The Columbus Crew — Major League Soccer’s defending champion — crashed out of the 2024 MLS playoffs Sunday night at the hands of the New York Red Bulls.
It’s the first major upset of the playoffs and one with massive implications for the rest of the Eastern Conference.
Columbus qualified for the playoffs by finishing second in the MLS regular season. It spent 2024 playing the league’s best and most beautiful soccer, qualifying for two major finals: the CONCACAF Champions Cup, which it lost to Mexico’s Pachuca, and the Leagues Cup, which it won over LAFC.
As the No. 2 seed in the league and the defending MLS Cup champion, Columbus was widely expected to make a deep playoff run. But that expectation proved dangerous for the team in its Round 1 best-of-three series against the Red Bulls.
In Game 1, Columbus failed to find its rhythm against the Red Bulls’ aggressive high press. It managed to maintain 78% ball possession throughout the game, but the Red Bulls expertly pushed Columbus back, ensuring that all its possession occurred in harmless parts of the field.
When Columbus tired and made mistakes, the Red Bulls were there to pounce. Their strategy was high-effort, high-intensity and exhausting, but it worked, and the Red Bulls claimed a shock 1-0 win.
In Game 2, the Red Bulls knew they couldn’t deploy the same strategy twice: Columbus would be undoubtedly be ready for it. They met Columbus man-to-man on the field instead, and while they went down 1-0 at the start of the second half, they fought back and finished the game level at 2-2 and primed for penalties.
The shootout wound up being a showcase for Red Bulls goalkeeper Carlos Coronel. He made three consecutive saves to hand the victory to the Red Bulls and send Columbus packing.
Call it complacency, exhaustion or just bad luck: either way, Columbus found itself on the wrong end of a playoff sweep after a dominant regular-season performance.
It’s a wildly disappointing result for MLS’s most consistent team and one that blows the Eastern Conference wide open. Columbus was backed to go to the conference final and face Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami; with Columbus eliminated and Miami forced into a Game 3 by stoic Atlanta United, the top two teams in the East may both fall at their first playoff hurdle.
The Red Bulls had an up-and-down season under new manager Sandro Schwarz, but this upset underlines that the team is heading in the right direction: straight toward the MLS Cup.
The Red Bulls are the first team in the Eastern Conference to clinch a spot in the next round. They’ll await the winner of the FC Cincinnati-NYCFC series in an Eastern Conference semifinal series later this month.
