Heading into Columbus Crew SC’s game against Atlanta United on June 13, the Black & Gold had scored 22 goals during the 2018 Major League Soccer season. Nine of those came from first-year forward Gyasi Zardes and four from Federico Higuain.
It didn’t take complicated metrics for Atlanta to figure out how to come into MAPFRE Stadium a shutout Columbus. The answer was simple: bottle up Zardes and Higuain and see if anyone else in the Crew SC lineup could beat them. The United defenders even told Zardes that was the game plan after the visitors won 2-0.