Crew 2022 to '23 Off-season Roster Thread

Nancy did do this with Alistair Johnston, but he had played a little RCB previously in Nashville, and plays there with Canada.

I like Moreira, I’m not sure his defensive instincts are good enough to play there, but I trust in Nancy so I’ll be interested to see how this plays out.

 

I would have thought Moreira was more likely to move forward than centrally. He's a good offensive RB but not a great defender.

 

OUT:
Artur, Santos, Ettiene, Kitchen, and whoever I missed.
IN: Ramirez and Medranda.
Are we better off than last year? Cause we sucked last year. I’m not sure the talent has improved all that much.

 

I can’t imagine the talent has improved at all, except maybe for some young guys getting better with more experience and a player like Molino getting healthy.

Note, I said maybe.

If this roster plays better than it did last year, it almost has to be because of how they’re being prepared and used.

Personally, my expectations are modest at this point.

 

I think Nancy is good enough to get this team over the playoff line, but probably not much else. If the FO says they think this is a championship team, I’m gonna hold them to that, but it’s not.

Maybe Nancy gets the potential out of Matan by playing him in a formation and style that fits his skills.

Maybe (and I mean MAYBE) Molino can stay healthy and be serviceable (he’s beyond being a consistent top player at this point).

Maybe he helps Morris take the next step. Or Farsi. Or Sands. Or Zawadski. Or JRR.

Lot of variables there.

 

Lets not forget about championship side Crew2 and their players.
But to say that Columbus sucked last year.... remind me how many points out of the playoffs Columbus finished. Because to my recollection it wasn't by much.

 

With that said.... guess who's back.... back again. Joedog's back, tell a friend.

 

Missed playoffs three years out if four.

Most reserve players are never good professionally. Don’t act like they will all pan out.

 

Who the ******** is Joedog?

 

Especially if the red line is between ninth and tenth.

 

Not sure about this take.... "most reserve players are never good professionally".
You do realize that these guys are.... wait for it.... wait for it... paid professionals. They were also good enough to win arguably the 2nd, maybe 3rd best league in this country.
I'm not pinning all of my hopes and dreams on Crew2 turning into the first team but I also feel like the young guys might be getting over looked a bit especially considering Nancy and his knack for playing and developing younger guys.

 

It doesn't matter who I am. Looks like gatekeeping is alive and well on BigSoccer though.

 

We had 16 freakin' ties(almost a league record) last year and we missed the playoffs by 2 points. The other big stat from last year was how many points we dropped(11 points!) from a winning position after the 90th min. Didn't we break the league record on this stat? I believe Nancy will take this team into the playoffs with better chemistry in the locker room, and improved organization and intensity on the pitch.

 

I hope you're right! That could be fun.
After watching last season I can't help but think the defensive core of this team is vastly over-rated (both by the front office and the fans) and needs to be massively upgraded for the team to seriously contend for anything beyond clawing its way into the playoffs and exiting immediately.
But I hope I'm wrong about that.
Either way, Cucho and LZ should be fun to watch!

 

Seems about the same Artur was always hurt , DEJ was more about money but with different formations the offense should hopefully be better but The defense is concerning with older guys making a lot of money and our lack of CBs

 

I don’t that think Next Pro was, top to bottom, the 3rd best league in the country last year. And, no, Next Pro rosters weren’t comprised solely of “paid professionals.” Next Pro teams could have 35 player rosters, and 11 of those could be amateurs.

Crew 2 was clearly one of the elite teams in that new league, which I’d argue (once it’s more fully developed), might be considered the 3rd best league in the country. But the only way that claim holds water is when you recognize that Crew 2 (and all other Next Pro clubs) are allowed to regularly field players from their MLS senior team’s roster. In the Next Pro championship game, Crew 2 started four players from the senior side’s roster.

In any event, this is probably just a long way of arguing what others have already said, that Nancy has a reputation for playing young guys and seeing them do well, and Porter did not. The relatively static nature of the roster going into 2023 (a fair number of total changes, but certainly no major or impact signings) certainly does set things up to be about a clear a test of a head coach’s skills versus his predecessor as one could imagine.

I appreciate and acknowledge the optimism in here, even if I don’t share it. Now, this being MLS, I do think the team is good enough (injury issues notwithstanding) to hang in there, mid table, and for the fans and (more importantly) Nancy to assess roster talent and the adequacy of some younger players, and then make some informed, serious acquisitions during the summer window.

 

I actually like all of them. I’m fine with Farsi and Sands as backups, JRR as third choice, and Zawadski on the bench.

We all thought Trapp was gonna be a US international for a long time as well, so didn’t Thierry Henry. That didn’t quite work out.

Ben Swanson. Ben Speas. Abubakar Keita. Alex Crognale.

These guys from Crew 2 will probably come in and be decent bench options, we shouldn’t expect more than that though until they prove it at the highest level (in the US), and as of right now they haven’t.

 

If the Crew do well under Nancy out of the gate in 2023, personally, I doubt it'll have much to do with Crew 2 players. It'll be because he gets more out of players like Matan and Diaz than Porter was able to, that he manages to elevate the overall play of the roster so that we stop coughing up point after point after point, as became the norm under Porter, and then maybe that a player like Molino returns to form and a couple of mostly unknown younger players (like Sands, who was never on a Crew 2 contract) evolve into an MLS-caliber players.

Possible? Sure. Likely? I have my doubts.

Speaking of which, Matan no longer appears on the roster page on either the Crew (https://www.columbuscrew.com/roster/) or MLS pages (https://www.mlssoccer.com/clubs/columbus-crew/roster/).

WTF?

 

Gonna blame the website as Matan played last weekend and Mrs. Tiny Vampire is in Columbus.

 

I want Cucho drifiting to wherever there is space for others to get him the ball to shoot. If theati sthe left, right center, I don't care. I want him finding those pockets, obviously if he is in the box, he closer to goal and has increased chance to score..

I challenge you to look at teams that pay 3 in the back and see what the player profile is for their squad and those playing that position. You'll find that many of them are going to be traditional OBs. Many have 2 traditional OBs and only one traditional CB in the 3. But also ( and Nancy has said this) attacking shape and defending shape often look far different. Attacking might look like 3 CBs but defending it might look like 4 defenders. That's why he said he is not concerned with rigid formation or who is playing what position. That's the modern game.

 

This does seem odd though. I'm not sure Mrs. Matan is truly happy here. She has posted like 1 picture of her with other people in it besides the tiny demon himself (not that I'm paying any attention to her ). Could be lonely. She does have a cat.

 

A few weeks until the first match and they still haven’t released the secondary jersey?

 

The interns that update those pages have a well-earned reputation for shoddy work. It's just odd that he was listed on both sites until recently. The MLS roster page also says we have only seven international players. Matan isn't listed there, either. But as @TrueCrew has pointed out, the roster pages are particularly bad when it comes to accurately lisitng this information.

 

Whelp there he is so not sure what the deal is.

 

Quinton with a first team deal

https://www.massivereport.com/2023/...ormer-mls-superdraft-pick-philip-quinton-2023