Sigi’s Prodigal Return Brings Justice and With It Heartache

By El Luchador

The same man who started the longest home unbeaten streak in MLS history, has now ended it.

Former Crew Skipper Sigi Schmid triumphantly returned to Columbus on Saturday night to beat his former assistant Robert Warzycha in a dramatic and erratic 1-0 jamboree before a large and boisterous crowd at Crew Stadium.

On June 7, 2008, the Columbus Crew lost 2-0 at home to the San Jose Earthquakes. No one knew at the time that it would be nearly 16 months and 22 home games before the Crew would lose again in C-Bus. How uncanny that this defeat would come at the hands of the who man started the whole streak to begin with on that warm summer evening last June, the man who brought Columbus her first ever professional championship just last year, the man who was dissed by Crew General Manager Mark McCullers, the man who is the most Massive coach in the MLS?

This match was a cautionary morality tale on two levels. First, if you fuck people as hard as McCullers fucked Sigi, there will be consequences. What comes around goes around. This is why El Luchador did not bet on this game. It was writ large in the heavens that sooner or later McCullers would have to look down from his luxury box to see the Fat Man laughing.

But second and more importantly, you can only take the pro wrestling, South American style of football so far before the cosmic balance of justice and karma comes back to restore equilibrium in the universe.

Even as a devoted fan, El Luchador could see clearly that Alejandro Moreno and Guillermo Barros Schelotto both tried to dive their way to glory in this game, as they have so many times before. Ryan Kozlowski wrote at Crewture recently about how in the last few weeks, the Black and Gold relied on a penalty kick to give them a 2-1 win over Houston at home, a penalty kick to give them a 2-2 away tie against Chicago, and nearly used a penalty kick to take them to the CONCACAF Champions League knockout round this week.

Finally it caught up with us on Saturday as the gods reached down and pushed the wizard Schelotto’s 83^rd minute PK wide left.

This wasn’t a simple loss that we witnessed my brothers and sisters. This was Manifest Destiny.

This loss was as hard on El Luchador as it was on any living, breathing fan of the Yellow Soccer Team. But two things make it easier to swallow: 1) We saw that this was an inevitable consequence resulting of our own wicked behaviour. And 2) We didn’t lay any money on this one.

Columbus till I die.