On the surface, the Crew had a tall task entering Sunday's match. Although it was in excellent form, still, the Black & Gold had a record of 1-10-6 in their last 17 visits to the Big Apple, including a 4-1 loss earlier this season that Sporting Director and Head Coach Gregg Berhalter deemed the worst loss of the season.
Top that off with the fact that yesterday, without even taking the pitch, the Crew clinched a spot in the MLS Cup Playoffs by virtue of Toronto FC's tie.
It would have been easy for the Crew to succumb to its historical struggles in New York with the excitement of qualification obscuring this individual match. With a 3-1 victory against the Red Bulls, the Crew showed its mettle and proved that complacency isn't a word that describes the club headed into the postseason.
"We don't want to play that fourth-fifth place game," said Wil Trapp. "We want to get third place. The performance we put out today showed that we're not complacent and we're not settling for just making the Playoffs."
Third place is very much in the realm of possibility for the Crew after a win today. A draw would have made fourth place possible headed into the season finale versus Philadelphia, but a win opens the door for the Crew to get to third and have a bye into the Conference Semifinals. That was the Black & Gold's goal all along -- qualification is one thing, but there are bigger goals that the club knows it can achieve.
"We're always trying to get better," said Ethan Finlay. "I think our goal after making the Playoffs – we found on Saturday – was, 'Okay, let's get third. Let's achieve and get to the highest point that we can and put ourselves in a good position.' Winning here today is one step closer to doing that."
"Obviously we qualified without having to play a game, but we wanted to validate that and I think this was an important game for that," echoed Berhalter. "There could have been a chance for a letdown, there could have been a chance for complacency but we focused on coming out with energy and trying to make a point."
Make a point the Black & Gold did, winning in a place they had struggled against the very team they needed to jump to move up the standings.
"[This win is] incredibly satisfying," said Finlay. "Our goal coming into this game was to win it. We had no intention of coming in trying to get a draw. From the get-go, we wanted to get a win here. It took a Herculean effort today. It was something else. All the guys that came in played so well. Credit to all the guys on the team today. Everyone had to play a part."
The match was won through a breakout performance by Aaron Schoenfeld, bagging his first career MLS brace and in fact doubling his career League goals total from two to four in the process.
"The biggest thing was that we came in, we weren't scared and we played our game," said the man nicknamed "the Big Celery." "You see how many passes we strung together at times, it was awesome. I think that was the biggest part that led to our success."
"The Big Celery, man... Fantastic," said Trapp on the performance of his teammate. "Ninety minutes of hard work, and when he got his chances he took them. You can't express the happiness when that third goal went in and the pressure was relieved. You could see it kind of broke their spirits. That was fantastic. We passed them off the field over the last eight minutes or so. Aaron was fantastic. I'm very, very happy for him and it's great to see a striker start to catch fire at the right time."
As this club has done all year, the focus now merely switches to the next contest: a home date with Philadelphia and a chance -- depending on the result of the final weekend's Sporting KC-New York match -- to earn that crucial bye.
"We're just focusing on the next game. We're focusing on Philadelphia," said Berhalter. "They played a great game against Kansas City and we know it's going to be a difficult game. Right now, the five, four and the three are there for us. We want to obviously finish as high as we can."
