February 21, 2026; Portland, Oregon, USA; Columbus Crew forward Wessam Abu Ali (9) reacts to the referee’s call during the second half against the Portland Timbers at Providence Park. Mandatory Credit: Troy Wayrynen-Imagn Image To hear the Columbus Crew and Sporting Kansas City talk about last week’s season-opening loss, you’d almost swear they were using the same script.
“I hope this game serves as a wake-up call,” Columbus coach Henrik Lidstrom said after the team’s 3-2 loss to Portland.
“The first thing we said in the locker room was to raise awareness,” Kansas City midfielder Manu Garcia said after the team’s 3-0 loss to San Jose.
The two teams will look to perform better in their first game when they meet in Kansas City on Saturday night.
In Kansas City, San Jose fell all at once. The game was scoreless for 40 minutes, with the second goal coming from a bad pass that halted the Earthquakes’ attack and sent SKC into chase mode with a depleted roster.
Kansas City didn’t have the ability to do that. The visitors only had one shot on goal.
“I think the first 40 minutes were actually pretty interesting and good,” first-year coach Raphael Wicky said. “We had some time ahead.”
Wicky and SKC are embarking on what some are calling a difficult rebuild. The club shuffled its roster after missing the play-offs last year but currently has just 22 players. That’s eight players less than the league roster limit.
Meanwhile, Rydstrom was hoping to generate more offense in the season opener. Normally two goals would be enough to win, but he and the team were aiming for more. Apart from goals from Wessam Abu Ali and Diego Rossi, not much happened.
“We relied too much on their abilities,” Rydstrom said. “We had some good diagonal attacks that hurt the opposition, but overall it wasn’t the case. Our build-up in particular wasn’t up to our standards. It’s disappointing.”
The bigger problem is that the team’s weaknesses due to counterattacks continued. Portland scored its first two goals that way.
“I’m getting to know the players better and better,” Rydstrom said, according to the Columbus Dispatch. “So the message to them was clear: We don’t play around and do things like this, hoping the opposition won’t be good. We have to decide our own destiny, and we didn’t do that in the game.”
–Field level media
