The return weekend of the Major League Soccer season closes with one final match on Sunday night when the Columbus Crew host Sporting Kansas City in a match between two of the historically better MLS sides but both of whom haven’t reached potential yet this term.
The midseason break probably came at the right time for both these teams to take stock and get their mojo back and it will be interesting to see what each of them deliver over the remainder of the campaign.
Columbus Crew
The Columbus Crew went into the break off the back of four matches without a win so to say it came for them at a good time would be something of an understatement. They have slipped right out of the play-off reckoning in the Eastern Conference so they are going to need to hit the ground running on their return to MLS action if they are to get back into a position to push for glory once again.
In all, the Crew have lost eight of their last 10 matches in MLS and only scored in three of those defeats so they won’t have to look too deep into their troubles to find out their problem. They must find a way of scoring more goals and while injuries haven’t helped them they can’t use that as a complete excuse. With Zach Steffen having played the final match of his loan spell the signs might be bleak for the Crew.
Sporting Kansas City
We have mentioned on a few occasions already that this has been a season to forget for the Sporting Kansas City franchise. Initially they were excused because their troubles centred round focusing on the Champions League but they’ve been out of that for a while and although injuries have most definitely hampered them, they would have expected to have delivered better results than they have managed.
After the results already this weekend, Sporting Kansas City have dropped to the bottom of the Western Conference table, which would have been unthinkable when the campaign begun, so they are going to need to go on a quite special run in the second half of the season, if they are to be around when the postseason gets started.
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Team News
Columbus Crew will not be helped by the fact that Federico Higuain is injured for this match and with the likes of Will Trapp, Gyasi Zardes and Jonathan Mensah all on international duty they are without a host of key men.
Sporting Kansas City still seem to have an injury list as long as your arm and that is holding them back. With that in mind, they could have done without missing some stars to international duty on top of that.
Betting
I mentioned when previewing Saturday’s matches that the next few rounds of fixtures are going to be hard to bet on with key men away at the international tournaments around the world and this match certainty falls into that category. To be fair had this have been before the break with the internationals available this would have been a tough gig to get stuck into.
There are just too many players missing for either side to take a solid stance on the game. To be fir I’m not a massive fan of betting on Columbus matches anyway as their style rarely fits with my betting mind set but given that it is the guess of anyone who will line up and how the teams will play, the best thing to do is leave this well alone.
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