Crew faces strong test on the road

Coach Gregg Berhalter came away displeased with a few elements of Crew SC’s 1-1 tie Sunday with Sporting Kansas City.

The Crew didn’t move enough and gave balls away too easily in the second half, when it completed only 71 percent of its passes, he

said. Overall, the secondhalf performance “wasn’t good enough” but marked a change in the team’s resolve. Earlier in the season, it was the type of disjointed, unraveling game it might have lost.

A game Saturday night at the Vancouver Whitecaps is a chance for the Crew to show it has improved on the road.

It is the first road game in which wing Pedro Santos is projected to start, the first since midfielder Federico Higuain returned from a knee injury and the first since the Crew returned to a 4- 2- 3- 1 formation.

A win or tie would be noteworthy since it would be the Crew's first this season against a team in playoff position in Major League Soccer. The other five road wins or ties — wins over D.C., Montreal and Minnesota, and ties against Salt Lake and Orlando — have come against teams below the current playoff line.

Vancouver ( 13- 9- 5) leads the Western Conference and, like the Crew ( 13- 124), is riding a five- game unbeaten streak.

“This is a tough test we have. It’s an in- form team, it’s a very physical team and it will be on turf,” Berhalter said. “There’s a lot of different challenges to face during this game and it’s a good test for us.”

Montreal, seventh in the East, trails the Crew by seven points but has two games in hand, meaning the Crew is not yet out of the woods. To solidify a playoff spot and potentially climb in the standings over the final five weeks of the regular season, the Crew believes it will need to do well on the road.

“We need to show ourselves, to prove to ourselves that we can go into hostile environments, difficult opponents on the road and bring something back,” Berhalter said. “I think we showed that against Salt Lake, against a tough opponent on short rest and we responded and we’re going to have to do it again now.”

The Crew headed to Vancouver, British Columbia, on Wednesday, a day earlier than it usually would for a game against a Western Conference opponent, to watch the Whitecaps play Minnesota United. The Crew saw in the Whitecaps' 3-0 win what has made them one of the best teams in MLS the last five weeks: a fast, well- positioned counterattack and an ability to take advantage of mistakes on set pieces.

The Whitecaps didn’t score off a set piece Wednesday but came within inches on a pair of corner kicks. They lead MLS with 14 set-piece goals.

“I think that gave guys good perspective,” Berhalter said of the viewing opportunity.

The Crew will transition from the stands to the field and perhaps gain more perspective on how much progress it has made as a road team.