Alexandru Irinel Matan recorded his first career MLS hat trick and the host Columbus Crew romped to a 4-0 victory over the struggling New England Revolution on Saturday night in a match between short-handed sides.
Matan had only two goals in 91 MLS matches entering Saturday. His three-goal performance was more than enough to propel Columbus (18-6-9, 63 points) to its second consecutive victory and its fourth in the past six matches. The Crew stayed hot despite not having top scorer Cucho Hernandez because of international duty with Colombia.
DeJuan Jones added an early goal against his former team for the Crew, who were already locked into second place in the Eastern Conference.
New England (9-20-4, 31 points) was outshot 21-8 overall and 8-2 in efforts on target en route to a third consecutive defeat. The Revolution were playing their first match since losing top attacker Carles Gil for the remainder of the season due to a hamstring issue.
Revolution goalkeeper Aljaz Ivacic was his own worst enemy on the Crew’s second goal and Matan’s first of the night, playing an unwise pass from his own box to teammate Ian Harkes in his own half of midfield.
Dylan Chambost applied pressure and poked the ball away to Matan, who settled and then scored from just inside the penalty area in the 14th minute.
Matan’s second tally came when he ran onto Rudy Camacho’s ball over the top of New England’s defense in the 64th minute. Matan managed to evade the lunge of defender Brandon Bye and then calmly converted a low finish past Ivacic.
Matan completed his hat trick eight minutes later, running onto Derrick Jones’ throughball that exploited some lackluster New England defense, allowing him to slot in yet another low finish on the run.
DeJuan Jones opened the scoring in the fifth minute.
–Field Level Media
