The Weekly Dis
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After a two-week international break, the Columbus Crew return to action on Saturday night with a game against the Atlanta Uniteds in the city where the game was invented.
The Crew (0-3-2) are in 14th place in the Eastern Conference and 29th place in a league of 30 teams. They will slink into ATL as one of two winless teams (Philly is the other) in MLS. They will bring with them one of the most anemic offenses in the league (five goals through five games). Except for a good half here and there, they've been an amorphous blob of meh.
From 2023-25, the Crew was helmed by Wilfried Nancy. He may or may not have been the best coach in MLS history. He certainly produced the most aesthetically pleasing brand of the beautiful game that the league has seen to date. In December, he left to take the Celtic job in Glasgow and lasted eight games.
Enter Henrik Rydström, who was hired by Crew GM Issa Tall on New Year's Eve. He brought with him some cachet for his success with Swedish power Malmö and his brand of ball-centric, "relationist" soccer. Like Nancy, possession is important to his system, attacking and scoring are accentuated and winning is always part of the program.
Soooooooo ... the early returns are not good. Hardcore Crew fans are having a difficult time discerning exactly what the coach is trying to accomplish with his four-man-backfield formation. National MLS watchers are pining for Nancy's beautiful game, and positing that relationism is a fallacy.
Meanwhile, DP attacker Diego Rossi has been lost on an island out on the wing and, after leading the Crew in scoring and matching a career-high with 16 goals last year, can't find the ball anywhere near the net. He has had zero shots on goal over the past three games (although he hit a post, which doesn't count).
"That's something that the coach made the decision," Rossi said earlier this week. "I only try to give everything on every single day that I'm here. Then, the position that the coach gives me on the pitch is what I'm going to do. I think, obviously, the last few years I was playing a different position, like you say. I try to do my best to help the team in the position that the coach plays me."
At Rydström's weekly press conference on Tuesday, he was asked some direct questions about his plans, his systems and Rossi.
Let's get into it.
"In one way, I didn't change that much in the beginning," Rydström said. "It was more me getting to know the players. ... And also, I thought it was a well-functioning team. And I also praised the work that they did here before. Then it's always this balance. When do you (say), 'Okay, now it's time to change. Now it's time to add something?'"
Rydström's story of the Crew under Nancy, based on underlying numbers, goes something like this:
The Crew were dominant in 2023, very good in 2024, not as good in 2025, by which point the rest of the league had fully adapted to Nancy's tactics. Put another way: As opponents got increasingly supple in defending the Crew, the Crew remained largely inflexible in their attack.
"You know, the squad will look different when it comes to the summer," Rydström said. "We have started to change the system ... to be more flexible. I haven't been in the league before, but I see lot of tactical flexibility from teams. They can change. So we need to have that ability. Short-term, it means that some players think maybe too much. They're not used to some things. I have my way of being and we have more meetings. We have other demands. I try to empower them ...
"I'm just looking forward to that day when everything is connected and that can be tomorrow. I see it in training, I saw it before (the Toronto game) also. It's not always what you see during the week that you see in the game. But I see the things we want to do, I see them more and more in training. This week has been amazing."
Rydström hates losing, but he will suffer losses to go through his process of building a winner. He is not unlike Nancy in that way. He's not going to back up the bus and look for the random counter-attack for the sake of three points.
"Diego knows that he is very important for me and for us," Rydstrom said. "He's so loyal and he puts in that work when it's come to pressing and running and I tried to find a way and position where he can make the most of those, running forward and attacking-wise. So sometimes it's almost, don't tell him this, but that he's too loyal, so he's running home even if you don't need to run home there ,that's for the back line, that's for the full back, but he do it anyway. But that's the structure we try to find."
Rydström said he understands why fans might be addled at this point. He, too, is working through things. He didn't make radical changes immediately because he knew the players were accustomed to Nancy's stuff. He has been doing some weaning and making adjustments as he builds relationships.
I'll let Rydström take it home:
"It's not that I have been on the bench and been like, 'Yeah, Mamma Mia, now we're playing football,'" Rydström said. "Again, I'm addicted to winning but I must say we must enjoy ourselves. And I have referred to one of the first meetings I had with Issa , when he said, 'Yeah, at the end of the day, it's about enjoying ourselves and the way we play.'
"You try to have things going on at the same time, the football part, but it's also to create the dynamic in the team and the connection. Sometimes you spend more time ... dealing with the things off the pitch. But if we don't take care of those things, and I don't mean that there's a lot of problems, but it's like when people come together and try to work together. What's the common way? What's the way forward? What's the playing style? What do we need to do right now? How can we get the most out of everyone in the staff?
So I would say (the growing pains are) quite natural. I'm very irritated when we don't win, and especially when we don't play the way we want to do. But again, I see it on the training pitch. So for me it's more, come on, now we're going to show it in the games.
"I understand that it will not be for 90 minutes, but we need to show it for 10 minutes, 15 minutes. And still, I think Kansas (City) second half was more the game where we maybe showed a little bit the kind of Crew I think we can show more of. But otherwise, no, it's not been at all that. So, and that's of course on me."
Here's the full video:
Posts
Monday:
Michael Arace
Blue Jackets history is mostly about the numbing pain of prolonged mediocrity, but there have been plenty of stabs of misery along the way. It all runs together, like walking across a Sahara of broken glass. Was the 368th step worse than the 2,817th? Man, I don't know. Maybe Porty does.
Did Sunday night present the worst loss in franchise history?
Was the blown three-goal, third-period lead against the Bruins the worst loss in franchise history? By the end of the week, there was at least one more contender.
Wednesday:
Michael Arace
"There's no quit in them," coach Rick Bowness said in his postgame presser. "Every game, they're going to go out there and lay it on the line. Five-on-five, we love our play. Clearly, penalty killing is an issue, and we've got to clean that up; it has cost us the last two games. But five-on-five, we're thrilled with the way we're playing. Their goalie (Brandon Bussi) made some big saves at the right time.
"But again, the effort is there. We'll live and die with being aggressive. We'll live and die with that effort."
Next game, they died with little effort ...
Friday:
Michael Arace
This game would get my vote for worst Blue Jackets loss of the week, and that's saying something, folks. I stopped watching early in the third period, and I never quit that early.
Also in this post was a word about the NWSL-to-Columbus bid, and the announcement from Columbus City Council that an agreement had been reached on a subsidy: The city will loan Haslam Sports Group, et al, $25 million for the construction of a NWSL-team-oriented training facility on the grounds of McCoy Park on the Southwest side, and for a new locker room to be built for the women at the new Crew Stadium. The loan will be repaid via a 2% tax levy on tickets to events at the new Crew stadium.
The city Council will vote on the proposal Monday afternoon. There has been pushback from members. My feeling is that Council president Shannon Hardin has the political savvy to get his ducks in a row and get the thing passed, even if it's just by one vote.
Anyway, here's what I wrote:
There are three camps here.
The first camp is the "Hooray for Women's Sports" camp, and they say, "This is a good and reasonable investment in the city," especially since the capital budget goes untouched. That's a lot of words for one camp, but there it is.
The second camp is the "How the hell can anyone justify giving public money to the Epstein class?" In this camp, the signage says, "The freaking Haslams are worth 10-plus billion." More efficient verbiage.
The third camp is peopled by folks who are in both camps, and who enjoy delicious sausage and tend to forget how it is made.
I wend my way in and out of all three camps with a bottle of Stadium Mustard in my backpack, and I hate myself for it.
Let us join together, then, for a progressive tax system whereby Jimmy Haslam – whose daddy, if not Deshaun Watson, shotgunned him and future generations of Haslams into the Epstein class – must pay a higher percentage rate on his capital gains earnings than the dude with the orange vest pulling out the chocks from under his private jet pays on his income. Show us your books, Dee, in the name of public-private partnerships.
Forrest Gump would support such an initiative.
Three excellent readers were quick to weigh in on the Blue Jackets' miseries and the 2% solution. I hope more of you will join in our discussions. I don't always answer commenters right away, but I see every comment, and I answer sooner or later. Anyway, good stuff here:
Tom has read Ken Follett's Kingsbridge series, it appears. He recommended Donna Leon's Commissario Brunetti books and I'm in the middle of the third one right now. Note to self: Reread Follett's "Pillars of the Earth," the first of the Kingsbridge series. Wonderful and epic it is.
The best video I watched this week
Old friend and former colleague Todd Jones assembled an extensive compendium of sportswriters' anecdotes, tall tales and inside-the-room dope – much of it diaphragm-clenching funny. Check it out.
Earlier this week, he sent me a note and a video. Both are pertinent to the times, and germane to what's going on in Columbus right now.
The note:
I found this to be an interesting video about how owners view their teams now, and how it breaks the old pact of a franchise being a public trust for a community. Young reporter does a good job with it. He focuses on the Red Sox, but the video also speaks to a broader reality in not just baseball, but all pro sports, as well as major college athletics. End-stage capitalism isn’t pretty, as we are witnessing everywhere in our society, and our sports aren’t immune. It's only about 15 minutes or so, but I recommend it.
The video:
Per usual at this time of year ...
... we end with the standings and the refrigerator magnet. And look out below, because here come the Flyers:
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Michael Arace
