Time to Step up Columbus

In light of the recent inci­dents now widely reported at BMO Field dur­ing a match two weeks ago between the Crew and TFC, I have a sim­ple ques­tion: Does trou­ble now fol­low the Crew around? The inci­dents are chron­i­cled here.

This post is not meant to min­i­mize the Crew’s accom­plish­ment. Sigi Schmid has built his team the right way, show­ing patience with young­sters through a tough 2006 and 2007 cam­paign while adding some choice for­eign play­ers like Guille Bar­ros Sch­e­lotto and mak­ing a trade for Ale­jan­dro Moreno.

But what does con­cern me is that a team that con­tin­ued to lose mar­ket share and real fans has resorted to encour­ag­ing the sort of ele­ment MLS worked 12 years to keep away from games to fol­low the team.

The Crew are on the verge of win­ning the Sup­port­ers Shield for the sec­ond time in team his­tory. They are also right now the biggest threat to Houston’s throne atop MLS.  Many in the Amer­i­can Foot­balling com­mu­nity love what the Crew has done on the field and wan to embrace this orga­ni­za­tion and team, myself included as an exam­ple of how it should be done in MLS.

Let’s Review Some Ear­lier Incidents:

When I dis­cussed the Toronto sit­u­a­tion openly and hon­estly and tried to engage TFC fans on my CSRN show the com­plaints about me being “too soft on TFC” all seemed to come from Crew fans. Days later sev­eral Crew fans were shout­ing racial obscen­i­ties at New Eng­land play­ers as caught on You Tube. The Colum­bus fans also were caught throw­ing glass bot­tles and coins on the pitch dur­ing the 2nd half of the match.

In defi­ance of a league wide ban Colum­bus fans began sprayed con­fetti and stream­ers on oppos­ing play­ers while attempt­ing a cor­ner. Now I can­not recall the spe­cific match but it was done. Why the secu­rity did not con­fis­cate the items at the gate is beyond anyone’s com­pre­hen­sion. The league wide ban was more or less enforced through­out the rest of the league. When pressed on the sit­u­a­tion at Crew Sta­dium, Colum­bus GM, Mark McCullers blamed Toronto FC for the trou­ble league wide and avoided totally the issue of racist fans.

July s infa­mous inci­dent against West Ham United in a friendly: West Ham has a rep­u­ta­tion for hav­ing rowdy fans, but we’ve hosted Eng­lish clubs before and never had trou­ble. The poster pro­mot­ing the match was an implicit call for some sort of nation­al­is­tic pride from the fans, which often times in the past has evolved into vio­lence when West Ham is involved. I’m as nation­al­is­tic as it comes when this game is involved whether it be the US National Team, Superliga, or even the Caribbean club cup which USL side Puerto Rico par­tic­i­pates in. But say­ing on an offi­cial poster pro­mot­ing the match “we take on the Brits, you push us over the top,” is in fact way over the top  and can be seen as encour­ag­ing rowdy behav­ior. How would Tigres sup­port­ers have taken a poster in Den­ver prior to the Tecate Cup match in July ago that read ” Col­orado fans put us over the top against the Mex­i­cans?” The poster and its mes­sage strongly indi­cate to me the Crew man­age­ment has no inter­est in stop­ping the con­tin­ued inci­dents at Crew Stadium.

This is not to men­tion the inci­dents at MLS First Kick at Crew Sta­dium when TFC came to town.

Given all of this, no need exists for the Crew to con­tinue allow­ing unruly and unde­sir­able ele­ments to fol­low the team at home and on the road. Regard­less of what any Colum­bus fan may claim just from a layman’s per­spec­tive watch­ing on tele­vi­sion, the atmos­phere around Colum­bus games has changed and not for bet­ter this sea­son. With suc­cess on the pitch comes respon­si­bil­ity off it: Time to step up Columbus.