Orlando City at Crew SC
4 P.M. TODAY
Mapfre Stadium UniMas (in Spanish)
WWCD-FM (102.5), WVKO-FM (103.1, in Spanish)
Crew 2-1-1; Orlando City 2-0-0
Crew — GK Steffen; D Afful, Naess, Crognale, Raitala; MF Trapp, Artur, Meram, Higuain, Finlay; F Kamara; Orlando City — GK Bendik; D Johnson, Aja, Spector, Toia; MF Perez Garcia, Carrasco, Nocerino, Barnes; F Rivas, Larin.
The Lions will play on the road for the first time this season after two victories over the first four weeks of the MLS season. … Orlando forward Cyle Larin is tied for fourth in MLS with three goals and Carlos Rivas is tied for third in the league with two assists. … Orlando is 1-2-2 all-time against the Crew.
Defender Jonathan Mensah is questionable because of a hamstring strain suffered in a 3-2 win over Portland last Saturday. … With a goal last week, Justin Meram became just one of seven Crew SC players to reach 25 career goals and assists. … Jukka Raitala is questionable at left back after playing for Finland’s national team in Austria on Tuesday.
Can Crew SC do what it failed to do all of 2016 and win a third straight match? The Crew shook off an early goal in last Saturday’s win over Portland and will look to avoid a similar start against a potent Orlando attack. Will Orlando, which was off last week, be fresher than Crew SC?
match-day experience off it. Improving stadium experience often requires attention to detail.
To name a few points of emphasis, Crew SC is using stanchions to snake concessions lines, adding merchandise shops to alleviate lines and focusing on getting vehicles into and out of parking lots more efficiently.
The club has also developed a “thoughtful and strategic” approach to long-term planning, Loughnane said. A survey sent late last year intending to measure community appetite and economic impact of a new stadium has respondent numbers “in the tens of thousands,” Loughnane said. The data is expected to be shared with community leaders at a later date.
Fox soccer analyst Alexi Lalas said he remembers watching the first Crew Stadium home game from a bar in Tampa, Florida, in 1999 and recalled thinking he was watching a soccer game from another country. With that memory, Lalas said, comes an inherent respect for Columbus as the first market in MLS to produce a functional soccer-specific stadium. It also comes with the realization that
today’s midsize MLS market is in an arms race both on and off the field, he said, one that has over time created expectations for an updated stadium.
“In a certain sense that’s good. It means that we’ve grown and evolved (as a league),” Lalas said. “I think everybody recognizes that the stadium situation, at some point, if Columbus is going to be or continue to be an MLS market, needs to change.”
Some supporters, such as Dave Foust, administrator for the Greater Columbus Golden Boys and Girls supporter group, feel that talk of needing a new stadium in Columbus is overblown and largely tied to results.
“If the team is doing well and playing well in an old stadium, are we even asking the question, ‘Is this stadium sufficient?’ ” Foust asked. “If you’re talking attendance, I think people will still come out if the Crew is doing well. But there will obviously be some point where they’re going to have to make some serious improvements to that stadium or put a stadium somewhere else to get with the times.”