Prediction time! When the Columbus Crew travel to Chester, PA in 2021 to play the Philadelphia Union, they will lose 3-0. That’s because the Crew have lost there by that identical score in 2013, 2015, 2017, and now 2019. It’s quite the odd-year phenomenon.

It’s not like Talen Energy Stadium is a house of horrors for Columbus. The Crew are 4-7-1 all-time in the building, so they are averaging over a point per game there. It’s just that every other year, like clockwork, they get thumped 3-0.

The Crew are playing in their 24th season in Major League Soccer. The have lost a total of 18 regular season games by the score of 3-0. Four of them have taken place on the banks of the Delaware River. That’s more than at MAPFRE Stadium, a place where Crew teams good and bad have been playing half their games for over two decades now.

Stadiums in which the Columbus Crew have suffered a 3-0 defeat in league play:

Four:
Talen Energy Stadium (Chester, PA): 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019

Three:
MAPFRE Stadium (Columbus, OH): 2001 vs KC, 2005 vs NY, 2015 vs DAL

Two:
RFK Stadium (Washington, D.C.): 2003, 2016
Stade Saputo (Montreal, QC): 2015, 2018

One:
The Cotton Bowl (Dallas, TX): 1997
Giants Stadium (East Rutherford, NJ): 1998
Spartan Stadium (San Jose, CA): 2000
Gillette Stadium (Foxboro, MA): 2005
Buck Shaw Stadium (Santa Clara, CA): 2011
Children’s Mercy Park (Kansas City, KS): 2013
BMO Field (Toronto, ON): 2016

That’s bonkers. Columbus knows a thing or two about a specific scoreline being associated with a specific stadium. Well, it’s no fun being on the other end of it, even if it’s just an every-other-year annoyance against a team nobody around here thinks much about otherwise.

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