Seeing reports Pep is out at Man City after the season concludes. I now have no problem with them firing Henrik since we are getting a Pep in our step.
Please don't get a concussion. I only have an Ohio State education. Memory is never OSU alums' strong suit. (About a lot of things. Lol.)
Picard has similar production thus far to Matan in their respective stints tbf, probably better. Didn't Matan go something like 40 appearances without a goal or assist?
Per FBref: 0 in 802 minutes across 28 appearances in 2021 (28 min/mp). Only 32 minutes played in 2022. 9 (1+9) in 2265 minutes in 2023. 6 (4+2) in 1441 minutes in 2024. These do not include the CCC or LC numbers (2 assists vs monterrey). MLSsoccer.com gives him an extra assist in each 2023 and 2024. (This is not saying much, but he is the best player on his bad greek team that is in the very complicated 6 team Greek relegation playoffs. His team cannot score, as he leads the team with 5.) Picard is probably a better crosser and finisher. I still dont trust him with the ball centrally like I would Matan. A switch to a back 3 might be a tough adjustment for Hugo. We will see.
HR didn’t do enough Tall is the bigger problem but that doesn’t give HR a free pass and LC might very well do better but he is not likely to take us on a miracle run. Nancy prob did leave knowing the structure that built his best team was no longer in place. Plus he had aspirations to coach in Europe.
Long Thread with comments from Tall, Courtois, Sean, and Pat #Crew96 GM Issa Tall said you could tell something was off with the team under Henricky Rydström from the first game of the season, but that was normal with a new coach. He said you started to see the way the team wanted to play in recent games, but then that would fall off as…— Patrick Murphy (@_Pat_Murphy) May 19, 2026
I never thought it was good on paper he was a PK merchant who averaged 5 goals a year in the run of play. I was more shocked that Nancy agreed to it and handed him a starting role despite not earning it. Az was playing much better then Gazdag and we shipped him out. I think the current roster is a bigger issue then HR but Bez coming back will be a bigger positive to counter balance the problem which is Tall and the current FO structure which is not good.
No the more you think about it , it’s like having another preseason now was a great time to make the change. Waiting till after the 24th wasn’t going to make a difference, but had we not fired him we would waste 2 months that we will now use to right the ship.
I think Nancy would have been gone sooner if Bez had never left. Nancy got too arrogant and thought he knew better than everyone else when it came to roster building. I think him and Bez would have started to butt heads, if they weren't already, and Nancy probably would have jumped ship. Nancy was able to boss Tall around when it came to roster decisions because he had more clout, but that wouldn't have happened under Bez.
Based on some comments Patrick Schulte made about the coaching change being a "breath of fresh air" and comparing it to a haircut, I think it's safe to say Henrik lost...or never had...the locker room.
A lot of those guys were used to winning and none of them were “big” parts of that success. A part, yes, but I get this feeling that many of them have a bit bigger heads than they should. Someone posed the question in another thread “if there were an expansion draft, who on this current roster would you protect?”. Frankly, there isn’t but maybe three or 4 that I’d give a shit about losing.
This is a great post. Spot on. The Crew ownership ditched Rydstrom and his system after 14 games in favor of .... Schulte? 32 year old Moreira? Rossi's voice counts... but he has the softest work environment he is ever going to have in world soccer. This group isn't winning a MLS Cup without alpha dog DP replacements and some other fixes. The end will hopefully justify the all the recent means (Bez back, Courtois getting a run). This group of Crew JAGs meaningfully driving Rydstrom out so soon ... is kind of gross. Makes the Crew seem a lot more like how the Browns are run.
Rydstrom drove himself out. Find it totally weird so many in Crew fandom fell in love with a guy we barely knew who made a bunch of really stupid decisions.
This. Hypothetically, if someone sees a mouse run across their floor, it's a very safe bet there's multiple mice in the walls. Using that as example, the comment about needing to lower expectations and the issue about the long meetings was the mouse running across the floor. We may never know about other issues behind the scenes.
How did he drive himself out? The MLS season is only 1/3 completed. If Rydstrom did not think he was getting backing over the medium term ... I doubt he would have moved his family over. Reportedly, they arrived in mid-April. Stop with the strawman stuff. Personally, I didn't love Rydstrom. Or dislike him. He got the shaft after only 14 league games by a bunch of Going Nowhere players who had gotten soft and set up a CBJ/Browns Country Club in 2025 under Nancy. These Crew JAGs are in for a shock if they ever have to join Corporate America and get a new leader overnight who has different ideas and different ways of getting things done.
I don’t think I’ve seen a single person “fall in love” with the guy. Many of us were sounding the alarm last season and saw that this roster needed some serious upgrades. I think we just feel like HK didn’t get a fair shake.
You could certainly make that argument, but since there is simply no way that this was not Bez' call, you should probably make your case to him.
Definitely a reasonable possibility, but also he would likely listen to Bez and not developed such a big ego. I think it’s a good chance that Bez & Nancy would be professionals who worked well together and respected one another even if at times they strongly disagreed about roster moves etc…
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMassive/s/duDF9R6s6x HR interview. Pretty fair interview. He wasn't happy with the training mindset. My understanding from our old friend DKerr is that training in Europe is much more competitive and cutthroat, which can be exhausting mentally and physically. I understand why the players would resist. The comment about testing player's decisionmaking goes toward my hypothesis that Nancy's goal was to make decisions easy for players with precise patterns of play. He is Sean McVay with Jared Goff. HR wanted them to make tough decisions on their own. Players in American aren't developed like that both in terms of mental decision making and the technical ability to pull it off. That problem is why some youth developers want smaller fields with two goals on each side. Give kids more options to think about how to accomplish their goals (i.e. scoring). The smaller field with less teammates will help with the technical/ball skill side.