In the third game of the season, the Red Bulls went into Columbus, Ohio, and surprised the Crew with their high-pressing style. Combined with the first of a number of great goals this season by midfielder Mike Grella, the Red Bulls came away 2-1 winners.
The Red Bulls returned to Columbus on July 4 expecting the same game plan from the Crew, but what they got was something totally different. The Crew played balls over the top of the defense, used Kei Kamara, their leading goal scorer, as a target player, and fought for second balls.
In a turnabout to their usual style of play, midfielder Ethan Finlay, the Crew’s leading assist man, turned goal scorer that night, netting two in a 2-1 win.
Now comes the rubber game tonight and the Red Bulls aren’t sure what to expect. But this game will be played in Red Bull Arena, and coach Jesse Marsch is sure that will make a difference.
“Playing at home is different than playing on the road,” Marsch said. “We’ve played Columbus twice on the road. I think this game will look differently. I still think Columbus is a very good team, but I do think we’ll get a different version of the game than we got there.”
With two games in hand on the Crew and New England Revolution and three on D.C. United in the Eastern Conference standings, a victory by the first-place Red Bulls will go a long way toward deciding not only the conference champion, but the Supporters’ Shield as well.
“If you’re going to talk about the table, this is a huge game,” Marsch said. “If we can manage a result here we certainly put ourselves in a very good position in the East. But what’s more important is that now we play against a good team that is going to challenge the way we play and that we can find a way to still command the game the way we know we can. That’s the biggest thing.
“Toward the end of the year results are important, but making sure that we continue to build on the confidence and the belief in the way that we play so that come playoff time we’re firing on all cylinders. That’s where the importance lies most in this game.”
But the Red Bulls (14-9-6, 48 points) still don’t know how the fourth-place Crew (13-10-8, 47 points) will play, so this past week in training they have been preparing for anything.
“We’re not sure what to expect,” midfielder Dax McCarty said. “They have a lot of good players that want to play. The first time we played them they tried to play through us and we were effective in closing them down and winning the ball high up the field and creating chances. The second time we played they were pretty effective going to Kamara. We would expect a mixture of both, honestly.
“At times they’re going to try and play out of the back and going to try and space us out and see if they can break us down, and if they can’t do that, if we’re winning balls high up the field and our pressure’s on point and our pressure’s right, they’re going to start to go direct to Kamara. He’s a handful. He’s a tough guy to deal with, not just the goals, I’m talking about in holdup play and in their build out. He’s probably the most athletic guy in the league and that showed last time we played them. He caused us all kinds of problems, so I expect a mixture of both.”
Marsch feels the same way.
“It adds to our preparation,” he said. “We kind of talked about that (on Thursday). We went through things on different adjustments that we have to make according to how they’re going to play. We’ll make some adjustments (as well) that I think will be difficult for them to deal with. It’ll be a little bit of a slugfest. They’ll be aggressive on the attack, we’ll be aggressive on the attack, and whichever team can be a little bit sharper in the final third, and whichever team can stand the other team up a little bit more will come out ahead in this.”
Kamara leads Major League Soccer with 22 goals in 30 games. He also has eight assists and should finish either first or second with Toronto FC’s Sebastian Giovinco for league MVP. Finlay has nine goals and 13 assists, a telling stat because he can be either a provider or goal scorer.
“You don’t play direct into Finlay. You play direct into Kamara for Finlay to run off him,” McCarty said. “That’s what killed us last time. They did a good job of telling their wingers to pinch inside, almost as second and third forwards and to run off of Kamara. We expect a mixture of both. We expect them to do that a couple of times and we have to be ready to deal with it with our center backs and our defensive midfielders, but we have to expect that they’re going to try and play the way they always play.”
Sacha Kljestan’s statistics mirror those of Finlay, but Kljestan, who has six goals and 11 assists, will be one of a number of Red Bulls players who can’t give Finlay time and space to spray the ball around the field.
“He’s a very good runner and he has good timing of running behind the defense, so the left side of the field for us, we’ve got to take care of that to make sure that we’re just not giving them so much space to run through and that we’re tracking him back and not letting him have an easy game,” Kljestan said of Finlay.
“We have to be prepared for whatever way they’re going to play, but also try and put our stamp on the game,” he said. “(Watch out for) a lot of second balls and try to put them under pressure like we always do when we play at home.”
Marsch has known Kamara for a while and marvels at his physical game. He’s a handful for any defender, especially for someone who isn’t ready to go shoulder-to-shoulder for 90 minutes.
“Pure athleticism. He’s a freak athlete,” Marsch said of Kamara. “He can jump, he can run, he can strike the ball, he’s strong. It’s a full package of athleticism that every center back in the league has to deal with, and then the additional thing they have now is with Finlay running and their outside backs being aggressive to go forward, the tension can be now shifted to wide spots, which allows Kamara to now move off defenders’ shoulders, and when balls come in the box he can be either running on the ground to slip it in or if it comes in the air he’s very good at being aggressive and winning battles in the air and finishing them.”
Kljestan believes the Red Bulls will be ready for anything and that the home crowd will make a huge difference. He also realized something else about the Crew from that March 28 victory.
“When we played them earlier in the season we went in and got a win there, but we felt, ‘Okay, this is a playoff team and this is going to be a team that’s going to be around for the long haul,’ “ he recalled. “They’ve got a system, they stick to it. They don’t deviate very much from their plan, kind of like us. They play some attractive soccer and they’ve scored a lot of goals this year. They’ve given up quite a few goals as well, so that’s what we’re going to try and take advantage of.”
