Columbus Crew, St. Louis City SC battled unknowns in Leagues Cup weather delay
The only thing that was certain for much of Sunday night was that neither team really knew what was going to happen.
Within their respective locker rooms at Lower.com Field, the Crew and visiting St. Louis City SC waited out a significant weather delay to their Leagues Cup opener. A continually developing storm dumped heavy rain and lightning throughout the region and put the status of a scheduled 7:30 p.m. kickoff in serious doubt. Eventually, at 11:16 p.m., the opening whistle was blown and what would become a 2-1 Crew win finally got underway.
What was it like to navigate the in-between moments, from when warmups were postponed until a start time was finally announced nearly five hours later? It depends on whom you ask.
“After close to five hours, to try to ramp yourself up takes a lot of courage and takes a lot of will and desire,” St. Louis coach Bradley Carnell said. “We played a little bit of catch-up, which could be understandable after a five-hour wait in the locker room and not knowing if we’re playing tonight and every three minutes there’s an update and then there’s no update.
“It becomes a lottery, how you start the game and how you come out.”
St. Louis nearly scored in the opening minute before the Crew built a two-goal lead before the visitors recorded their first shot on goal. Playing at home with more than a week before its final group stage game in the tournament, the Crew had less pressure to deal with as the delays mounted. Mexican foe Club America will come to Columbus for a July 31 game, meaning the Crew now have a full week to rest at home before their next game.
No such luxury exists for St. Louis, which hosts Club America on Thursday. That schedule complicated whether the visitors even wanted to play Sunday evening or bump the game to Monday.
“Given the congestion of our schedule, if play (Monday) and get home late in the evening and then it’s already Tuesday, you get chasing now to try to get back on schedule,” Carnell said. “Normally we could’ve got back a lot earlier and in the recovery rooms (Monday). Now we use this as a travel day (Monday), which becomes a bit tricky. You lose one day, pretty much, but we’ll adapt.”
The game didn’t end until 1:08 a.m., forcing St. Louis to alter its travel plans. The team was planning to fly home after the game but had to change it to Monday.
but, as his press conference concluded around 1:30 Carnell said it wasn’t clear if they would depart Columbus at 10 a.m. or 2 p.m. Eastern but that his hope was to get out early.
Inside the stadium, fans were given periodic updates that warmups would start no sooner than a certain time. Inside the locker rooms, players had to keep on constant edge.
“We kept getting mixed signals about whether we were going to play or not, so you kind of fight the urge to let your guard down a little bit,” Crew goalkeeper Evan Bush said. “You’ve got to stay somewhat engaged. The best time we actually had was then they gave us an hour window where they said we weren’t going to go out and warm up so you could kind of let loose a little bit and let your guard down. Once they started going to the, ‘Five minutes, five minutes,’ you had to get locked in.”
Players took the field just before 10:50 p.m. and had less than half an hour on the field before the game started.
“We’re not robots and the players can’t just flick a switch and get active and get going,” Carnell said. “That’s something that was lacking a little bit tonight, the care and the welfare for the players, thinking we can just get on at 10:45 or whatever and get them going. No, there’s a whole process in the locker room to get the guys activated, to get the guys warm. Before you even see the players on the field they’re doing 20 minutes inside. From that point of view, the running of the show today was not optimal.
“I wish we could’ve made a decision very earlier.”
Crew defender Yevhen Cherberko, who made his club debut as a second-half substitute, said he’d never experienced such a delay and that his experiences elsewhere were that the game would’ve been postponed until the next day. Bush said he got a postgame video of his daughter leading chants in the Nordecke at midnight as she was turning 10 years old.
Both Carnell and Crew coach Wilfried Nancy credited everyone who stuck out the delay to watch the game. The home coach said it was important to play the game and that his practice emphasis of being adaptable and flexible to situations that occur in games helped his team handle the uncertainty of the night.
“I control what I can control,” he said. “It was not easy to (wait) 30 minutes, and after that it was 15 minutes and after that it was five minutes, but … we try to train the players to get out of their comfort zone a bit. That's why I'm really pleased about what we did because we did again (have) a good performance knowing the situation so I'm happy with that.”
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Weather wreaks havoc on Leagues Cup debut for Columbus Crew, St. Louis
