The Columbus Crew’s four-game MLS winning streak was snapped Wednesday night in Florida as the Club lost, 2-1, to Inter Miami CF at Chase Stadium in the Club’s sixth-straight away match.
After conceding twice in the opening 21 minutes, the visitors got a goal back and looked destined to score an equalizer, but were unable to earn a point on the road.
“It has been good games, good performances. Today was not a bad performance,” head coach Wilfried Nancy said afterward. “It was also a good performance, but we were not good at certain moments. This is again something that we did well. We have grown a lot regarding these kind of games.
“I would have preferred to concede in another way. This is positive about what we've done since the few last games that we had. It could have been better in terms of the way we did this game.”
The home side opened the scoring 10 minutes into the match when Ian Fray headed in a corner from Julian Gressel. The Crew’s deficit doubled 11 minutes later when Leonardo Campana scored after Columbus lost possession deep in its own territory.
“We just needed to be sharper,” captain Darlington Nagbe said, who made his 400th MLS regular-season appearance. “I thought we did a good job defensively being tight and compact. They were dangerous on the counter. Yeah, we just needed to be sharper.”
The Crew did trim the deficit, though. In the 40th minute, the reigning league champions possessed the ball on the left flank waiting for the right moment to strike. Aidan Morris whipped a ball into the 6-yard box, where Cucho Hernández flicked it in for his sixth MLS goal of the season.
The second half was filled with Columbus searching for an equalizer, but Miami maintained its low block and never allowed the Black & Gold to level the match.
“We came out well in the second half,” Nancy said. “We had all the time the ball. We tried to unbalance the low block. After that, we had the opportunities. We didn't score, but we had opportunities. A bit of better decisions. We could have scored a second goal, also. Sometimes we're going to score and sometimes not. What I like is we try to unbalance the low block, and this is something that we did. After that, we missed the goal to come back. Yeah, we were running after the score now.”
The match was Columbus’ sixth-straight on the road across all competitions, including the Concacaf Champions Cup Final in Mexico. However, the Black & Gold will be home soon.
On Saturday night, the Crew return to Lower.com Field for the first time since May 11 when they host Sporting Kansas City in an interconference clash. This will be SKC’s first trip to the Ohio capital since 2019 – and first visit to Lower.com Field.
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