{"id":428607,"date":"2023-03-06T23:17:59","date_gmt":"2023-03-07T04:17:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/ca\/?post_type=news&#038;p=428607"},"modified":"2023-03-06T23:17:59","modified_gmt":"2023-03-07T04:17:59","slug":"columbus-crews-zelarayan-named-player-of-matchday-2","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/news\/columbus-crews-zelarayan-named-player-of-matchday-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Columbus Crew&#8217;s Zelarayan named Player of Matchday 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Columbus Crew Lucas Zelarayan won the Player of the Matchday 2 prize after scoring a first-half brace to pave the way for his team&#8217;s 2-0 win over DC United at Lower.com Field.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">What a performance from Lucas Zelarayan. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Crew96?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">#Crew96<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/5T3CBXKyqC\" target=\"_blank\">pic.twitter.com\/5T3CBXKyqC<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Major League Soccer (@MLS) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MLS\/status\/1632850289882439680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">March 6, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The 30-year-old Armenian International, playing as a shadow striker in Wilfried Nancy\u2019s 3-4-2-1 formation, connected with attacking partner Cucho Hernandez in the 10th minute before hammering home a perfect through ball from Alexandru Matan just before halftime to put the match to bed.<\/p>\n<p>This is Zelarayan&#8217;s third Player of the Matchday award as he also won 2020 MLS Cup MVP honors for his brace in a 3-0 title-clinching win over the Seattle Sounders.<\/p>\n<p>Zelarayan, in his fourth season in Columbus, has 30 goals and 23 assists, becoming just the eighth player in the club history to reach the 30 goals\/20 assist milestone.<\/p>\n<p>Saturday&#8217;s output also gave him five multi-goal games, which is the eighth-most in Crew history.<\/p>\n<p>Columbus will look to make it two straight wins on Saturday, March 11 when they face Toronto FC at BMO Field in a Matchday 3 Eastern Conference showdown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Columbus Crew Lucas Zelarayan won the Player of the Matchday 2 prize after scoring a first-half brace to pave the way for his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4224,"featured_media":428608,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"tags":[17688,17923],"news_category":[17676],"gn_keywords":[],"acf":{"announce":"The Armenian bagged a brace during 2-0 won over DC United","video":[]},"rank_math_focus_keyword":"","rank_math_description":"","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_robots":"","rank_math_canonical_url":"","rank_math_facebook_title":"","rank_math_facebook_description":"","rank_math_facebook_image":"","rank_math_twitter_title":"","rank_math_twitter_description":"","rank_math_twitter_image":"","rank_math_snippet_shortcode":"","rank_math_primary_category":"","rankmath_seo":{"focus_keyword":"","description":"","title":"","canonical_url":"","robots":"","facebook":{"title":"","description":"","image":""},"twitter":{"title":"","description":"","image":""}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/428607"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/428607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428607"},{"taxonomy":"news_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_category?post=428607"},{"taxonomy":"gn_keywords","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gn_keywords?post=428607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}