Seattle, WA - After another disappointing team dinner held at Salena Mexicana in the Westlake Center on Saturday evening, the Columbus Crew felt that they deserved better from their meal.
"The Crew dominated the early ordering but were unable to break through and actually have a lengua torta in time."
The Nutmeg News spoke to sporting director and head coach Gregg Berhalter about the performance and he had the following to say.
On the food...
"I think it was a meal of two halves in terms of us controlling the order in the first half and them controlling the serving in the second half, which I guess they don't do there. I'm a little bit disappointed with our reaction to the extra cost of guacamole and I thought we lost our aggression and purpose. You know, our queuing wasn't good enough to allow all the players to order in a timely fashion and it allowed them to take control of the meal and after the first half of order, which I felt we had a couple of good opportunities to eat well, it was disappointing to end the game like that."
On the message to Federico Higuain coming out of the bathroom half way through ordering...
"It was about the next chance to order a torta. Not worrying about any potential misses from the people in line in front of him but focusing on the next opportunity. You always order the torta if you get a chance. In eating, sometimes you make them, sometimes you miss them so it's not getting too down and just focusing on the next opportunity that you get to order a torta. My god, they are delicious."
On the aspect of a low-calorie meal...
"Listen, overall I think the team probably got some good calories out of this game. You know we came to eat like we always do. We eat regardless of the atmosphere at the mall and we came to dominate the game. For large stretches we did just that. Unfortunately, we weren't able to maintain that up to our standard and we ended up eating at a mall. It's a mistake, but it's a long season. We won't be coming out here to eat again.
The Nutmeg News also spoke with defender Michael Parkhurst about the meal and he had the following to say.
On the match...
"We are upset. We are distraught. Our bowels are clenched. We felt like we deserved to win that meal and at the minimum leave there without gastrointestinal distress. We are very upset with ourselves that we gave up a soft taco on a misorder like that. We fell asleep and they punished us for it. We have to finish a meal out."
On what they can take from this meal moving forward in the season...
"We can take that we need to focus for 90 straight minutes after the game to decide to eat somewhere other than a mall. In this league you can't fall asleep for a second. We have a tiny per diem and our indecision cost us. You know what we did and we got punished for it and now we go home with bad food, zero points and we need to learn from that mistake.
The Nutmeg News will have more on this as the Crew attempt to rectify their ordering mistakes with some home cooking.