For the second straight week, Columbus Crew SC missed a massive opportunity.
Locked in a heated battle at the top of the Eastern Conference, Columbus visited leaders New York Red Bulls with the top of the conference hanging in the balance. Unfortunately, a 2-1 loss may have taken the club out of contention for a first-round playoff bye.
Head Coach Gregg Berhalter admitted after the match that a top-two finish is looking less likely, with a trip to surging Toronto FC coming in two weeks.
“I think it’s going to be hard,” he said, “but at this stage anything is possible. This league is crazy. You don’t know what will happen. We’re just focused on the next game and putting in a complete performance against Toronto.”
The loss to New York came after a similarly deflating 2-1 defeat to the Portland Timbers in Columbus, but Berhalter isn’t calling the pair of losses a slump.
“This was always going to be a difficult game to win,” he said. “We had the right mindset, we started the game really well, and it’s unfortunate that at the end of the day you don’t get the three points.”
Berhalter said the team’s passing wasn’t good enough on the evening, but goalkeeper Steve Clark, whose errant pass led to the second New York goal, took much of the blame.
“I thought we had the game in hand and I made a couple of bad passes,” he said. “I think that hurt us tonight. They have good pressure, so credit them. But I had a couple bad passes today.”
Defender Michael Parkhurst didn’t blame Clark, but admitted the club made too many mistakes.
“It was good, and then we gifted them two goals,” he said. “They’re a very good team, so they don’t need any help scoring. When you gift a team like that two goals, it’s going to be difficult. We feel like we beat ourselves a little bit tonight.”
Berhalter views the loss as a learning experience.
“It was an intense game,” he said. “It had a good atmosphere to it, good tempo to it, and overall it was a match of high intensity. … It certainly had an extra bite to it. I think it’s a good challenge for us, today. We’ve learned a lot from this game.”
Clark said the team needs to “just let it go,” and look ahead. And for Parkhurst, a top-two finish and a head of steam heading into the Audi 2015 MLS Cup Playoffs.
“Of course you want to go into the postseason with a good feeling, but we’re still able to do that,” he said. “There are two games left, and if we can win both of those, we’ll be a confident group heading into the playoffs. We’re still confident with what we can do out there.”
