After two disappointing games against the likes of Houston and Kansas City, the last thing Crew fans were looking forward to was a matchup against the team that trailed them by only two points in the Eastern Conference standings. Fortunately for the Hudson Street Hooligans, they had nothing to fear.

The ball stayed almost exclusively on the New York half for the first 20 minutes of the game, and the Crew controlled the ball as much as they have all season.

Then, in the 20th minute, Columbus’ Guillermo Barros Schelotto found a streaking Emilio Renteria with a beautifully played through ball that sent the forward to a breakaway goal, erupting Crew Stadium.

Renteria, who has scored two of his three goals on the season against New York, was thrilled with his performance.

“I’m really happy to have scored a goal,” Renteria said. “Versus New York I keep scoring goals, so we’ve just got to keep playing them.”

The Crew continued to dominate the half, and went into halftime with a 1-0 lead. There was no complacency in the team, however, and they came out just as energized in the second half as they did in the first. In the 48th minute,

Brian Carroll hit a smoking volley straight into the net off of a deflected free kick. The goal was Carroll’s first of the season, and a great one at that.

“It was certainly fun,” Carroll said. “I just tried to keep it on frame and see if good things would happen, and they did.”

The shot was a rare one for Carroll, and he acknowledged the fact that he appears to be going for quality over quantity in his goal scoring.

“I would certainly like more quantity,” Carroll joked. “But I’ll definitely take the quality.”

From that point on, New York was clearly frustrated. The team had dug themselves quite a hole, and it clearly affected their play.

As fouls increased, so did tempers on both sides. The boiling point between the teams came in the 89th minute, when captain Frankie Hejduk received a red card for “serious foul play.”

Needless to say, Hejduk was not pleased and had some choice words for the referee and the Red Bulls as he left the field.  He will miss next week's match against Houston.

The game ended with the score 2-0 in favor of the Crew, and the team left the game with a five point lead in the Eastern Conference, a welcome cushion after a rough stretch of games.

“Overall we played one of our best games,” head coach Robert Warzycha said after the game. “I wasn’t surprised [by New York's poor play] because that was our plan. That’s what we do to teams and that’s why they played that way.”

With Renteria entering the starting lineup for only the third time this season, his play was widely scrutinized from the beginning, and his chemistry with Crew star Guillermo Barros Schelotto was obvious right away.

“We are playing a little more offensive together,” Schelotto said of Renteria. “I went to find him, and he showed me the pass to make. It’s a very big thing for me because I know where he needs me to play the ball.”

The overwhelming sense of optimism coming from the Columbus locker room was matched only by the amount of disappointment from New York coach Hans Backe.

“We just looked paralyzed and passive,” Backe said. “Maybe if [Thierry Henry] was in the game he would have given us quality play, and made the other players around him better.”

Thierry Henry was in the stadium for the game, but did not even join his teammates on the bench. He watched the game from a box in the stands.

The Crew’s next game will be Saturday July 24th when they host the Houston Dynamo before embarking on a three-game road trip crossing the country from L.A. to Philly and then to Salt Lake before returning home in late August.