When Christian Ramirez arrives at Allianz Field to face Minnesota United on Saturday, it will be the first time he steps foot in the new stadium built for his old team.
The Crew forward who started his MLS career with Minnesota in 2017 is embracing the mix of emotions going back to the city he once used to call home.
"My wife and Zara and Nova will fly off because Zara obviously hasn't been back since she was 2 months old, when she was born," Ramirez said. "So, it'd be good to see how far the club has come and just to see everyone that I haven't seen in that time."
Crew coach Wilfried Nancy knows Ramirez' story and connection to their opponents in the upcoming match, but that will have little effect while deciding whether the 32-year-old will start. In the season-opening 1-0 win over Atlanta United on Feb. 24 , the second-year coach opted to started Jacen Russell-Rowe at left forward over Ramirez and Alex Matan.
Recognizing that he's "not here to please people," is part of what makes Nancy's job difficult.
"This is also the beauty of my job," Nancy said. "That we all make mistakes, but at the end of the day, when I make a decision is because I think that this is the best one for a moment."
Nancy's goal is always to put a starting lineup on the field that will play the best against the specific matchup. In this case, the lineup will set the tone for the Crew on the road.
After the 2023 regular season in which Columbus went 4-8-5 on the road, the Crew proved in the postseason they can play well away from home. Following the first round of the MLS playoffs, in which they lost to Atlanta United at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Game 2 of the three-game set, the club went on the win both its Eastern Conference semifinals and final matches on the road in overtime.
"The spirit of what we had last year, and I don't like to talk about the time last year, but we showed that we were able to do it," Nancy said. "For me, we had success on the road at the end of the day last year because we were on the task."
Even though the season ended on a high note , the overall 2023 season showed the Crew had to improve on the road, and the first opportunity to show if there has been improvement is in Minnesota on Saturday.
"It's us showing growth and going into this first road game, to see you where we are as a group in comparison to last year," Ramirez said. "We were very different than the side that we showed that we were at home. So, it's if we can take that on the road and just say 'this is us' and play our style of football and have that mentality, it'll show us where we're at right now."
Minnesota is one of the few Western Conference teams the Crew have recent history with, falling to their upcoming opponents in the knockout stage of the Leagues Cup in penalty kicks at Lower.com Field last season .
When watching film to prepare for this match, however, Nancy barley got anywhere near the penalty kicks portion of that game. Currently being coached by interim head coach Cameron Knowles, Minnesota is a different team from August.
Running a 4-3-3 formation in their first game of the season rather than the 4-4-2 they had against the Crew last season, there has been a lot of change, the biggest being the newly hired head coach joining the club from Manchester United , Eric Ramsey, who will not be with the team until after the Columbus match.
"Now that they have a manager in place ... all players are playing to show him what they can bring," Ramirez said. "They know that he's watching, so it's a team with nothing to lose, really."
The Crew are down midfielder Mohamed Farsi, who is ruled out for the Minnesota game after having an ankle stepped against Atlanta last Saturday. Though Nancy has confirmed that Farsi's ankle is not broken, he is still "day-to-day."
With the Crew's roster depth, there are various options who can slot into the right wingback position Farsi usually plays, including Sean Zawadzki , who has proven he play virtually anywhere on the field for Columbus.
In the midst of preparing for their match in Minnesota, the Crew learned who they will be facing in the Round of 16 of the CONCACAF Champions Cup , in which they received a bye for round one of the competition.
The Houston Dynamo were officially determined as the Crew's opponent late Tuesday night, and now Columbus is set to head to Shell Energy Stadium for the first leg of their two-match series on Wednesday.
"It's obviously an exciting time," Zawadzki said. "You're watching all the games, to see midweek games is always fun, it breaks up the week, stuff look forward to. To see we have Houston, it's another exciting test. It makes me think back to last year when we played them in Houston . So, kind of to look back on that and to go back there this year and hopefully get good results."
Still having the Minnesota match in between now and the Crew's start in the international competition, the players are trying to balance focusing on one game at while also knowing what is up ahead.
For Nancy, the idea is to keep his players on the task directly ahead, while his staff is focusing on the full picture, which includes the start of CONCACAF play.
"Our job is to create the best team for this game, knowing that we have maybe in the next two or three weeks many, many games," Nancy said. "So, maybe I'm gonna make a rotation, maybe I'm gonna start with the same team, but a few players going to come out earlier. I don't know what, the game would dictate everything but what I know is we have many games to play and we, my staff, we have to be aware about this and find the good team for each game to perform."
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus Crew face Minnesota United in first road game of 2024
