Americans outside soccer’s bubble often struggle to grasp the significance of the sport’s numerous variety of championship tournaments. Fringe fans find puzzling the multiple title clashes that most dialed-in fans of “the beautiful game” consider normal.
For instance, the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup winner is hailed as the country’s national champion – the best team from professional leagues like MLS and USL Championship as well as amateur teams all the way down to adult and youth leagues.
But the winner of the U.S. Open Cup is not always the nation’s best team. Actually, it seldom is. Since the 1996 birth of Major League Soccer, which is the top league
in the United States, the MLS Cup champion has doubled as U.S. Open Cup champion only three times (D.C. United in 1996, Chicago Fire in 1998 and L.A. Galaxy in 2001).
This champion-not-a-champion history makes perfect sense to soccer people, who join the rest of the world in being neither confused nor bothered by the possibility that the worst team in any particular league could somehow be crowned the best team in the country. But baked into the psyche of the majority of U.S. sports fans is the belief that any legitimate winner-take-all tournament must exist as the culmination of season-long league competition. The Super Bowl, World Series, NBA Finals and NHL Stanley Cup finals fit that bill. The U.S. Open Cup does not. For the non-soccer crowd to recognize as national champion a team struggling just to make the MLS playoff is, well, weird.
But I am here to tell you the Columbus Crew are not weird. They are good, really good, and getting better.
They’re not the best yet, but they are national runners-up. That’s right, the team currently four points out of the MLS playoffs with four games to play came within inches of capturing their first U.S. Open Cup since 2002. St. Louis City SC defeated the Black and Gold in a shootout Oct. 21 after the teams drew 0-0 in regulation at ScottsMiracle-Gro Field. The Crew hit a post in the first half and dominated much of the game, but came up short of their 10th championship in franchise history.
Can the Crew make the MLS playoffs, then win it all?
Don’t be shocked, though, if No. 10 arrives in December.
Huh? C’mon, Oller, tap the brakes. The Crew have not even qualified for the playoffs and you’re predicting they’re going to win the MLS Cup?
Not exactly. I’m just saying Columbus is a dangerous team playing as well as anyone in the league. If the Crew qualify, and they are four points behind FC Cincinnati for the ninth and final spot in the Eastern Conference, they will be a tough out.
“If we get into the playoffs, I don’t think there’s a team that will want to play us,” Columbus-born Crew midfielder Taha Habroune said.
St. Louis City likely won’t want a rematch. One of the hottest teams in MLS, at one point winning 21 consecutive games across all competitions, St. Louis could not get over on the Crew through more than 130 minutes of regulation and extra time before converting four of five chances in the shootout. The Crew could only manage three makes against 6-foot-6 goalie Ben Lundt.
Columbus had won five of six games entering the U.S. Open Cup final, finally having put things together following a summer of player transfers that required a lengthy adjustment period.
Things began to click in a 2-1 win against Orlando City SC in the U.S. Open Cup semifinals on Sept. 16, but the team’s confidence did not take off until the Crew handed Inter Miami CF and Messi a 2-1 defeat on Sept. 27.
Crew began to click a month ago
“You start to see the cohesion of the group,” midfielder Sean Zawadzki said. “You make a lot of transfers in the summer and it’s difficult. Guys need to get accustomed to the league, but everyone has come in now and the connection and trust is there. You know what guys are going to do, where they play.”
Brais Mendez, Anass Zaroury and Santiago Rodriguez have given Columbus a boost. It remains to be seen whether their bodies can hold up over the next 2 ½ weeks.
“We take [this loss] on our chin, and now we move ahead to Saturday,” Zawadzki said, referring to the Oct. 24 home game against Toronto FC. “Now it’s four finals, so you take it game by game and continue to push.”
Will the Crew push hard enough? The talent is there, but the sting of losing the national championship to St. Louis could leave an emotional scar that stalls recent success.
“We can take this either way,” Habroune said. “It will either fuel us and we’ll come back better or we’ll dwell on this. It’s up to us.”
Don’t count them out.
Sports columnist Rob Oller can be reached at roller@dispatch.com and on X.com at @rollerCD.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Crew’s U.S. Open Cup heartbreak may be start of dangerous playoff run
