Hey, game time is rapidly approaching! Mini-preview o-clock.
The essentials
Opponent: Columbus Crew (5-5-3)
Time, Location: Sunday, May 28, 7:30 p.m. CDT • GEODIS Park
Weather: 69ºF, 1% chance of rain, 51% humidity, 8 MPH NNE wind
Follow: MLS MatchCenter • @ClubCountryUSA • @NashvilleSC
Watch/Stream • Listen: MLS Season Pass on Apple TV ($), FS1, Telemundo • 104.5 The Zone
Match officials: Referee: Victor Rivas. Assistants: Logan Brown, Walt Heatherly. Fourth official: Kyle Atkins. Video assistants: Edvin Jurisevic, Joshua Patlak
Vegas Odds: Nashville SC -105, Draw +252, Columbus +285
Etc.: Rate, review, subscribe.
| Stat | Nashville SC | Columbus Crew |
| Record (W-L-D) | 7-3-4 (1.79 PPG) 3rd East | 5-5-3 (1.38 PPG) 10th East |
| Recent form (most recent first) | W-W-D-W-W | L-D-D-L-L |
| GF/Game | 1.36 | 1.92 |
| GA/Game | 0.64 | 1.31 |
| xG Power | +0.30 (8th MLS) | +0.52 (3rd MLS) |
| G Power | +0.57 (3rd MLS) | +0.38 (7th MLS) |
| “Luck” | +0.27 (12th MLS) | -0.14 (18th MLS) |
| Offense | -0.15 (20th MLS) | +0.31 (7th MLS) |
| Defense | -0.45 (3rd MLS) | -0.21 (8th MLS) |
| Venue advantage | +0.48 Home (11th MLS) | -1.03 Away (25th MLS) |
| Injury report | OUT: D Nick DePuy (leg, season) QUEST.: D Walker Zimmerman (groin) | OUT: D Milos Degenek (ankle), M Luis Diaz (back), D Will Sands (knee), D Josh Williams (ankle) QUEST: M Kevin Molino (knee), GK Eloy Room (knee) |
Columbus Crew
We’re on a tight turnaround here, so a 10,000-foot view: Columbus is like a less-extreme version of Atlanta United. Good attack, bad defense, incredibly reliant on one or two guys for the former, perhaps to the detriment of the latter. The Crew’s offense isn’t quite as good, and the defense not nearly as bad (they’ve bene unlucky there), and it’s worth noting that the stars – attacking mid Lucas Zelarayan and striker Cucho Hernandez – are not quite as transcendent as Atlanta’s Thiago Almada and Luiz Araujo, but also they’re not so single-handedly bad at defense as to almost outweigh their (incredible) attacking contributions.
In fact, the defense isn’t really that bad in an opponent-adjusted sense (eighth in the league), and their goalkeeping hasn’t been bad either: with Eloy Room in-and-out of the lineup, 2022 SuperDraft pick Patrick Schulte has played the vas majority of minutes, and performed much much better than the Curaçaoan steady hand.
CBs Steven Moreira and Gustavo Vallecilla have been good and very interrupt-y in style – with a rotating cast of guys between them (see Milos Degenek’s injury above) in the back three, or in stead of one of them. Philip Quinton, who is in all ways below-average – or sometimes worse – was the guy against Cincinnati last weekend, and unless that poor defensive performance spooked Wilfred Nancy from playing him again, will lkely be there again tonight.
Darlington Nagbe and Aidan Morris are the guys you expect in the central midfield, while the wingbacks have been extremely rotated, with only Mo Farsi eclipsing 1200 minutes so far… and basically nobody else eclipsing even half that. Those guys have largely been liabilities in service, fwiw.
Zelarayan has not been quite the Walking Free Kick Conversion that he has been in recent years, with none of his 6 goals (on 4.81 xG) coming from a dead ball, though he has hit a pair of penalties. Cucho has just one goal on 2.18 xG from the run of play, for what it’s worth, though you could easily imagine both his xG/96 (which is at just 2/3 of that number in the run of play in comparison to last year) and conversion rate (obvs been bad, he was not last year and there’s no reason to project that he lacks anything in that department) getting back to normal.
Worth noting that, while Nancy is certainly an upgrade in the coaching department, Columbus has not been a whole lot better than last year. That’s particularly true because the Crew has had an extremely rough go on the road: the team is 1-4-1 outside of central Ohio, 4-1-2 at home. The attack goes from truly elite to run-of-the-mill when they step away from Lower.com Field. Nashville has been a good-not-great home team so far this year, but there’s every opportunity for this game to cement the narrative that last year’s weak home form was but an aberration.
Keys to the game
- Don’t give up free kicks in dangerous areas. They have not been great this year. I am not tempting the fates with Zelarayan and Cucho over a dead ball.
- Be the protagonist. Columbus is bad on the road, and that’s in part because the offense drops off a cliff. Nashville has a little margin for error to push numbers forward without worrying about Columbus punishing too much unless the free kick thing happens.
- Play wide. After a few matches of Nashville playing against absolute trash central midfields, that’s the strength of this Crew team. I’ve long been an Aidan Morris skeptic from an MNT perspective, but certainly he’s a plus player in Major League Soccer, and next to Darlington Nagbe, there’s an opportunity to get the most out of both of them. Particularly when Nashville’s in attack, there’s no need to try to play through these guys, rather than around or over them.
- MVP form. I would simply let Hany Mukhtar do incredible things on the ball (whether that’s scoring himself or feeding his speed merchants on the outside and over the top).
- Set pieces. Ever has it been, ever shall it be.
Prediction
Nashville SC 2, Columbus Crew 1
Club and Country 