Columbus Crew Beat FC Cincinnati 2-0 in Hell Is Real as Tapia and Habroune Close the Playoff Gap to One Point

CINCINNATI, OHIO · SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2026

Derbies are not supposed to care about the shot count, and Hell Is Real never has. Columbus Crew walked into TQL Stadium on Sunday night, were outshot 24-4 by FC Cincinnati, and walked out 2-0 winners anyway — Gonzalo Tapia heading the opener on 22 minutes and setting up Taha Habroune for the second on 54, Patrick Schulte making eight saves behind them, and the Eastern Conference playoff race squeezed to a single point in the process. Field Level Media's report of the match put the Crew on 35 points, one behind ninth-place Cincinnati and the conference's final wild-card spot with four matches left. The Associated Press, in its account carried by TSN, recorded the same bare facts and the same table picture: Columbus (10-15-5) a point back of Cincinnati (9-11-9), and a rivalry that now leans black and gold.

Four shots, two on target, two goals

Start with the strangest number of the night. This is a Columbus side that, as Field Level Media noted, had piled up 60 shot attempts across its previous two matches, 22 of them in one first half against Charlotte. At TQL Stadium the Crew managed two shots in the entire first half. One of them went in. Brais Mendez swung a right-sided corner to the back post on 22 minutes, where Tapia had been left completely unmarked, and the forward converted a five-yard header while Cincinnati were temporarily down to ten men, a defender off the field receiving treatment. It was, in every sense, a goal scored against the run of the evening: the home side had the ball, the territory and the crowd, and Columbus had the lead.

Cincinnati's response was volume without conversion. The shots kept coming — 24 of them by the final whistle — and Schulte kept answering. His defining moment of the first half arrived in stoppage time, a diving stop to turn away Evander's free kick from 30 yards and carry the shutout into the interval, as Field Level Media described it. The Associated Press counted eight saves in all and noted it was Schulte's sixth shutout of the season. For a goalkeeper, a derby won 2-0 while your team is outshot six to one is not a quiet night at the office; it is the office.

Habroune, again, and the Tapia show

If the first goal was opportunism, the second was craft. On 54 minutes Santi Rodriguez played the ball ahead to Tapia on the left wing, Tapia cut it back into the middle, and Habroune — 20 years old, a Columbus homegrown in his third MLS season, per the Associated Press — met it first time from 12 yards and tucked it inside the far left post. Field Level Media recorded it as Habroune's third straight match with a goal and his fifth of the season. Tapia, who had scored the first, made the second: a goal and an assist in the rivalry game his team simply could not afford to lose, on a night when Columbus created almost nothing else. Two shots on target, both converted. There is efficiency, and then there is whatever this was.

The sweep matters beyond the evening. Field Level Media noted Columbus have now swept the season series from Cincinnati for the first time, adding this 2-0 to July's 2-1 home win, and the Associated Press put the wider picture plainly: three straight Crew wins in the fixture, an unbeaten run of five in it, and a 9-3-6 regular-season edge in the Hell Is Real rivalry. Rivalries are usually described as levellers, games where form goes out of the window. This one, at the moment, has a direction of travel, and it runs from Columbus down Interstate 71.

What it leaves behind

For Cincinnati, the mirror image is grim reading. The Associated Press recorded one win in their last nine matches; Field Level Media had it as four defeats in five and a 1-5-3 stretch across those nine. A team that began the night able to jump the Red Bulls into eighth place and open daylight over the chasing pack instead spent 90 minutes proving that domination of a shot chart is not domination of a football match. Twenty-four attempts, none converted, at home, in a derby, with the playoff line running straight through the fixture list: that is the kind of night that follows a team into its remaining four matches. The Associated Press has Cincinnati at home again on Wednesday, against D.C. United, which now looks less like a fixture and more like a verdict waiting to happen.

Columbus, by contrast, have turned the late season into a habit of arriving exactly on time. Field Level Media counted five wins in six for the Crew; the Associated Press called it a fourth win in five, with the Toronto visit on Saturday next on the list. Either way the arithmetic of the table is the same and it is deliciously tight: 35 points to Cincinnati's 36, ninth place and the last wild-card spot held by the team Columbus just beat in its own building. The Crew did not outplay Cincinnati on Sunday. They outscored them, outlasted them, and let their goalkeeper have the game of his month. In October, with the line this close, that is not a lesser way to win a derby. It might be the only way that counts.