Nashville SC stuns Columbus Crew with stoppage-time winner from Najar in the 94th

There were barely two minutes left before the point slipped away when Andy Najar showed up on the right side of the box to make it 3-2 for good. Two minutes earlier, Reed Baker-Whiting had rescued Nashville SC with a stoppage-time header. In the blink of an eye, the Columbus Crew went from tasting a draw to leaving GEODIS Park empty handed.

The match looked headed in a different direction. Nashville controlled nearly all of the first half and went ahead in the 26th minute with a left-footed finish from Hany Mukhtar, cutting in from the left, curling it into the top corner after a through ball from Daniel Lovitz. That 1-0 held until halftime, though the home side had chances to add to the lead with shots from Sam Surridge, Cristian Espinoza and Jeisson Palacios that didn't find the net.

In the second half, the game flipped in just ten minutes. In the 57th minute, Mohamed Farsi equalized for the Columbus Crew with a low shot from inside the box, assisted by Malte Amundsen. Then in the 67th minute, Andre Gomes made it 2-1 for the visitors with a stunning direct free kick, also placed low and just inside the post. The Columbus Crew, who had barely threatened up to that point, suddenly found themselves winning a game they hadn't earned.

Nashville threw everything at finding an equalizer, bringing on Elias Saad, Edvard Tagseth, Reed Baker-Whiting, Bryan Acosta and Shak Mohammed, and the pressure finally paid off in stoppage time. A corner into the box found Baker-Whiting's head for the 2-2 equalizer in the 92nd minute, and just two minutes later, with the Columbus Crew still trying to regroup, Najar finished from the right to seal the 3-2 final score.

The numbers behind the comeback

The stats confirm what played out on the field: a Nashville side that pushed for all 90 minutes and a Columbus Crew that made the most of a handful of key moments.

With just three shots the entire match, the Columbus Crew came within inches of taking all three points thanks to the clinical finishing from Farsi and Gomes. The xG generated in the match, an in-house estimate calculated after the fact based on shot location, puts the figure at 1.343 for Nashville SC against just 0.226 for the Columbus Crew, a gap that captures the imbalance in scoring chances well, even though the scoreboard stayed tight until the very end.

Our preview had given Nashville SC a 65% chance of winning, against 16% for the Columbus Crew and 19% for a draw, with expected goals of 2.55 for the home side and 1.25 for the visitors. The final result ended up matching that forecast, though the path there took an unexpected detour: for a good stretch of the second half, the match seemed headed to disprove that projection as the Columbus Crew mounted their comeback, until Nashville answered in stoppage time.

What the result means

Nashville SC came into this match atop the Eastern Conference with 49 points from 21 games played, and this stoppage-time win only strengthens that position. The Columbus Crew, on the other hand, leave with the sense of having let a result slip away that had seemed all but secured, a tough pill to swallow for a team sitting 14th in the conference with 20 points from 21 games. The 29-point gap between the two sides in the standings already told the story of two very different seasons before kickoff, and the match ended up confirming it, even if it took until the final gasp to get there.