There are few things I can think of that are more rewarding as a sports fan than to witness a young player that you watch play on a weekly basis blossom before your very eyes over the course of a season. I’m sure that the same can be said from the perspective of the coaching staff, his fellow players, the front office, and the various pundits who cover a given team through visual or print media. The story of Ethan Finlay in 2014 is as clear-cut an example you’re going to see, both in Major League Soccer and across the entire North American sporting landscape, of a player who was relatively unknown to start the season yet finished as an indispensable asset crucial to his team’s success.
Entering his third season for the Black and Gold, Finlay initially found it difficult to break into the lineup. He didn’t make an appearance until the Crew’s third game, coming on as a substitute in the 73rd minute of Columbus’ surprising 2-1 road win against the Seattle Sounders on March 29th. Over the next eight games, he would make six more appearances off the bench and score his first career MLS goal in a wild game with Portland. Finlay’s 81st minute tally looked to be the game winner until a Gastón Fernandez equalizer four minutes later sealed a 3-3 draw.
Head coach and sporting director Gregg Berhalter would give Finlay his first start of the year one week later as the Crew returned home to face the Chicago Fire, and he didn’t disappoint. No more than ten minutes into the game, he would take advantage of a wondrous diagonal through ball from Federico Higuaín, burying the ball into the back of the net via an attacking foray into the right side of the penalty box, giving Columbus a lead they wouldn’t relinquish. It’s a scoring sequence that Finlay would develop into a calling card of sorts for him at varying points during the season.
Just in case you’re unconvinced how common the “Finlay Foray” (really comes off the tongue nicely, doesn’t it?) is, or perhaps you’re not following my description of it above, check out the examples for yourself including this aforementioned goal against the Fire:
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Why try to elude the goalkeeper and make it hard on yourself shooting at an acute angle when you can just chip it over him as Finlay did to equalize against Real Salt Lake on June 4th.
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Higuaín has a lot of company on this team in terms of good distributors of the ball, as Tony Tchani demonstrates in this “Finlay Foray” which proved to be the de facto game winner in a 3-1 Crew victory over the New York Red Bulls on October 19th.
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Timing and touch is key from an execution standpoint if you want to have success on these kinds of plays. What sets Finlay apart is his ability to spring the trap, so to speak, at the right time without getting caught offsides. It helps when you have players such as Higuaín, Tchani, defender Waylon Francis and central midfielder Wil Trapp, who are all capable of providing scintillating services into the attacking third that consistently take advantage of and expose the glaring weaknesses of opposing teams’ defenses.
Finlay’s play down the stretch mirrored the team’s as a whole. The Crew finished the season as one of the league’s hottest teams, the details of which I’ll get to later in comparing them with their opening opponent in the MLS Cup Playoffs. In the end, both Finlay and Higuaín finished tied for the team lead in both goals and assists with 11 and seven respectively. However, Finlay did most of his damage during Columbus’ blazing run towards clinching a berth in the postseason, scoring seven goals and five assists over the final 15 games of 2014 compared to Higuaín’s five goals and a single assist over the same time period.
Speaking of those last 15 contests, Columbus compiled a 10-3-2 record over that span, good for 32 points. You know who else accomplished that feat during the same segment of their schedule? The New England Revolution…you know, the very team the Crew will be facing in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. Nobody else in the league was as dominant over this closing portion of their 2014 campaign as these two sides, so suffice it to say that the league’s most in-form teams will be coming together for a two-leg series that promises to be one for the ages when it commences in Crew Stadium on Saturday afternoon.
Over the first two years of his career, Finlay toiled in relative anonymity with a majority of his playing time coming via the Crew Reserve team. Even in 2013, the Marshfield, WI native who led Creighton University to the College Cup semifinals in 2011, made just three starts and appeared in 19 matches at full senior level. I think that’s why it’s all the more inspiring to see the overall arc of his third season in the league play out the way that it has so far, with the 24-year-old seemingly getting better when it mattered for this franchise and turning into a star before our very eyes.
The final month of the regular season was the proverbial icing on the cake for the attacking midfielder. Not only was his play instrumental in securing the Crew’s first playoff appearance since 2011 which saw them vault over a handful of teams to lock up a three-seed in the East, but he also secured his own future with the club so to speak, signing a contract extension last Friday. He was also nominated for MLS Player of the Month for his efforts.
As the Black and Gold’s 2014 playoff campaign gets underway and the Crew make that march towards adding a second star to the newly unveiled crest for next year, Ethan Finlay will undoubtedly function as a key cog in those overall ambitions. It’s that time of year where heroes are made and the added reward from a fandom standpoint of seeing your team win a championship becomes an increasingly tangible reality. Can Finlay play the part for Columbus? We shall most definitely see.
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