With J Hutcherson -- I'm not here to tell our Ohio friends what they should've been doing with their Sunday afternoon, but Cruz Azul gave the Crew a lesson on how to get a result at the Nemesio Diez. It's simple. Keep playing.
Cruz Azul did that, taking advantage of a Toluca penalty miss and eventually netting the winner. In last week's Champions League first-leg, Columbus did too, coming back from two goals down at halftime to draw 2-2.
Tonight (8pm on FSC), it's a little tougher. A tie is a loss unless it's another 2-2, and that means overtime. 3-3 shifts the away goal advent to Columbus. It's a lot easier if the Crew can put together a win.
Winning a competitive game in Mexico has been the next step for American soccer for so long, it's almost a cliche. Good is never good enough, and there's a growing list of clubs getting turned over in Mexico. That's especially true at altitude, something an in-season Crew couldn't manage in Mexico City.
That team they lost to in August? Cruz Azul, who rang them up for five unanswered goals. Regardless of the positive talk coming out of the Columbus locker room following their turnaround against Toluca at Crew Stadium, there's still that earlier scoreline as a reminder of how wrong it can go. Toluca did two goals better against Marathon in the group stage, beating them 7-0 at home.
It's probably not even worth mentioning that DC United held Toluca to a 1-1 draw in Toluca. On the final night of Group B, the hosts would've had to lose that game by a ton of points to end up not advancing to the knockout stage.
What will be interesting is to see if tonight's game draws a big crowd. During group play, a reported 15k showed up to see Toluca - San Juan Jabloteh. There other two home games were at and just under 10k. The stadium holds 27,000.
Comments, questions, solutions to problems that have yet to present themselves. Please, tell me all about it.
