Not sure exactly why Bez is the target of your ire? He neither built this roster (not much of it at least) nor is it a transfer window. Time to slow your roll ; )
Agreed. If it's not this comment which was the final nail (or two), this firing has a smell of something rotten off the field. But you never...never...tell anyone to lower their expectations, especially when they're paying customers and (especially) multi-million dollar sponsors.
You can't say he did as well as he could and say he shouldn't have played possession soccer lol. Nah. There's a ton of shit he could've done better. Win a cup with this group? Hell no. Look better than completely incompetent? Absolutely yes.
That’s not how it works though. A fan base should never lower their expectations. This base had a damn near riot when Andrulis was f-ing things up. “Lowering our expectations” is not something we do.
Bez upon his return to the Crew, talking about the Rydstrom Era to staff, players, fanbase ... basically everyone:
I'm saying he is delusional if he is thinking that it is the coach's fault for how we are playing. Key positions have gone SEASONS without being filled. Nancy jumped ship and we got someone to take the job and then they are summarily fired after trying to do the best they could with what they were given. I think he did the best possible with what is there. And Bez is delusional if he thinks Laurent can get any better out of them. That's what I mean. You said Bez had a say behind this you know his voice spoke the loudest at the end of the day. Firing HR takes heat off Issa, too. Look, I'll be happy to be wrong.
That's the thing about life, if you have lower expectations, you can go through your life being pleasantly surprised rather than constantly let down. Maybe it is a lesson to learn for people. Expect less. Because most people are going to give you less anyway.
Bogart said that his sources said the locker room never bought in to him. That’s not great for a manager, even with bad talent.
Looks like Tall didnt like the style we were playing, which makes sense. He and Bez set up the academy to play a 3-4-3, player fit be damned, and this 4-4-2 haram ball was not cutting it. https://www.dispatch.com/story/spor...strom-columbus-crew-coach-firing/90133006007/ Great to see Lori Schmidt on the write up. Read the non quotes of this article in Common Man's Lori Schmidt voice
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMassive/comments/1tfc9fw/comment/om8n2or/ This here is all anyone needs to know. Reddit thinks the Rhino is apparently God's gift to Crew soccer and don't you (general, not specific you) dare criticize Him. The Rhino is a moron. And this: The Rhino got their information from big soccer and now the info has gone quiet, they have nothing. Still. Always remember. The Crew went shit after the current Nordecke board took over Coincidence? To nobody's surprise, both of these comments have been downvoted into oblivion. I'm not sure who's got the bigger cult: Rhino or zebra in the weather subreddit.
The roster is bad, but HR did himself no favors. My biggest gripe is that the pressing regime was inconsistent and most games a mess. In a 4-4-2, there is a standard pressing pattern to build off of. We did it with worse players under GGG, and we were a decent team. It also became apparent that he didnt know the league and the opposition. A lot of his choices, especially second half tweaks played into the opposition. Yesterday was the first game where I went oh he actually accounted for how philly played. But then the subs ruined the cohesion. Felt he also didnt know his players' best qualities and misused them far too long before recognizing it. The roster is bad, but playing chambost and gomes was making it worse. We were so outnumbered in the midfield. Even if we stick to a back 4, I expect to see more of a 4-3-3
What does Courtois really know about Nancyball? He was in Columbus before Nancy arrived. He coached Crew 2 in MLSNP’s inaugural season with an older, stacked roster. Then he was hired by Montreal in January ‘24. He and Nancy overlapped one year and wasn’t on the senior coaching staff then.
One thought on Issa and the hiring of Rydstrom: I don't necessarily think it was a bad hire. I'm glad they swung for the fences instead of hiring an MLS re-tread. Clearly, it didn't work out. But the thought process was at least good. But you can say the exact same thing about the Gazdag acquisition. Good on paper, but not on the field. I have no doubt that Issa is intelligent, thoughtful, and well-intentioned. But the decisions aren't leading to the desired outcomes.
Most don't, including the GM who helped deliver three major trophies to Columbus. And there's the rub. When you don't meet organizational standards, you lose your job. Rydström was not meeting the standard. However flawed it may be, a roster with Diego Rossi, Max Arfsten, Steven Moreira, and Patrick Schulte is not one of the five worst rosters in MLS. It's a different era with different standards, no matter how much you don't want to hear it. The gap in talent and investment between the top and bottom of the table today is a chasm compared to MLS 1.0.
This whole “what happened to Nancy at Celtic” and “what happened to Rydstrom in Columbus” dramas playing out so close to one another is hard for me wrap my mind around. There’s one huge difference. Celtic just won a championship they sure as hell never would have won had Nancy stayed in the job. Maybe Nancy wanted them to evolve into playing an even better type of soccer, but they undeniably had the talent to keep winning while he pursued that larger goal. But we suck. The roster is a train wreck. HR managed the situation poorly. But Jesus Christ couldn’t make this into a winning side. Not with these players. HR may have been unprepared for this role, but who put him in it? This is Tall’s failure at least much (I’d argue more) as it’s HR’s. By comparison, Nancy has only himself to blame.
Courtois and nancy had parallel thinking. It's not entirely the same and courtois often adjusted, switching the formation sometimes midgame. Both emphasize possession, building out from the back, and a lot of final third possession. It was not possession for possessions sake as seen under HR, Porter, and at times Gregg For as much possession we had the past few games, it didnt seem like we had it in the final third. Sure fotmob or something has that breakdown. Courtois does require more speed and physicality with his teams. He played a lot more vertical.
I am certainly not an expert on Courtois, and I confess to not watching any of his games when he was at Montreal (except when they played against us). But there was a press conference near the end of his tenure here where he gushed over Nancy and said that he couldn't imagine a better mentor (paraphrasing). I'm hoping he's smart enough, and was around enough, to be able to take the best of Nancy's tactics and philosophies and apply them now. I'm not necessarily advocating for him to be a carbon copy of Nancy, but some "let's get back to what was working" approach would seem to be reasonable, at least in the short term.
Someone once told me that in the end its not about wins and losses so much as its about trajectory. And this club, right now, shows no.signs of a positive direction.
Here is the quote that WAS THE LAST STRAW.. “They thought we were tough to play against, but we don’t have a striker,” Rydstrom said. “No, we don’t, so we know where we are when it comes to that. It’s also the expectations on the club and the team are always big and should be, but at this point where we are right now, we need to lower that a little bit.”