Columbus Crew record first multiple-goal victory of the season, defeating NY Red Bulls 3-0
After the last four Crew matches ended with decisive goals in the final minutes of play, Columbus put the flair for the dramatic aside to defeat the New York Red Bulls 3-0 on Saturday at Lower.com Field.
"It's not easy to play against the New York Red Bulls, after many games in a row," said Crew coach Wilfried Nancy. "When I was in the locker room, I wanted to step back a bit, just to think about how we did it. The way we played ... was a really, really good game with the ball, but also without the ball."
The Crew started the scoring early, with striker Cucho Hernandez recording the first goal directly in front of Red Bulls goalkeeper Carlos Coronel, off a pass from Yaw Yeboah in the 13th minute. In the second half, Hernandez helped give Columbus its first multiple-goal lead of the season with an assist to Jacen Russell-Rowe that led to a goal at the 56-minute mark.
With Hernandez getting the ball near midfield on the Red Bull's side, he found Russell-Rowe racing past New York defender Andres Reyes. Hernandez laid out a pass ahead of Russell-Rowe, and after taking control of the ball, the forward sent it into the back of the net to the left of Coronel.
"That goal that he scored tonight was not easy," Nancy said. "He had the pressure of the center back, a really big center back."
Midfielder Aidan Morris increased the lead to 3-0 in the 66th minute, finding the back of the net following a Crew corner kick, which would mark Columbus' first goal off a set piece this season.
Once the game went into stoppage time during the second half, Nancy made his last round of substitutions, including putting Will Sands in for Yeboah. Sidelined with an ACL tear back in April of 2023, this was the 23-year-old's first match since the injury.
"It's a moment I've been waiting for, for a very long time," Sands said. "After a kind of rough last year, it's good to finally be back and get back into the swing of things."
While Columbus had just a slight possession advantage over New York, being in control 57.9% of the time, the defense allowed the Red Bulls to take only three shot attempts, two on goal compared to the Crew's 13 shots, six on goal.
"They've been really good all year limiting teams to not as many chances," said Crew goalkeeper Patrick Schulte of the players in front of him. "And I think that was a goal of ours from last year, we allowed too many goals. Having two shots makes my life a lot easier."
From early in the game, both the Crew and Red Bulls made the match physical. At one point during the first half, Yeboah and New York's Peter Stroud had to be separated after a brief scuffle while getting up after a hit.
Throughout the over 90 minutes of play, the two teams combined for 27 fouls and five yellow cards, with Red Bull's Daniel Edelman being given a red during stoppage time. Despite the amount of fouls, there were still a significant number of calls that the players, coaches and fans at Lower.com Field felt were missed, and they let the referees know it.
"I don't like to talk about the referees because I know that they tried to do a good job, and I respect that it's not easy to ref, but it's difficult" Nancy said. "Sometimes they make calls, and this is not common sense. So, I cannot compete with that, so it's just difficult."
The earliest goal of the match was immediate once the ball got to the foot of Hernandez, but the play started in the backfield as center back Malte Amundsen launched a pass up the left side to Yeboah, who would eventually find the striker running towards the Red Bull's goal. Amundsen had tried to connect this type of pass to Yeboah earlier in the match, but the midfielder was unable to collect the ball in time to make anything of the opportunity.
The Amundsen-Yeboah connection has been on display on multiple occasions and is something that comes "natural" according to the midfielder. In the MLS Cup final, a similar pass from Amundsen led to a Yeboah goal in the Crew's 2-1 victory over Los Angeles FC.
"I always try to connect with Yaw," Amundsen said. "I think he understands where to go when I get the ball, and we just play off that, it's as simple as that."
With this being the final match of the Crew's 15-day stretch in which they played five games, Columbus is off until next Saturday. The team will face off against Charlotte FC on the road on Saturday, March 23.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus Crew pick up 3-0 victory over New York Red Bulls
