Congratulations Columbus Crew!

What a season! Coach of the year. Defender of the year. League MVP. Regular season champions (Supporters Shield). and now MLS Cup champions!

I (very grudgingly) liked some of the New York Red Bull players: Dane Richards amazed me through the playoffs with his blazing speed (and pretty much single-handedly dethroned last year's champions, the Houston Dynamo). It was good seeing John Wolyniec getting a chance again. Juan Pablo Angel is a scorer and always finds a way to get the ball in the net. Danny Cepero was the feel-good story of the year (unless you are Andy Greunebaum) And Dave van den Burgh was my favorite Red Bull player (and has become my favorite non-Crew player in MLS) as his pace always gives him space to cross dangerous balls into the area.

That said, I was in no way whatsoever cheering for New York. In fact, I wanted the Crew to win 5-0.

Somehow I managed to have the wrong starting time for the game, so I checked the MLS website, which had a count-down on the top of it... which was wrong, too. So I missed the entire first half. I was able to watch the rest, including the final 3 goals.

I was pulling for Ezra Hendrickson to be subbed into the game at the end, as I played with him in Kokomo (one of the hardest slide-tackles I ever suffered was at the hands of my own teammate when I was chasing EZ down the field and my teammate attempted to slide tackle him and EZ jumped over him, leaving me as the only victim).

As it was, I'm happy that the Columbus Crew finally prevailed!