COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Fire had a one-goal lead late in the first half of coach Gregg Berhalter’s debut Saturday when they suffered a breakdown that has happened far too often the last few years.
The Crew’s Steven Moreira went wide right to cross into the box. The ball deflected off Jack Elliott and into the air, then redirected off Carlos Teran and over goalkeeper Chris Brady to tie the score.
In first-half stoppage time, Diego Rossi headed home another cross from Moreira to give the Crew the lead, and he scored again in the 50th minute, lifting his team to a season-opening 4-2 victory on a frigid night.
“The message to the group was, bitterly disappointed with the result but proud of the effort,” said Berhalter, who coached the Crew from 2013 to ’18. “When you see Columbus, it’s a team that moves you around and makes you run, and the guys didn’t buckle and they kept going, and that was nice to see. Basically we gave them three goals, right? That’s tough.”
Brian Gutierrez scored both goals — the 21-year-old homegrown player’s first multigoal game in MLS — for the Fire, and winger Jonathan Bamba had two assists in his MLS debut. But it wasn’t nearly enough against the Crew, who finished second in the league standings last year.
Rossi became the fourth-fastest active player in MLS to have 100 goal contributions (65 goals, 35 assists), doing it in 149 career regular-season games. Jacen Russell-Rowe added a goal.
On Rossi’s second goal, Malte Amundsen dispossessed the Fire’s Philip Zinckernagel, poking the ball to Rossi at the top of the box, where he beat Brady. The Crew nearly added a fifth goal in the 63rd minute, but a video review disallowed it.
Bamba, 28, acquired in the offseason from Spanish club Celta de Vigo by Berhalter (who doubles as director of soccer operations), dropped a pass from the left side of the area to Gutierrez, who scored on a low shot from just outside the area that slipped inside the back post to open the scoring in the 13th minute.
With the Crew applying pressure, Sergio Oregel, making his first MLS start, passed to Brady, but Russell-Rowe intercepted it near the penalty spot and bounced a shot off the post and into the net to make it 1-1 in the 20th.
“It was tough, and better players than him have had worse debuts,” Berhalter said. “That’s the message, right? That’s the nature of this game, and we still support him. I think he’s a fantastic player, and it’s just getting used to games like this.”
Gutierrez struck again on the counterattack, playing a long pass from near midfield to the left flank, where Bamba cut inside and slipped a pass to him for the finish from the center of the box in the 22nd minute. Gutierrez also received a yellow card in the 59th minute, one of three for the Fire.
“He cares a lot, and he wants to win,” Berhalter said. “Sometimes young players lose emotional control; all players lose emotional control. For him, it’s about really understanding how good he can be and what’s going to fuel him. I think you see the goals that he scored and how he can play, how he can work. He’s a tremendous player.”
The Fire play their home opener next Saturday against D.C. United at Soldier Field (7:30 p.m., Apple TV+, 890-AM).