On one leg, Room keeps Crew postseason hope alive
Odds are the Columbus Crew, your defending MLS Cup champions, will not make the playoffs. They played too poorly over the dog days of summer. They probably dug themselves too big a hole. Like dogs they dug. Dogs.
Yet, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that they can exhume themleum, selves. And if they do — if they somehow get four points and climb over four teams that have games in hand, in just six weeks’ time — they will look back on Saturday’s game in Foxborough as the point they started scrabbling.
And they will thank Eloy Room, their goalkeeper.
The Crew came away with a point in a 1-1 tie with the mighty New England Revolution. It should have been a threepoint victory for the Fighting Canaries, but the one point was well-salvaged, on the road, on a carpet derived from petroagainst a burgeoning juggernaut, in no small part because of Room.
We sometimes forget what a goalkeeper means to a team, or what influence he has on games. We go, “Oh, what a save!” when he dives to deflect a bullet with his fingertips. But there are the other 5,399 seconds in a soccer game, during which goalies are playing the part of on-field coach, delivering orders to thwart an oncoming attack, directing the defense on set pieces, and so forth.
Room performed these usual tasks with aplomb against the Revolution, the most potent offensive team in MLS. The Revs (17-4-5) are a lock to win the Supporters' Shield, indicative of the league's best regular-season record. The Revs are extraordinarily fun to watch, given how they press for turnovers and then take the ball and try to ram it down an opponent's throat. They have scored 48 goals in 26 games this season.
When playing the Revs, there is a lot of delivering orders to thwart an oncoming attack, and so forth.
They Revs generated 33 shots against the Crew Thursday night. Thirty-three! They looked like a hockey team. They looked like the dynastic Edmonton Oilers of the 1980s.
Crew coach Caleb Porter was braced for the onslaught, more or less. Porter was without several of his best attackers, out with injury, including the maestro Lucas Zelarayan, speed-burner winger Luis Diaz and the foul magnet, the versatile, cerebral and oft-tumbling Pedro Santos. And never mind the rest of the names on the injury report, which
has been too long for too long.
Porter played a 4-4-2 formation. The “2” up front were two hands in a prayer for a bit of offense, which has been lacking all season. It was the right setup. Gyasi Zardes remains a horse and Miguel Berry, when he has been on the field, has found the net. They presented a measure of danger when the Crew had the ball, which wasn't often.
The “4-4” in the backfield and midfield were compacted to withstand inwhoops.
cessant attack, which the Revs provided, as they do. By and large, the Crew's defense held. Theirs is a solid defense, even if it sometimes belches.
It belched again Saturday night when, after a microscopically accurate cross from Harrison Afful to the head of Zardes gave the Crew and improbable 1-0 lead, the Crew captain, center back Jonathan Mensah, essentially gifted the game-tying goal with a perfect pass to the Revs' potent striker, Adam Buksa.
Crew fans have seen this sort of defensive gaffe before, most notably in the hellish 4-2 loss to D.C. United in Columbus last month. These gaffes are even worse than own goals, which are often forgivable in bang-bang situations. Gifted goals are like consciously lighting a match in a heliumfilled dirigible. Oh, the humanity.
Room made sure that there would be no disaster this time. He made sure the Crew came away with a valuable and unexpected point against the best team in the league. He did it on one leg.
Room seemed to have pulled his groin on a goal kick in the 85th minute, but he stayed in the game because Porter had burned all his substitutions. Room played on one leg and made three huge saves from the 90th minute into stoppage time. It was like watching Scott Sterling.
It was a Moment, with a capital “M.” It was the kind of gritty, gutty performances that can inspire. Room, who saved the six on-frame shots that weren't gifted, stood tallest on one leg. “Heroic” is not the word for it, but it is within 192 square feet of the word.
Top seven in the Eastern Conference make the playoffs and the Crew are in 10th place. They are four points below the playoff bar. They have eight games remaining, five at home.