Better Soccer Through Chemistry

My quick take on the Crew crashing out of the playoffs in the first round, after watching only the second leg of the quarterfinals, is that head coach Greg Andrulis completely and utterly screwed his team.

Didn't anybody learn from the Colorado debacle last year? Yes, Joe Cannon is an MVP candidate this year, but, as many Republicans will tell you before tomorrow, changing your horses in the middle of the race is still a dubious call, and his replacing Scott Garlick last season upset that particular apple cart, if I may throw in as many clichés as I can here.

So, down 1-0 to New England after the first match, Andrulis seemed to buy into the idea that it was his coaching that kept the unbeated streak going in Cowtown for so long, and he tinkered like a man possessed. Edson Buddle, inexplicably, to the bench. Tony Sanneh as playmaker. Frankie Hejduk in a different role as well.

As a result, the Crew played massively disorganized for about eighty minutes, until they got desperate and threw mostly everyone on the field into the attack to salvage a tie in the game that was not enough to pull level in the series.

I had a hunch, during the regular season, that the good form of the Crew came more from veterans Robin Fraser and Simon Elliot settling in and providing leadership after some initial uncertain, with other guys, like Ross Paule, Jon Busch and Hedjuk, also chipping in with their experience. This allowed the younger guys, particularly Chad Marshall, Edson Buddle and Kyle Martino, to flourish for exactly the same reason the Fire struggled this year, but that's fodder for the next column on the Chicago web site.