Arace: Columbus Crew clinch playoff spot for the 1st time since they won MLS Cup in 2020
Crew forward Cucho Hernandez, 24, is imbued with an effervescent joy, and he is spreading it, like a freshly popped bottle of champagne, up and down Nationwide Boulevard.
He scored on two penalty kicks and headed in another goal off a corner to carry the Crew to a 3-0 victory over the Fire in the new Crew Stadium Wednesday night. With that, the Crew clinched a playoff berth for the first time since they won the MLS Cup in 2020.
The Crew (14-9-6) are tied for third place in the East with the Philadelphia Union, who have a game in hand. The top four in each conference will get home-field advantage in the remodeled playoffs, which features a best-of-three series in the first round. Put another way: The LDC, as the kids call the spaceship, might just be hosting a playoff game for the first time since the building came online in July 2021.
The way Cucho is going now – two hat tricks and seven goals in his past three games – it’s time to start talking about his chance to win the Golden Boot. He has 13 goals and 11 assists in 21 games. Some context: Early in the season, he missed six games with a knee injury. He also sat out a game in July for maintenance. Think about that. Cucho has missed seven games and he’s two goals off the league leader, Nashville’s Hany Mukhtar.
The Crew easily handled the Fire, who picked up six yellow cards and a straight red and had to play the final 25 minutes with 10 men. Although the Crew did not score in the second half, they managed their lead with some aplomb, which was what most fans wanted to see after the debacle in Orlando Saturday.
Orlando may have been the Crew’s ugliest loss of the season. The Crew blew a two-goal lead over the last 20 minutes and surrendered by a 4-3 score. The denouement featured egregious breakdowns and awful set-piece defense. It felt like 2022.
With another tough road game coming up Saturday at Dallas, the Crew needed to take care of business Wednesday night. Methodically, they went about it.
"We had a clean sheet tonight," coach Wilfried Nancy said. "To me, that is the best thing."
It feels like it was long time ago that Cucho arrived in Columbus as a summer transfer. Remember him sprinting into wide-open space, taking a heavy touch to draw the goalie off his line and putting a little lob over the goalie and into the net? That was his first goal, a game-winner at Chicago, scored on July 9, 2022. If it seems like that was another era, it's because it really was.
Cucho scored six goals in his first seven games with the Crew last summer. He and Lucas Zelarayan were the sum of the Crew’s offense under Caleb Porter, but they weren't enough to overcome a litany of blown points, or get the Crew in the playoffs, or maintain Porter's employment.
This season, Cucho deferred to his adopted big brother. Zelarayan was leading the team in goals with 10 before he was sold to a team in Saudi Arabia six weeks ago. Cucho moved back into more of a striker role with the acquisition of left flanker Diego Rossi, and the league’s most dangerous offense gained in lethality.
The Crew lead the league in goals with 60. The franchise record for a season is 67, racked up in 1998, when MLS settled ties with shootouts. Longtime Crew fans would've never thought they'd see such production again. Here it is, sans shootouts.
Nancy’s possess-and-attack system has also produced a league-leading 60 assists to date, as well as the league’s best goal differential (plus-19). It is relentless.
The Crew are oft called the most exciting team in MLS for their scoring. And for being prone to the kind of defensive lapses that were on display in Orlando.
They have five games remaining, three on the road, to be half as exciting.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus Crew vaults into top 4 in MLS East with 3-0 win over Chicago
