Crew relies on defense as offense catches up

Crew president and general manager Tim Bezbatchenko has a rule of thumb:

“I have a belief that you don’t know what your team is until 10 games in,” he said Monday morning.

The Crew has played eight games over six months. Who are they? Perhaps that question is best answered with another question: At this point in a pandemic, do any of us know who we are anymore?

The MLS season was halted March 12 due to concerns about COVID-19. The season sort of resumed in a bubble with the MLS is Back tournament, which ran from July 8 through Aug. 11. Two weeks later, the Crew and the rest of the league got back to a more regular regular season, playing at home stadiums, albeit without fans.

(There soon may be news on the fan front. Bezbatchenko said he is hoping to have a few spectators — friends and family of players and staff only — on hand when the Crew plays plucky Philadelphia at Mapfre Stadium on Wednesday night. Bezbatchenko added that the club is hoping to get clearance for a limited number of fans — 1,500, the state-mandated max at this point — admitted for the Crew-cincinnati game at Mapfre on Saturday night. Stay tuned.)

“It’s a year with a choppy schedule, start-stop, stop-start, before and after the MLS is Back tournament,” Bezbatchenko said. “The teams that keep things steady will come out in very good positions. Through all the chaos, you want to stay true to who you are, to your style of play, and stay disciplined, stay focused.”

The eight-game sample provides enough to say the Crew (5-1-2) is doing well. Although Columbus slipped to second place in the East after a disappointing, scoreless draw in Cincinnati on Saturday night, it was its sixth shutout of the season. The team defense — a “commitment to collective pain,” Bezbatchenko said — has been something to behold.

The Crew has allowed 23 shots on frame and two goals in over 720-plus minutes. The two goals allowed were both the product of defensive mistakes — a missed mark on a set piece and an egregious giveaway. It’s conceivable, then, that the Crew could have had a clean sheet through eight games. Either way, it’s remarkable.

The Crew showed in the tournament — when it was undefeated and unscored upon in three games during the round-robin stage — how good it can be on either side of midfield, when healthy. Since, the team has struggled to generate offense.

The games against Cincinnati, the one on July 11 in the Orlando bubble and the other over the weekend at Nippert Stadium, are instructive. In the one, FCC tried to play with the Crew and lost 4-0. This compelled FCC to completely alter its style of play. Six weeks later, FCC backed up the bus at Nippert and came away with a point.

The Crew obviously missed attacking midfielder Lucas Zelarayan, who sat out two games with an ankle injury and was shaking off rust upon his weekend return.

The team paid a transfer fee of around $8 million for the playmaker, and he has shown he’s well worth the price.

Zelarayan will get more space, and be more effective, when opponents have other threats to consider. That’s a problem right now.

Beginning with the Minnesota knockout game in Orlando last month, the Crew’s opponents have been dropping back and filling the penalty box.

They’ve been targeting central midfielder Darlington Nagbe (NYCFC looked bent on sending him to surgery) and squeezing Zelarayan, or whoever it is with the ball in the middle of the attack.

“It’s a challenge for our team,” Bezbatchenko said. “We need to evolve to be a multipronged attack.”

The Crew has 12 goals in eight games and a plus-10 differential. Not bad, considering the injuries the team has dealt with, including Youness Mokhtar. If Mokhtar and fellow wingers Pedro Santos, who is enigmatic, and Luis Diaz, who is 21 years old, can make plays on flanks ... well, then you’ll be looking at another level of dangerousness. Aspirational dangerousness.

“We need to continue to be solid defensively,” Bezbatchenko said. “We need to continue, through all of the choppiness, to get back into a flow. To find consistency. And we need to see how (coach Caleb Porter) wants to break down defenses on the outside.”

That’s as fine a summation as one can summon for a club that has played eight games in six months. The Crew has 15 games to go. Then, playoffs. TBA. marace@dispatch.com @Michaelarace1