Let me be upfront and say this piece is fueled by seething creative envy. And the joy of a Crewsmas goal. But mostly seething creative envy.
In the 17th minute of Saturday’s game, Columbus Crew SC took a 1-0 lead on the Chicago Fire when Justin Meram (aka “J9”) swerved a cross into the Chicago box, whereupon 5’9” Ethan Finlay headed the ball into the net. Fans cheered. Flags waved. Smoke wafted. Players hugged. And then Crew SC broadcaster Neil Sika summed up the play by declaring it, “J9 to five-nine.” His ad-lib simultaneously made my day and filled me with the aforementioned seething creative envy.
So here’s a dive into a wonderful goal and a brilliant call.
Fourteen minutes before Columbus got on the scoreboard, they came close to doing so with another Meram and Finlay combination. It was just in the opposite order of the goal. Mohammed Abu played Finlay behind the defense in the box. Near the endline, Finlay laid a cutback pass just outside the center of the six-yard box. Meram ran onto the ball and smashed it at Chicago goalkeeper Jorge Bava, who parried the ball wide.
They weren’t done though. The Finlay and Meram connection would pay dividends in the 17th minute thanks to some side-to-side movement by Columbus. The play started in the right channel and worked its way around to Meram in the left channel. As Meram cut the ball back to his right foot, Finlay darted in from the right side toward the center of the goal at the six-yard box. That is where he met Meram’s cross and nodded it into the net.
Did Meram ever imagine the day when Ethan Finlay would be on the scoring end of one of his aerial crosses?
“No,” Meram said. “But I didn’t imagine the day where I would miss a 6-yard sitter, so…”
Meram’s voice trailed off, but I will just assume he meant to complete that sentence with, “…it’s a good thing I made up for it with a pinpoint cross that resulted in a goal 14 minutes later that gave us the same 1-0 lead we would have had if I had scored on my opportunity.”
When you think of an Ethan Finlay goal, you think of him blazing past the defense for a breakaway or slipping into the right spot in the box after some combination play. You know, maybe being on the receiving end of that chance he created for Meram earlier. I can’t imagine you think of him making a decisive run to the six-yard box to aggressively attack an aerial cross. But that’s what happened. But why? On that play, what caused Ethan Finlay to morph into Brian McBride?
Two things.
“I was just thinking of Justin having an in-swinging cross,” Finlay said, revealing the first reason. “In-swinging crosses, depending on where they are at, tend to either come hard into the goalie or they go toward that back post.”
The second thing is that teammate Ola Kamara started to drift toward the back post when Meram cut the ball back to his right foot. Finlay knew what to do. He attacked the center run and filled that little bit of space. That is where the ball went, so he managed to sneak in front of Kamara for the header.
“I haven’t seen the replay on it yet, but Ola said afterward that he was right there behind me,” Finlay said.
And that’s true. Kamara actually snapped his head like he was going to head the ball, except Finlay filled the space and got his head on it first.
“If you look at it, that’s great interchange between the both of us,” Finlay said. “Ola’s movement is fantastic, so for me, it was just reading off of what he was doing.”
As fun as it would be to say that Meram picked out Finlay specifically for an unlikely header, that wasn’t the case. Meram saw plenty of gold in front of the goal, so that is where he sent the ball.
“I was just swinging it in,” Meram said. “I knew there were a couple guys over there and I knew someone was going to get their head on it.”
That someone turned out to be Finlay.
I couldn’t recall another Finlay header goal.
“It’s been a little while,” he said. “What comes to mind is Houston in 2014.”
When you don’t score many goals with your head, I guess they stand out. Finlay was absolutely correct. On September 13, 2014, down in Houston, Finlay notched a 54th minute equalizer with his noggin. I went back and watched the video:
Finlay’s marker left him wide open at the 6-yard box. Practically standing still, he waited on a Waylon Francis cross and directed it into the net. It was indeed a header, but that goal from 2014 was nothing at all like Saturday’s aggressively attacked skull-score.
During his scrum with reporters, Finlay described the goal as, “…a five-eight guy gets on the end of a ball. I think I can be at the NFL combine with that vert.” (Vertical leap.)
A reporter mentioned that Finlay is officially listed as 5’9” tall. The goal scorer attributed that to the mind games often played with the listed measurements for athletes in all sports.
“You know how it is,” Finlay said. “Five-nine, 165 sounds like a beast of a human.”
Now back to my seething creative envy. Neil Sika has been calling Crew SC games on radio and television since 2007. Over the years, I have watched many of those games by his side in the broadcast booth, sometimes serving as ad-hoc research assistant when something unusual happens in a game. Mostly, though, it’s just fun to shoot him looks when he comes up with a creative turn of a phrase.
It is a good thing I was not in the broadcast booth on Saturday, because when he said “J9 to five-nine,” I might have hurled him out the window. As I may have already mentioned a few times, my creative envy over that phrase can be classified as “seething.” I would have been so incredibly proud of myself if I had come up with that phrase a day or two later after much pondering and writing. Sika spoke those words on the air precisely 56 seconds after the ball hit the net. (I cannot stress how hard I mashed the keys while typing that last sentence.)
So how did that happen? How did his brain come up with that phrase so quickly?
“With the sun glaring like it was, you always want to make sure you get the goal call right, especially on opening day,” Sika said. “Plus, Ola Kamara was in the area right by Finlay, so it was like, ‘Did Finlay actually leap into the air and get that?’ And then as I was processing the goal, I was cycling through and thinking, ‘How in the (heck) did Ethan Finlay rise like a traditional center forward on stilts and head the ball into the goal?’”
As analyst Dwight Burgess offered his commentary during the replays, Sika took a fortuitous glace at his custom game notes.
“I’m looking down at my notes and it’s like, ‘Oh! Five-nine! This’ll work!’ It just kind of popped into my head. I don’t know. I can’t say much more than that. It’s funny because as I said it, I was going to say, ‘J9 to the five-nine Finlay,’ but ‘J9 to five-nine’ just rolled off the tongue from there. That’s what came out and you’ve kind of turned it into a monster.”
Of course I’ve turned it into a monster. “J9 to five-nine” is perfection, and it was ad-libbed on the fly.
“I’m glad you liked it,” he said. “But believe me, as much as you liked it, there’s all the dumb (stuff) I’ve said over the years that doesn’t work and there’s crickets. That’s the fun of being in that position. You try stuff. You just have to be you.”
Obviously, due to the lack of television viewing opportunities on the playing field during a professional soccer match, neither Finlay nor Meram were aware of Sika’s call when we spoke after the game. It was my pleasure to tell them about it.
“J9 to five-nine? That’s actually a pretty good call,” Finlay said with a laugh. “I’m going to have to go listen to that one. That’s a pretty good call.”
Meram cracked an amused smile when told of Sika’s “J9 to five-nine” call.
“I like that,” Meram said. “It’s got a good little ring to it. I like it. Tell him I said that.”
I’ll do you one better, Justin. I’m telling the world.
Seething creative envy aside, that’s the story of how Meram, Finlay, and Sika combined for a perfect little moment that made my CrewsmasDay.
Questions? Comments? Advice for working on my creative-jealousy anger-management issues? Feel free to write at sirk65@yahoo.com or via twitter @stevesirk
