Hey gang….it turns out that this week has been all but impossible in terms of producing a full-blown Notebook for the Dallas game. My apologies. However, I did want to pass along some Mr. Numbers Nerd research I had done for it, lest it all go to waste. Besides, I know you’ve got a lot of other reading to do, what with the unrelenting onslaught of articles discussing such topics as:
* Has soccer finally made it in America?
* Will soccer ever make it in America?
* How to fix soccer so it has any chance of making it in America.
* America likes soccer way too much, so America is a morally decaying nation of un-American Americans ruining America for real Americans.
* Something Landon Donovan did or didn’t say, within or without context.
* Tim Howard is an American hero and is great at the using-his-hands position because he is an American and Americans use their hands at sports.
* Imagine how much further the USA’s World Cup team would have advanced if, like, LeBron James and Mike Trout and Calvin Johnson and California Chrome all played soccer.
So give your eyes a break and read only 750 words instead of the usual 3,000-ish.
MR. NUMBERS NERD: CERO A CERO EDITION
Sunday’s result meant the Crew have tied their last two regular season games by a 0-0 score. That is only the second time in club history that the Crew have played back-to-back double shutouts in MLS action.
2014:
June 7 at D.C. United
June 29 vs Dallas
2007:
April 7 vs New York
April 14 at Salt Lake
As you can see, the Crew accomplished the 2007 feat on consecutive weekends. The 2014 version is a little different since the Crew won 2-1 and lost 4-2 in a pair of Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup tilts in between their regular season 0-0 games.
Before digging even deeper into this subject, I am going to carefully word this as “scoreless soccer games.” I have to do this because from 1996-1999, tie games were decided by shootouts. That means that after a scoreless draw, a winner and loser would be declared and go into the record books as a winner or loser, unlike international soccer, where shootout games are still officially recorded as draws. This means from 1996-1999, these games were not technically recorded as 0-0 draws. (Even though they were in terms of soccer.) So in order to keep an apples to apples comparison, I will go with the semantically correct “scoreless soccer games.”
Sunday marked the 31st regular season scoreless soccer game in the Crew’s 17.5 season history. Some tidbits….
Overall:
Home: 12
Away: 19
Most by year:
Four: 2007
Three: 1999, 2004, 2010, 2011
Years with zero scoreless regular season soccer games:
1998
2013
Now here’s where it gets crazy. Now in its 16th season, Crew Stadium has hosted 11 scoreless soccer games in regular season play. That’s 11 in 240 regular season games to date, meaning just 4.6 percent of games in Crew Stadium’s history. The opponent in FOUR of those games? The opponent in 36.3 percent of the 4.6 percent? Of course, it’s last Sunday’s opponent, Dallas.
Scoreless soccer games at Crew Stadium by opponent:
Dallas: 4
New York, San Jose: 2
Miami, New England, Tampa Bay: 1
(FYI: Tampa Bay was the opponent for the only one at Ohio Stadium.)
Dallas has played 19 games at Crew Stadium, meaning they have played the Crew to a scoreless draw in slightly over 21 percent of those encounters. Good times.
The Crew have never had three scoreless games in a row, but they are heading to one of their most likely locales for a 0-0 road result. We’ll see what happens Friday night in Colorado.
Most scoreless soccer games on the road, by opponent:
Chicago, Colorado, New England: 3
Dallas: 2
Most overall scoreless soccer games by opponent:
Dallas: 6
New England: 4
Chicago, Colorado, New York: 3
Teams the Crew have never played a scoreless regular season soccer game against, ranked by times played:
Kansas City: 50
Philadelphia: 10
Seattle: 9
Montreal: 6
Vancouver: 5
The Kansas City mark looks amazing, but the Crew and D.C. United played their very first 0-0 game last month. It was their 59th all-time regular season meeting, so the Crew and Sporting KC still have some work to do to break that mark. Coincidentally, the Sporks are the Crew’s next home opponent on Wednesday, July 16, at 7:30pm.
