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Other names | Ohio Derby |
---|---|
Location | Ohio |
First meeting | CIN 1–0 CLB U.S. Open Cup (June 14, 2017) |
Latest meeting | CIN 2–2 CLB MLS regular season (August 27, 2022) |
Next meeting | TBD |
Stadiums | Lower.com Field, Columbus TQL Stadium, Cincinnati |
Statistics | |
Meetings total | 11 |
Most wins | Columbus Crew |
Top scorer | Gyasi Zardes (CLB) (7 goals) |
All-time series | Columbus: 5 Drawn: 4 Cincinnati: 2 |
Largest victory | CIN 0–4 CLB MLS is Back Tournament (July 11, 2020) |
The Hell is Real Derby, also known as the Ohio Derby, is a rivalry between the two Major League Soccer (MLS) clubs based in Ohio: the Columbus Crew and FC Cincinnati. Under current MLS regular season scheduling, the series occurs twice per season as both teams are members of the Eastern Conference. The teams first met in 2017 in the U.S. Open Cup before Cincinnati joined MLS in 2019.
On June 15, 1994, MLS announced that Columbus would be home to one of the ten founding members of the new top-flight North American professional soccer league. Cincinnati joined the league in 2019 as an expansion team under the same name as their United Soccer League club, which had started play in 2016, thus creating the first top-flight derby in Ohio. [1] Two weeks after the Cincinnati expansion announcement, the clubs met for the first time with lower-league Cincinnati winning 1–0 in the U.S. Open Cup. [2]
In October 2017, Columbus owner Anthony Precourt threatened to move the team to Austin, Texas, putting the prospect of an MLS rivalry between the two Ohio teams in jeopardy. [3] [4] [5] Precourt's proposed relocation sparked outrage in the American soccer community, creating the #SaveTheCrew movement. After a year of support by fans, rival teams, [6] local businesses, and politicians, the Crew committed to staying in Columbus in November 2018, when the Haslam family (owners of the NFL's Cleveland Browns, which had been the subject of a controversial relocation in the 1990s) purchased the club. [7]
The two teams met for the first time in the fourth round of the 2017 U.S. Open Cup, while FC Cincinnati was still a member of the United Soccer League. Cincinnati won the match 1–0 on a goal from Djiby, knocking Columbus out of the tournament and advancing to the quarterfinals. [8] [9]
On August 10, 2019, the two sides played against each other in MLS league play for the first time, ending in a 2–2 draw at Mapfre Stadium. [10] Columbus earned their first win of the series in that season's reverse fixture with a 3–1 victory. [11] The highest-scoring match came in 2021, when the Crew pulled off a late comeback at their new Lower.com Field; holding a 2–1 lead in the 75th minute, FC Cincinnati surrendered two late goals to lose 3–2. [12]
The derby's name was created by fans of both teams in 2017, prior to the first competitive meeting in the U.S. Open Cup. It is derived from a religious sign that reads "Hell is Real" and is located on Interstate 71, which connects Columbus and Cincinnati–a distance of 110 miles (180 km). [13] The sign was installed in 2004 on a local farm in Chenoweth by a Kentucky developer who had installed similar religious signs in other states. [14]
Competitions | Matches | CLB wins | CLB goals | Draws | CIN wins | CIN goals |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Major League Soccer | 10 | 5 | 22 | 4 | 1 | 11 |
U.S. Open Cup | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
Total | 11 | 5 | 22 | 4 | 2 | 12 |
Columbus Crew win FC Cincinnati win Draw
Season | Date | Competition | Stadium | Home team | Result | Away team | Attendance | Series (W–L–T) | Ref |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2017 | June 14 | U.S. Open Cup | Nippert Stadium | FC Cincinnati | 1–0 | Columbus Crew SC | 30,160 | CIN 1–0–0 | |
2019 | August 10 | MLS | Mapfre Stadium | Columbus Crew SC | 2–2 | FC Cincinnati | 20,865 | CIN 1–0–1 | |
August 25 | Nippert Stadium | FC Cincinnati | 1–3 | Columbus Crew SC | 30,611 | Tied 1–1–1 | |||
2020 | July 11 | MLS is Back‡ | ESPN Sports Complex | FC Cincinnati | 0–4 | Columbus Crew SC | 0† | CLB 2–1–1 | |
August 29 | MLS | Nippert Stadium | FC Cincinnati | 0–0 | Columbus Crew SC | 0† | CLB 2–1–2 | ||
September 6 | Mapfre Stadium | Columbus Crew SC | 3–0 | FC Cincinnati | 1,500† | CLB 3–1–2 | |||
October 14 | Nippert Stadium | FC Cincinnati | 2–1 | Columbus Crew SC | 0† | CLB 3–2–2 | |||
2021 | July 9 | MLS | TQL Stadium | FC Cincinnati | 2–2 | Columbus Crew | 25,701 | CLB 3–2–3 | |
August 27 | Lower.com Field | Columbus Crew | 3–2 | FC Cincinnati | 19,949 | CLB 4–2–3 | |||
2022 | July 17 | MLS | Lower.com Field | Columbus Crew | 2–0 | FC Cincinnati | 20,741 | CLB 5–2–3 | |
August 27 | TQL Stadium | FC Cincinnati | 2–2 | Columbus Crew | 25,037 | CLB 5–2–4 |
† Matches played behind closed doors or reduced capacity due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
‡ Although the match was part of the MLS is Back Tournament, group stage matches count toward regular season MLS statistics.
Columbus Crew FC Cincinnati
P. | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | ||||
2 | ||||
3 | 3 | |||
4 | ||||
5 | 5 | |||
6 | ||||
7 | ||||
8 | 8 | |||
9 | 9 | |||
10 | 10 | |||
11 | ||||
12 | 12 | |||
13 | ||||
14 | 14 | 14 |
• Total: Columbus with 3 higher finishes, FC Cincinnati with 1.
Pos. | Name | Team | Goals |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Gyasi Zardes | Columbus Crew | 7 |
2 | Lucas Zelarayán | Columbus Crew | 4 |
3 | Miguel Berry | Columbus Crew | 3 |
Pedro Santos | |||
5 | Luis Díaz | Columbus Crew | 1 |
Derrick Etienne | |||
Youness Mokhtar | |||
Steven Moreira | |||
Cucho Hernández | |||
Luciano Acosta | FC Cincinnati | ||
Isaac Atanga | |||
Edgar Castillo | |||
Djiby Fall | |||
Nick Hagglund | |||
Yuya Kubo | |||
Emmanuel Ledesma | |||
Kekuta Manneh | |||
Rónald Matarrita | |||
Darren Mattocks | |||
Matt Miazga | |||
Brandon Vazquez |
Player | Columbus career | Cincinnati career | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Span | Apps | Goals | Span | Apps | Goals | |
Cristian Martínez [lower-alpha 1] | 2016–2018 | 31 | 3 | 2017 | 1 | 0 |
Kekuta Manneh | 2017 | 19 | 4 | 2019–2020 | 29 | 4 |
Derrick Etienne | 2020–present | 82 | 9 | 2019 | 5 | 0 |
Fanendo Adi [lower-alpha 1] | 2020 | 12 | 0 | 2018–2019 | 25 | 5 |
Fatai Alashe [lower-alpha 1] | 2020 | 9 | 1 | 2018–2020 | 21 | 2 |
Saad Abdul-Salaam | 2021 | 19 | 0 | 2020 | 8 | 0 |
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