Not personal towards the poster here. At all. If these pull quotes are true ... and I suspect they are ... It is damning criticism of what the Crew roster has become. Soft. Entitled. Nancy and his small roster ways let this group get phat and happy. A Country Club with zero consequences. Schulte might have been better served with competition for playing time in 25 and new philosophies in 26. Maybe he makes the USMNT World Cup roster. We will see if Courtois has backbone and gets this group to play better. Or has the courage ... and Front Office support ... to make lineup changes.
How many guys on the Crew roster developed in the American system, though? For me, when in doubt, blame MLS. Maybe one reason why players aren't willing to push themselves as hard is because the league's structure allows 50% of the teams to make the playoffs and there's no threat of relegation. Ownership talks more about the "matchday experience" than they do about results on the pitch. To me, MLS is more an entertainment product than a soccer league. Of course, that's just my opinion, man.
It's an interesting read and I am not surprised to hear MLS players don't have the same commitment as those in Europe. Hearing this message from a new foreign coach doesn't hold the same weight as say Tata or an experienced manager like Bruce or Bob might. Also taking over with a lot of players that have been successful recently is a harder sell than say taking over Toronto or Chicago who have won ish in a long time.
He also said he was too manic for his own good and went about things in a way that wasn't ideal. Don't put his failure completely on the players. He put plenty of blame on himself.
Yea, less than half of our typical starting lineup are typically guys who were actually developed in America or Canada. If you look at the 16 guys who appeared in the last match against Atlanta, I think only 5 were actually developed in North America, while 9 were developed in Europe and 2 in South America. I think the lack of relegation and large number of teams making the playoffs is certainly a factor. But I think a bigger factor is the performance based incentives in players contracts in Europe compared to here. There’s a lot more guaranteed money here compared to Europe. In a recent episode of the Orange Slices podcast, Heath Pearce and Mark McKenzie were talking about how in Germany a lot of guys can double their salary with their performance incentives. You usually get a bonus for a start, a smaller bonus for a sub appearance, and then bonuses for wins and smaller bonuses for draws. That may happen to a degree here, but over there it’s much more significant and certainly raises the intensity at training to a whole new level. You are literally competing against the other guy in your position for money every day. The other big factor is the depth of rosters. MLS salary restrictions create top heavy rosters, while in Europe most teams are at least two deep (relative to the quality of the league) at every position.
Except that the soccer we played when we were on top of the continent, just a short time ago, was fricking awesome, by any measure, IMO.
I can't believe how quickly this narrative has taken root that Nancy was a complete wimp that let his players coast. Is it possible that the reason they were so comfortable was because their coach implemented a system that fit them perfectly, so performing well came relatively easily?
His teams were in super human condition and played with relentless effort and discipline. The narrative can't be real.
Or... HR was simply out of his depth. A dude that was never tested outside Sweden, couldn't adapt to his new surroundings. He also said he was going to play one way, and either completely lied about that or abandoned the idea almost immediately and had no coherent plan b. Courtois came in and the team instantly had an identity. HR had 14 games plus something like 3 USOC games and he couldn't give the exact same team any identity, good or bad. This is some real Occam's razor shit. Yeah, HR seems like a nice enough guy, but we're talking about one of the most ruthless businesses in the world here, professional sports. It's ok to say he failed. Him and the last two Swedes before him also failed miserably in MLS. Maybe their style of soccer or coaching just doesn't work here.
Good point. I’d counter that (1) we were never quite “on top of the continent” but I get your point; and (2), it really wasn’t a short time ago, nor did it last very long. Mid-2023 to mid-2024 was our peak form, so one year. Regardless, your point is valid: we were that good for a year, so how did we manage it in a “soft” league. I suppose the same way a small number of other MLS teams have achieved similar success. Through having a specific core of talented, driven players combined with a talented manager and soccer GM/President, which elevated the rest of the players on the roster and the organization as a whole. Leaving Nancy & Bez aside for the moment, a bit like Guille, Marshall, Moreno, etc. back in ‘08, the mid-‘23-‘-24 core - Cucho, Morris, Nagbe, especially, backed by Rossi, Moreira and Camacho before he lost a step - were driven and possessed the skill to perform at a very high level. Cucho, Nagbe and Morris, especially, were elite, best-of-all-time types of players. That’s not exactly a small thing when asking yourself why we were so damned good during that period. But what about Nancy & Bez? Bez, I’ll set aside. He clearly does the job to win championships and has three MLS Cups and various other pieces of hardware associated with his tenure in MLS. But I assume he has little influence on the roster’s day-to-day mindset. Regarding Nancy, maybe it’s just me, but I was always impressed with the partnership he developed with assistant coach Jules Gueguen, who oversaw team fitness. They had a very specific way of pushing players to be extremely fit, while gauging how stressed players were so as not to push them too far. It worked extremely well. Just think back to how astonishingly fit the team was back then. That playoff victory in Cincinnati, being a prime example. FCC players were gasping for air, bending over, hands on knees, cramping up, while we never stopped running. That fitness level is gone. When Nancy left, taking Gueguen with him, their approach to team fitness went with them. Couple that with losing an elite core and the aging of other second tier core players, and it’s not hard to see why a team that was top of the heap two years ago is now accused of being soft. Because they probably are. Just like they’re not nearly as good, talent-wise, as they were in mid-2024, even if their egos have a hard time accepting those truths.
I would add that people tend to forget the fact that while Bez has to be given full credit for Cucho, Morris was a local product and Nagbe came because he wanted to be in Ohio. Of course he was offered a huge pile of money, but anyone in MLS would have done the same. The latter two were basically luck. Cucho is good but I dont think he could have won the Cup on his own.
Morris was recruited to come here from Ft. Lauderdale when Gregg was coach. I forget who was the academy director at that point. Looking online, there was a new one almost every year until Kelvin Jones took over.
If being MLS champion, Leagues Cup champion, and making the CCL final (beating Tigres and Monterrey in MEXICO btw to get there) and being talked about as potentially the greatest team in league history isn't close to being on top of the continent, then I don't know what it.
Bullshit. You said we were: "close to being on top of the continent" I claim we never quite got there, due obviously to losing the CONCACAF final. We certainly got close. But so have other MLS clubs. And this "best team of all time in MLS" garbage is just our in the bubble thinking here in Columbus. Sure, it was said. Just like it gets said of a lot of MLS Cup winners. Tenorio in The Athletic ranked our '23 team the 6th best MLS Cup winner of all time. Then again, opinions are like assholes.
Columbus is the greatest team the world has ever seen. So theyre on top of the whole world, which includes CONCACAF.
And we played better ball than the Cup winning team the first half of '24. We were ranked #1 in the CONCACAF club rankings in there 2. Our success had wins at every level of the roster. All 3 DPs producing. International roster spots starting and contributing. Home grown contributions. Draft and second team producing above league average starting players. Combine that with the fitness already mentioned and a coach who encouraged players to bring the best of themselves to bear, and you really had something. Anyway, I forget what everyone was arguing about, but that 12 month window from somewhere in 23 to somewhere in 24 we were awesome.
I don't understand this weird thing that seems to be happening where we are retroactively trying to downgrade the Nancy era team. Is this some weird way to excise HR? What is going on here?
Enough about HR and Nancy... Maybe we can talk about the Porter era?!? . Always fun to talk about CP. (No offense to @Ch(Elsey) ).
More about the coach not relating to the players in America. Crew doesn’t play in Europe he is just stating a difference from his POV
The squad got worse from it's peak. If you have absolute quality in the starting 11 it elevates the squad guys making "Strength in depth" a real thing. When you replace quality with guys that would usually be your strength in depth it weakens your squad. It seems like that is where we were at Nancy got out at the right time and HR was the unfortunate soul who came in next and decided to play a different way. The easiest thing to do would have taken the Nancy way and continued on, but not being submerged in the day to day of the previous regime it would be difficult to just keep that going. I guess at least HR has confirmed what some of the squad mentioned that training was the problem?
While Arace got some things wrong, I felt his and Tom Reed's analysis of the training issue to be pretty good. There was the guy on reddit who said HR gave his Swedish teams homework and tests. I dont see that going over well here.
Training, tactics, culture clash, and apparently the players hated the assistant coach Olsson. Those seem to be the big issues.