black & Gold conceded an 88th-minute goal to lose, 3-2, to the Portland Timbers at Providence Park.
"It’s amazing with football – life maybe, also – that you can prepare and you can be aware of things, but then for some reasons maybe you forget about it or you don't do it,” Rydström said. “The problem we had was mentally we overall didn't take a step against them. The counterattacks were a little bit the same. Sometimes you lose the ball, but instead of us taking a step forward and lock their players in, we let them get out from situation, we let them drive against us and we let them turn with the ball.
“When they scored, 3-2, we let them cross the ball into our penalty box so many times instead of taking a step forward. It starts there. Then we can probably organize us better. It looked exactly like the last season, nothing better when it comes to that. I think mostly it was a mental thing.”
While there were individual moments of brilliance, the new Swedish coach said he was “really disappointed” by the collective performance. “This performance was really below our standard.”
The visitors struck first through Abou Ali, when he pounced on a poor Portland pass and tucked the ball into the bottom-right corner. His first goal of the campaign was also his fourth across his six MLS appearances since joining Columbus last summer.
The Timbers equalized in the 14th minute and took the lead six minutes later, but Diego Rossi, last season’s leading scorer, leveled the match once more in the 44th minute when he unloaded a shot toward the back post.
The Crew had attacking chances in the second half, but one Portland counter after another eventually led to the last-minute defeat.
“I hope this game will work like a wake-up call,” Rydström said. “The overall feeling we have is that it's so boring to play when you just hand everything over to circumstances: the referee maybe will find offside or the opponent is not good and so on. We need to step up here.”
Of course, Saturday was just the opening stanza. It was also the emergence of a new Crew side. Sekou Bangoura and Jamal Thiaré both made their Crew debuts, while Abou Ali and Hugo Picard started following their first full preseason with the club.
Rudy Camacho, who was injured last season and only played nine minutes in a postseason match, played the full 90 in Portland. While he was proud on a personal level, he said the goal is to learn from the match and improve moving forward.
“That’s not the result we wanted,” Camacho said. “We know that we had to do better and we are able to do better. We could win this game because I think we are better, but we didn't show it tonight. We need to work more with the ball. We ran a lot so we knew we need to figure it out. We have time. We're going to get back and be better next week.”
The Crew remain on the road next weekend at Sporting Kansas City before hosting the Chicago Fire for Crewsmas on Mar. 7 at ScottsMiracle-Gro Field.
