The New York Red Bulls travel to Columbus for the first leg of the Eastern Conference Championship series on Sunday, November 22. The Red Bulls enter after a 2-0 aggregate win over D.C. United in the semifinals, and Columbus comes from a 4-3 aggregate win over the Montreal Impact. The series will kick off at 4 p.m. with coverage on ESPN.
New York Red Bulls (2015 postseason)
- Record: 2-0-0
- Previous Match: Win, 1-0 vs. D.C. United at home
- Goals Scored By: Dax McCarty and Bradley Wright-Phillips (1 each)
- Assists By: Sacha Kljestan and Gonzalo Veron (1)
Columbus Crew SC (2015 postseason)
- Record: 1-1-0
- Previous Match: Win, 3-1 vs. Montreal Impact at home
- Goals Scored By: Kei Kamara (2), Ethan Finlay (1), Frederico Higuain (1)
- Assists By: Higuain and Waylon Francis (1)
Scouting Crew SC
It seemed to be the usual forces at work for Columbus in their semifinal series against Montreal, the first leg of which they lost 2-1 (away) and the second of which they won 3-1 (home). The top three regular season scorers continued to add to their 2015 tallies: Kei Kamara, who finished the regular season with 22 goals, netted twice; Ethan Finlay, who scored 12 times in the regular season, netted once; and so did Federico Higuain, who scored 8 times in the regular season. Higuain, who had the second-highest amount of regular season assists, also logged one of those. However, these players’ performances might not be as worrisome as they seem. For the most part, the Red Bulls handled these threats during the regular season; though Finlay scored twice in the only game the Red Bulls lost during the regular season series, Kamara was shut out across three games and Higuain was kept from both scoring and assisting. The Red Bulls will go into this series knowing exactly who to watch for and with pretty good experience in doing so, and so Kamara and Finlay will find it hard to register the 6 shots on goal each as they did in the second leg against the Impact. But even if they do, there’s still 2015 Goalkeeper of the Year Luis Robles to stop them.
Red Bulls Ready to Rumble
Though a match between the first- and second-place Eastern Conference teams is certainly the recipe for a challenge, it’s one the Red Bulls have been up to before – three times, in fact. In the regular season, the Red Bulls won two of their three games against Columbus. One of those was at Columbus, with Bradley Wright-Phillips and Mike Grella netting the second and first goals (respectively) of their prolific seasons. However, the games were still close, each win or loss coming from only a one-goal difference and with the two teams sharing almost exactly 50% (50.07%, to be exact) possession. The Red Bulls’ 248 regular season recoveries against Columbus are closely followed by Columbus’ 114 against the Red Bulls, and their 78 interceptions vs. Columbus are not far in front of Columbus’ 69 against them.
Ronald Zubar, still in for the injured Damien Perrinelle, is not new to this series either. He went the full 90 in the Red Bulls’ victory at home in October. In that one game, he made 9 recoveries and 3 interceptions, won 6 duels, and had 84.4% passing accuracy. And after two straight clean sheets, the worries about the back line gelling to this new lineup have fallen away.
