COLUMBUS, Ohio—Back in their home stadium for the first time in more than a month, Columbus Crew SC finally picked up their first win of the season.
Columbus found the offense that had been missing for much of the campaign on Saturday night, continuing to create dangerous scoring opportunities and eventually doubling their 2016 goal total in a 3-2 victory over New York City FC.
While players and head coach Gregg Berhalter maintained afterwards that the team's confidence never wavered during their winless start, all found relief in the season's first three-point outing.
“It’s a big relief,” said Crew SC captain Michael Parkhurst, who was incorrectly sent off late in the match instead of teammate Tyson Wahl. “We’ve played some good games this year and we’ve felt a little unlucky. We just hadn’t put everything together yet. Tonight, we did enough. It feels good to have a victory under the belt.”
Goalkeeper Steve Clark said he wasn’t overly frustrated with the narrative of being the last team in MLS without a win, and added that the club expected a good performance vs. NYCFC despite entering the game winless through five matches.
“That’s the storyline of early on,” Clark said. “It will be nice to not hear that anymore, but we have confidence in the way we play and the process of it. It’s not always wins and losses, for me. It’s how we play. We were all pretty confident that we’d get one tonight.”
Coming into the match, last year’s dynamic duo of Kei Kamara and Ethan Finlay had combined for a single goal. Each scored Saturday, with Justin Meram also contributing a goal and two assists.
Berhalter called Kamara and Finlay’s goals “big”, but kept the season in perspective:
“There were points so far in the season when we’ve been a little unlucky, but we could have done better. We realize that. It’s playing our brand of soccer and continuing to execute that’s important.”
