Columbus Crew SC is returning to MAPFRE Stadium this Saturday for its first home match in over a month. In fact, the Black & Gold will be at home for four of their next five contests as they look to bounce back from a tough start to the 2016 season.
Crew SC faced some tough competition in its first five matches, four of which were on the road. They visited MLS Cup Champions Portland Timbers, rivals Chicago Fire, Supporters’ Shield runners-up FC Dallas, and current Eastern Conference leaders Montreal Impact, bringing home a point twice.
“We’ve had tough away games,” Sporting Director and Head Coach Gregg Berhalter says. “But it’s also good for us. We’ve been tested early on and we know we need to improve, but we’ve certainly been tested, that’s for sure.”
The Black & Gold boss sees those early battles as a positive, but it also takes a toll when other teams are collecting points.
“I think mentally it’s been tough,” Berhalter says. “We’re obviously not satisfied with the results that we’ve been getting. But you still have to keep things in perspective and we still have to realize we’re a good team. We had some tough games on the road and we have to keep perspective on this whole thing. Sometimes it’s difficult to do, and our job is to look at the positive, look at what we’re good at and keep trying to improve because we have a good team.”
Columbus has proven its team is capable, returning all of its starters from the MLS Cup Final. This season, the team has established strengths in creating chances, possession and passing accuracy. It is second in MLS at 81.49 percent accuracy to Seattle’s 82.75.
“We isolate the games, and we look at the performance in each game, and we evaluate each game, and I think that by and large we’ve been playing better than two points in five games," Berhalter says. "I take comfort in that fact and now we just have to keep pushing. Now we have a couple home games where we want to play better and we want to get some points.”
Crew SC’s upcoming home stand should provide some comfort in a familiar MAPFRE Stadium, including the patronage of home supporters. Keeping the team centered for a win against New York City FC could kick-start more than a few points—gaining confidence would be even more critical.
“Confidence is a fragile thing and you have to keep communicating, and you have to keep talking,” Berhalter says. “You even see parts of the Montreal game, we weren’t fully confident with our movements, we miss a couple chances and you can see guys start to get a little tense, and that’s what we have to keep focus on is, stay calm, just keep playing. We have good players, we want to tire the other team out and take advantage of that. When they get tired, take advantage of movements to open up their defense.”
The Black & Gold will use this week to prepare for Saturday’s match against star-studded NYCFC at 7:30 p.m.
“The best thing you can do is stick to the process, keep trying to improve what we do and stay calm. There’s 29 games left in the season—a lot of points left to play for.”
