Zardes hopes to help Crew make late run
What became the final kick of practice wound up costing Gyasi Zardes two games.
It was Oct. 23 and the Crew was preparing for a road game against Houston the following day when the team’s leading scorer suffered what he described a week later as a “knee knock.”
It wasn’t serious, but it was enough to keep him sidelined for what would be a 1-1 draw against the Dynamo and a 1-0 loss at bottom-feeder D.C. United on Wednesday.
Now with a Sunday home game against league-leading Philadelphia set to usher in a stretch of three games in eight days to close the regular season, Zardes is ready to get back into the lineup for this crucial juncture.
Along with full availability from fellow offensive linchpins Lucas Zelarayan and Darlington Nagbe, he hopes to reinvigorate an offense that has stagnated in their absences.
“Do I want to force it and play on it with playoffs right around the corner, or do I want to take some time off to heal it?” Zardes said Friday. “Obviously I want to play every single game, even if I’m hurt, but we were trying to look at the bigger picture and really be smart about managing playing a game against D.C. United or being healthy to play a game against Philly and Orlando and the rest of the season.”
Since a six-game unbeaten stretch culminated with a 2-1 win against Minnesota United on Sept. 23, the Crew has scored nine goals in its past seven games while earning only five of a possible 21 points. Three of those nine goals came in a home win against New York City FC on Oct. 18.
Coach Caleb Porter’s team hasn’t exactly been able to put its best foot – or feet – forward, though. Zelarayan missed three straight games and then came off the bench in both games that Zardes missed, while Nagbe missed eight straight games before playing a combined 96 minutes in the past two games.
The three will be reunited against the Union.
“We’re just really looking forward to having our top group, our full-strength group with our best players together,” Porter said. “For us to play the way we want to play and for us to compete with the best teams, we need our best players, so it’s great timing to get Gyasi back, to get Lucas and Darlington back and be able to go full throttle into the playoffs.”
Porter said the team’s overall experience level should make plugging everyone back into the lineup a fairly straightforward process. Friday’s training session, he said, went well and featured “a good majority” of the players who will start against Philadelphia.
Nagbe said the hope is that being at full strength will help prevent teams from clogging the middle of the field.
“I think we’re good enough, we’re talented enough and we’ve been coached well enough to break those numbers down,” he said. “The next three games we’ll focus on that. I think Lucas coming back in there, he’ll draw more attention centrally and hopefully that will bring more guys in the attack as well.”
If the Crew can regain the form that had it challenging for a Supporters’ Shield until the last week or two, Porter likes the opportunity at hand.
“There’s no doubt about it, we took our lumps, but I feel like in this last week of the season it’s set up really nicely for us to finally be 100% healthy and have three games to get ready for the playoffs and push for seeding and home games,” he said. ajardy@dispatch.com @Adamjardy