{"id":28790,"date":"2014-10-28T16:38:26","date_gmt":"2014-10-28T20:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=28790"},"modified":"2014-10-28T16:38:26","modified_gmt":"2014-10-28T20:38:26","slug":"parkhurst-revs-crew-will-be-entertaining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=28790","title":{"rendered":"Parkhurst: Revs-Crew Will Be ‘Entertaining’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

Photo credit: Kari Heistad\/capturedimages.biz<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the most intriguing matchups\u00a0of the MLS conference semifinals will kick-off on Saturday\u00a0at Crew Stadium\u00a0as the Columbus Crew host the Revolution in the first leg. But don’t expect the lower-seeded hosts to show any apprehension heading into the contest.<\/p>\n

Not only did Columbus beat the Revolution twice this year\u2014both at home and at Gillette Stadium \u00a0\u2014but they\u2019re also in similar form. The Revolution may have won 9 of their last 11 regular season games, but the Crew have won eight in the same span. Moreover, Columbus hasn’t lost at home since early-August, making Crew Stadium a potentially\u00a0tough venue to get a result\u00a0for the surging Revolution.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are excited to play the Revolution,\u201d Columbus defender Michael Parkhurst said via e-mail. \u201cFirst, it kept us out of the play-in game, which we wanted to avoid. I think we match up well against one another, which is why all three games we played this year were tight, hard-fought games. It will be an entertaining matchup and we are confident that if we put in two strong performances we\u2019ll be capable of advancing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Revolution traded Parkhurst\u2019s rights to the Crew during the off-season, enabling them to pick higher in the draft and pocketing some allocation cash in the process. To no one’s surprise, Parkhurst has been one of the factors in his team reaching the playoffs.<\/p>\n

But they\u2019ve had help from elsewhere, too. The rise of midfield players Tony Tchani, who anchors the midfield and has been one of the league\u2019s best transition players, has given Columbus some bite in maintaining possession. Federico Higuain, the Argentinian scorer with silky-smooth skills and impeccable accuracy on set pieces, has played the role of poacher effectively.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a combination and style similar to the Revolution, who use Jermaine Jones in the same position as Tchani and have seen a similar impact as Higuain from Lee Nguyen. Parkhurst and his teammates are aware of the similarities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey, like us, play attacking soccer with good combinations and passing leading to the final third,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t all a set-up for either a narrow, goal-starved contest. Nor\u00a0does it appear that a\u00a0lights-out, wide-open and high-scoring series is in the cards.\u00a0 Rather, this series looks like a chess match on grass with both sides taking calculated risks to make gains.<\/p>\n

The Crew know a lot about patience and adversity. They\u2019ve had a strong, talented squad all season long, but\u00a0stumbled through\u00a0a winless drought early in the season. They\u00a0pocketed only\u00a0one win between the middle of April and the middle of July.<\/p>\n

But Columbus knew wrongs would be righted if they kept at it. Sure enough, they\u00a0caught fire down\u00a0the stretch\u00a0and on the final day of the regular season, they\u00a0overtook\u00a0conference powers\u00a0Kansas City and New York for sole possession of third place.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe turnaround has been a matter of putting everything together,\u201d said Parkhurst. \u201cWhen we went through a stretch of many winless games in the middle of the season we were out-possessed and sometimes dominated teams but were unable to generate enough scoring chances and or we didn\u2019t finishing the ones we did create.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have stuck to our system and the belief in our ways and now at the right time of year we are seeing the results of 10 months of hard training and tactical work.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Parkhurst is expecting an entertaining semifinal series between his current and former clubs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":28794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Parkhurst-1.png?fit=490%2C257","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28790"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28790"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28797,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28790\/revisions\/28797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}