Crew Notebook - Match Date: July 23, 2003
Columbus Crew 1, New England Revolution 1
by Steve Sirk

Okay, stop me if you heard this one. This soccer team in Columbus is playing a game. They create a bunch of chances, don’t give up a bunch of chances but….oh, you have heard it before. And it’s not even a joke in the ha-ha sense. Forget I even brought it up.

Craig Merz: Budding Attorney

Crew coach Greg Andrulis was not at all pleased when he went up to the podium for the post game press conference.

“It’s a broken record,” he lamented. “Defend well, create a lot chances…lose or tie.”

Andrulis then addressed the play of the newcomers in the lineup. “I’m proud of Jeff Matteo and Michael Ritch, two of our developmental players. They stepped and helped us when we needed it.”

Columbus Dispatch reporter Craig Merz followed up by asking Andrulis if, since he had only praised the two developmental players, was he upset with his veterans?

“I’m not going to get into that,” the coach shot back. “It’s not that it’s not a good question, but I’m just not going to get into it.”

Then Merz, thinking quickly like a lawyer who just had an objection sustained, rephrased the question so it might be admissible. Was Andrulis happy with any of his veterans?

“We’ll have to look at the tape. It’s not good enough.”


GOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!

Okay, normally one goal in a home game wouldn’t elicit such a Cantor-esque explosion, but when it’s the first home goal in a month, it’s a big deal. The goal was courtesy of Jeff Matteo, a guy traded away last year, released by the MetroStars this year, and then reclaimed off waivers. The kid got a chance to start last night and seized the day, skipping a low shot inside the left post to end a Crew home goal-less drought that seemed as limitless as the team’s ability to squander chances.

“It was a one-two that got kinda screwed up and I had the ball and slotted it left corner,” he said. “It was good. It would have been a lot nicer if we’d won though.”

I explained to him that while he may have been excited to score his first MLS goal, I knew someone who was even more excited. My buddy Flick won $35 in his section’s goal pool, as Matteo was “his horse.”

“Do I get a cut of that?”, Matteo asked immediately, which was a quick reminder that he is on a developmental contract. “I get a percentage, right?”

I explained that Flick had loudly announced to all around him that he was going to take Matteo to Sizzler as a reward.

“Big time!”, the goal-scorer said with a laugh.


The Equalizer

The Crew’s penchant for giving up aggravating goals continued. In this case, a very dubious call against Brian Dunseth gave the Revs a free kick some 35 yards from goal. The free kick was flighted into the box, where Taylor Twellman nodded the ball to the far post to Crew Killer Pat Noonan, who tied the game.

“I think it was a bad call on Brian Dunseth,” said Andrulis. “I think he blew the whistle based on what he perceived the intent to be. But we still have to defend that set piece. There’s no excuse, whether it’s a good call or a bad call…the second part we have to do better at. We’re yelling at the referee because it’s a bad call and they’re celebrating because it’s 1-1. It’s not good enough.”

“If I made enough money, I’d complain,” said Dunseth of the call. “I don’t want to get fined. I can’t afford it. It’s disappointing. Watch the replay. It’s all ball.”

Like his coach, Dunseth said the Crew needed to do a better job on the goal. “They put the ball in the box in a dangerous, difficult situation,” he said of the Revs. “They got a head to it and it went back across the box. That’s always going to be trouble. It doesn’t matter if you have a bunch of 7-foot Dikembe Motumbos back there. All it takes is the right angle and right position and you’re going to get a touch on the goal.”

Duncan Oughton summed it all up concisely. “Yeah, it was questionable call, but we’ve got to rearrange and sort it out quickly. (Bleep) happens but we need to stop that sort of thing.”

Presthus On The Goal

“I thought it was a good ball in,” said Crew goalie Tom Presthus. “Clarkie and Taylor went up and challenged for it. The ball got knocked across. I tried to get across to get to it, where Chad & Noonan were battling. In retrospect, I should have stopped and made myself bigger and tried to stop the shot rather than going right through it. It’s frustrating as a goalkeeper because I thought we played well defensively.”

Duncan’s Leg Wound

Oughton was still agitated (and limping) after the game due to a non-call on Brian Kamler, who did a number on the Kiwi’s right leg. If this was the Civil War, Duncan’s days would be numbered.

“How do I not get a call on that?,” Oughton asked while raising his pant leg to show me a sequence of gashes on his leg. The first laceration is just below the knee, and the carnage continues on a broken line down the front of his shin all the way to his foot. “The guy goes studs up right through my leg, I get the ball, I bounce it off of him and it’s a throw in for them. Clean challenge though, right?”

Missed Chances: Edson Buddle

Edson buddle came on in the 60th minute and twice found himself in position to be the hero. The first came on a breakaway against Revs keeper Matt Reis. Buddle pushed the ball to his right in an effort to dribble the charging goalie, but the ball went too far wide for the striker to retrieve while the net was open.

“I haven’t seen one of those in awhile,” said Buddle of the breakaway. “I took a harder touch than I wanted to. I was trying touch it around him to the right, but it was too hard.”

In overtime, Buddle had an open look at the goal from 17 yards out. His shot beat Reis easily, but sailed just over the crossbar. “I was keeping my eyes on the ball so by the time I looked it, up it was just going over the bar,” he said. “It felt good when it left my foot, but I leaned back just a little too much.”

Andrulis found it hard to disparage Buddle as he works his way back into the lineup after missing the better part of three months with a hip flexor injury. “I think some of that, to be fair to Edson, is injuries,” said Andrulis. “Edson hasn’t played in three months. Tonight he was put in a situation where he has come through for us in the past. As he gets sharper, those will be better opportunities. His touch let him down at the most critical time and normally that doesn’t happen with Edson because he has a great touch. I think he’ll regain his form with more playing time at speed. You just can’t replicate that at practice.”

Missed Opportunities: Brian Maisonneuve

If there is one player on the Crew that is particularly snake-bitten when it comes to finding the back of the net, it is midfielder Brian Maisonneuve. To him, the penalty area might as well be the Bermuda Rectangle.

“I don’t know what the answer is. The goal’s about that big for me right now,” said Mais, while holding his thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “The last three games, I have about five good looks. I hit a couple of them well. The one I’m most disappointed in was last game when I was wide open and pulled it wide.”

Against the Revs, Mais ripped an 18-yarder wide left in the 78th minute. But the most agonizing chance of all came in the 90th minute, when Mais appeared to have the lower right corner picked out and the keeper beaten. At the last second, Carlos Llamosa came sliding in to deflect the shot wide. The shot was the result of a fantastic dribbling slalom across the top box.

“I kept looking to slip it through, but the more I dribbled, the more the lanes just kept opening up,” he explained. “Then I had a good look at the far post and I hit it right where I wanted to, but then Carlos came sliding and just got a foot on it.”

“I’ll just keep plugging away,” he said with a shake of the head. “We’ve just got to keep it together. We’ve created chances. I just don’t know what the answer is in terms of putting the ball in the back of the net. The good news is that we’re creating good chances. We just need to keep plugging along until we put those chances away.”

I suggested that maybe his Detroit Tigers hat was to blame. Perhaps it is sapping his natural abilities, like the real Tigers caps seem to do to major league baseball players. “No, I didn’t wear the bad-luck Tigers hat today,” he said. “I’m a fan, but I think I need to throw that thing away.”

Mais On Midfield

Mais assessed the team’s midfield play against the Revs. “I thought we moved the ball well,” he said. “Sometimes you’re going to force it a bit in the midfield. You’re going to try to be creative and it’s not always going to work. Soccer is a game of turnovers. You’re going to turn the ball over, but it’s just a matter of how you react. I thought we moved the ball well at times. When we moved it quickly, I thought we were dangerous. When we took three, four, five touches, we got closed down pretty quickly. When we played one and two touches, we looked pretty good.”

Road Sweet Road?

With the dismal homestand completed, earning only five points in four games, the Crew will be playing nine of their final 14 on the road. It may seem like a disadvantage, but is it possible that playing on the road will help the team to relax? Perhaps they’ve been putting too much pressure on themselves, causing their home struggles to snowball? So might the road actually help the team?

“It can,” said Mais. “When you’re at home, you want to take the game to them for sure. On the road, maybe you don’t press as much and can kinda take your foot off the gas and the ball might end up in the goal. Soccer’s a funny game.”

“Actually, this year, we’ve been better on the road, haven’t we?,” said Oughton. “This needs to be our fortress. It’s not good enough, you know? It’s frustrating for the fans because we’re not treating them the way they should be treated. We should be winning in here. This is our house.”

Dunseth feels that home or road doesn’t matter, the team is the team is the team, regardless of location. He feels it’s just a matter of getting both phases of the game in sync. “We’ve given up two goals in four games,” he said. “The house isn’t falling down. We’re just not scoring any. In the beginning of the year, we were scoring (bleep)loads of goals, but we were giving up (bleep)loads of goals. Now we’re not as dangerous offensively as we were earlier in the season, but defensively we’ve locked it down. We’ve got to put both parts together.”

Dante’s Return

Shiny-domed striker Dante Washington was in town to receive his 2002 U.S. Open Cup championship ring. Always a fan favorite, Washington received an ovation from the fans upon receiving his ring.

“The ovation was very nice,” Dante said afterward. “It’s great to come back and see the fans. I will always bleed yellow & black, so whenever I get the chance to come back, I will. When I was walking around the stadium, people were yelling my name and saying hello. It was really, really nice. I’m glad the Crew were able to bring me back tonight. That says a lot about the organization. I don’t think a lot of organizations would do something like that, but it was a classy thing to do.”

Dante trained with the team on Tuesday and got to have dinner with all his old friends. “It’s great to be back. It feels like I never left,” he said. “I just jumped right back in as if nothing had changed.”

That, of course, includes teasing Duncan Oughton. “At dinner last night, Kyle started talking about the game from elementary school where everyone tries to break each other’s pencils,” he explained. (In Glenbrook Elementary, we referred to it as “Breaks.” Surely your own school had this game as well. Student A would hold his pencil horizontally while Student B thwapped his own pencil on Student A’s pencil, attempting
to break it. You’d alternate turns until someone’s pencil snapped.) “And we were talking about the one kid in every class that could always break everyone else’s pencil. So I just mentioned that when Duncan was a kid, they played a similar game in New Zealand where kids tried to break each other’s boomerangs. He just looked at me.”

“It was good to see Dante Washington,” said Oughton, who has obviously built up an immunity to Dante’s Kiwi cracks. “It was great to have the big man back and to have dinner with him. I wish he was around. We went out and had sushi. The big man likes eel.”

“I do like eel,” Dante agreed.

It’s Good To Be The King

Dante has now been dubbed ‘King Dante’ in Virginia Beach as well. “Life is great in VA Beach,” said the king. “I’m trying to figure out where the King Dante banner came from! Someone told me I had my own cheering section last week, so I looked up and WHOA! There was a King Dante banner! I don’t know who they know…but it was in blue & white, which are our colors down there.”

The VA Beach banner was done by University of Virginia student Patricia Ross, who became enamored not only with Dante’s play, but his fan-friendly attitude. She had heard about the King Dante banner in Columbus and sought to make Dante feel a little more at home in VA Beach.

As for the original King Dante banner, it was presented to Dante as a gift, but he declined the offer.

“The people with the original banner tried to give it to me tonight,” he said. “I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ And they said they wanted me to have it, but I said they should keep it. Put it in the Crew archives or something. It’s not like I can hang something like that on my front door at home. But it was a very nice gesture and I appreciated it. I also saw that the Dante’s Inferno sign was up too.”

Saturday Aftermath

I have never seen a Crew locker room like after Saturday’s 1-0 loss to the Wizards. It was a maelstrom of seething fury. Take the locker room from any Crew loss that I’ve covered in the last six years, and nothing comes remotely close to Saturday’s atmosphere. (This includes Eastern Conference Finals losses to D.C. United.) One player opted to do battle with reporters over innocuous questions. Another normally talkative player was so frustrated, he couldn’t see straight, much less answer questions. Most players just looked down or looked away, indirectly denying all but the most forced attempts at interaction.

However, Maisonneuve and Dunseth dutifully answered any questions thrown their way, no matter how aggravating it was. In the tent afterward, I asked Dunseth about talking to the press after a game like that.

“Well, when you spend most of your career in New England, you get used to talking to the press when you’re pissed off after a loss,” he said. “Unfortunately, I have a lot of experience in that area. There was really no other situation when I was there. I mean, two nine-game losing streaks?”

Saturday’s Giveaway

The Crew handed out Crew jersey beer holder things at Saturday’s games. Basically, you dress your beer in this little foam Crew jersey and it keeps it cold or something. My friend Rob received his and tried to put it on his hand, with spectacularly deforming results. “These Crew gloves don’t fit worth a (bleep),” he said.

In the tent, Dunseth picked one up. “You know what this is?” he asked. “It’s an authentic, life-sized Jeff Matteo Crew jersey. Adidas made too many for him, so they passed the extras out to the fans so they can dress their beers up like Jeff Matteo.”

Crew Cat Interview (Saturday)

As always, I swear I am not making this Crew Cat interview up.

SS: Just to clear something up, last game you said if you dial “0”, it’s the operator, but if you dial “00”, it’s Crew Cat. Do you ever get people asking for the operator because they accidentally twitched and hit zero twice?

CC: No, I just get punks like Dunseth calling. People who don’t know their elbow from their bleephole.

SS: Does he call you because he hit the wrong number? Or does he dial double-zero to talk to you?

CC: He calls me because, you know what? I school him. School is in session. He calls me and I let him know what he’s doing wrong and how he can improve in the games.

SS: Such as?

CC: Such as his inability to get back for balls when he’s huffing and puffing. His fitness level needs to get a little bit better.

SS: So he should go out and dance with you at halftime when you’re dancing by the Crewzers? Would that help his fitness level?

CC: Yeah. I’m glad you said that. I remember one time he called me and asked about dance moves. He wasn’t too confident on the dance floor. After the games when he goes out, he has lots of ladies chasing after him, but he goes out there and he drops the shoe. He doesn’t know how to dance. So he calls Crew Cat for some dance tips. And some tips for the ladies too. I’m not really a cat. I’m a tiger. I just have to tone it down when I’m here.


Crew Cat Interview (Wednesday)

This Crew Cat interview was a bit more involved. He asked me to step into his office, which was the bathroom area of the locker room. Much to my surprise, it did not include a litter box the size of a picnic table. Among those who strolled by over the course of the interview were Brian Dunseth (BD), Tom Presthus (TP), and Shane Murphy (SM.) As you’ll see, Crew Cat was less than impressed by the halftime dog show, which featured doggie relay teams completing an obstacle course.

SS: I’ve heard you are, and I quote, “Brian Dunseth’s (b-word).”

BD: Yeah. My pimp hand was strong in that commercial, fur ball.

SS: Pimp hand was strong!

BD: It’s true. I don’t know what else I have to do. My pimp hand was strong.

CC: (Stares down Dunseth and shakes his head.)

SS: Okay, let’s move on. My buddy Flick gave this to me. He found it on the ground. Dominion Homes is giving these little stuffed mascots. I dunno, maybe if you call to build a house in the next five minutes, as an added bonus, you get a little stuffed animal or something. I haven’t actually read it. But if you look, Stinger looks like Stinger. Brutus looks like Brutus. (I then reveal the image of the Crew Cat doll, which looks like a sappy, cuddly, harmless little kitten in a Crew t-shirt.) What the (bleep) is THAT?

BD: It looks like a Pound Puppy that has brain damage. It’s like a Pound Kitty.

CC: Okay, listen up. Dunseth is a player-hater. I’m not going to stoop to his level.

BD: That just means he doesn’t have a comeback. We went over this already a few weeks ago, didn’t we Sirk?

SS: Yes we did.

CC: I’d (bleep)-slap him, but I’m a cat.

SS: How does your agent let something like that get merchandised?

BD: Fire him!

CC: I don’t have an agent.

BD: That’s your problem!

CC: I don’t have an agent. I take care of my own business. Apparently someone else is stepping in and putting some garbage together. This isn’t—

SS: You’re saying this is unauthorized, bootleg Crew Cat merchandise?

CC: Yes, this is bootleg merchandise.

BD: (Looking at picture again.) But with today’s technologies… You know how in the Gigli posters, they digitally shaved off some of J-Lo’s booty? They did that here. They shrunk Crew Cat’s head. (Dunseth leaves room.)

CC: Are you listening to this garbage?

SS: Of course.

TP: (Enters room.) Oh great. It’s Crew Cat. He almost knocked me out today. Like I needed TWO knockout punches today.

CC: That’s right! And I’ll do it again! Put that in the article. I’ll do it again! And I like Presthus. Imagine what I’ll do to someone I don’t like, such as Dunseth. If he ever steps up to the plate, it’s over.

SS: So what was up with all the dogs at halftime. I noticed you were gone for the first part of that. Were you hiding?

CC: I was grooming.

SS: Sharpening the claws?

CC: I was doing more than sharpening the claws. I was sharpening the skills because the skills pay the bills. Those dogs are all my (b-words.)

SS: So then you tried to prove it by going through the slalom.

CC: Did you see how fast I was going? I did it with style and grace. I got style points, baby.

SS: It looked to me like you got stuck.

CC: Style points.

SM: I noticed you just stood there and watched the dogs with your arms folded. Was that intimidation?

CC: I’ll tell you what it was. I don’t need someone to lead me through that (bleep). I can do it on my own. These guys had to have their hands held! What kind of freakin’ cracked up job is that? That’s complete garbage. A real animal…a real dog, a real cat…would do it on his own. Wouldn’t need no one walkin’ him through the (darn) thing. What are they gonna do, yo-yo next? What the (heck) was all that garbage? Get that stuff out of my face.


Duncan’s #8

A few weeks ago, Crew Cat told me Duncan wears #8 because it is “the double-zero turned sideways. It’s as close as he can ever get to being the Double-Zero.”

I asked Oughton about the feline’s assertion.

“I’m not making any comments to Crew Cat until he pays me the money he owes me,” scoffed Oughton. “He tried to beat me in a certain event and there was prize money involved. Let’s just say he came in a sad second. A very sad second. He was holding the prize money because he anticipated winning, but he didn’t. The big cat, or another name for cat, is a nice guy, but he owes me money. (Bleepin’) Muppet.”


Questions? Comments? Did that pencil game “Breaks” have a different name at our elementary school? Feel free to write at sirk@columbuswired.net

Columbus Wired's Steve Sirk is in his sixth season of covering the Columbus Crew, the last four of which have been spent with the team's official web site, www.thecrew.com , where his post-game notebook articles bafflingly appear alongside legitimate news and articles of substance.