For the second time in a year, Columbus Crew SC blew a three goal lead at home to a Canadian opponent. The beneficiary this time were the Montreal Impact, who came back from 4-1 to tie the game in added time at 4-4.

What began as an epic comeback to the dormant Crew SC scoring machine was quickly derailed after the fourth goal, which was a penalty kick. Justin Meram was tripped in the box for a fairly obvious call, and looking to extend a 3-1 lead, this should’ve been a happy moment for Columbus. However, there was dissension in the ranks as both Federico “Pipa” Higuain and Kei Kamara wanted to take the pk. For Kamara, it would’ve been his third goal on the night, and his first MLS hat trick. For Higuain, it would be his 14th pk goal in team history, which would be a new record. After many minutes of arguing, team Captain Michael Parkhurst broke things up, with the end result being Higuain taking and making the kick.

It was all downhill from there, as the Impact scored two goals in one minute (one from a pk of their own), and got the stoppage time dagger from former Crew SC player Dominic Oduro. Columbus looked listless for the ten minutes or so after the argument, but did eventually settle down before the equalizer disrupted any good feelings the team had left.

“I categorize that as an immature performance,” head coach Gregg Berhalter said, “we have two players who are designated to take penalty kicks, and it’s on me for not qualifying which one takes it in this game. I’ll take full responsibility for that…rest assured it’s not going to happen again.”

Kamara had a different take on the situation, saying “[Pipa] said ‘no no, I get to take it.’ That’s selfishness. That’s not teammate [sic], that’s selfishness.”

Kamara continued “How long have I been here? How many goals have I scored? How many have come from [Pipa]? 1, maybe 2. I don’t depend on him…I don’t depend on [Pipa] for assists, for balls, for nothing.”

Parkhurst gave some insight as to how he tried to end the feud. “I just said ‘let’s get out there guys. This is embarrassing for the team. Let’s sort it out…I think our [chemistry] is ok…winning cures all, and right now we’re not winning enough games.”

Vice Captain Wil Trapp also tried to downplay any potential chemistry issues. “Each one of us has to look out ourselves and take accountability for what happened, but at the end of the day we’re a team…it’s about relying on each other and believing in each other,” Trapp said, “if you look at the team chemistry on all four of our goals, it was excellent…after a game like that, it’s easy to be frustrated, it’s easy to be angry. I don’t think [chemistry] is a thing that we as a team need to focus on a whole lot.”

“We try to always [draw positives out of a game],” Berhalter said, “having said that, you don’t want to ignore the negatives. It’d be foolish to do that.”

CrewSC won’t have long to figure out the issues. The squad will play Wednesday in a friendly against Liga MX side Veracruz before playing another MLS game Saturday against the Colorado Rapids.