The Weekly Dis
The end of the greatest era in Crew history is nigh
On the subject of Wilfried Nancy's departure from Columbus and the Crew, all signs indicate that it's all over but the crying.
For weeks, reports emanating from Scotland saying that Nancy was a candidate for the coaching job with Glasgow powerhouse Celtic F.C. have been flitting about. Nancy has refused to discuss rumors. Crew GM Issa Tall insisted that he has had no contact from any team that may be interested in Nancy, and added that Nancy was fully engaged with planning for the Crew's 2026 MLS season.
#Crew96 GM Issa Tall a few minutes ago: "All I can say is that Wilfried is under contract and that we are talking about next year. We've discussed some of the decisions we're making for next year and Wilfried is heavily involved. We haven't had any talks about anything besides him being here."
— Michael Arace (@michaelarace1.bsky.social) 2025-11-14T17:10:43.595Z
I'm trying to figure out how to fix that display issue.
Crew coaches broke from meetings after lunch Friday and, according to the team, the coaches had the weekend off. Around 1:30 p.m., Nancy was pictured at John Glenn International Airport, waiting in line for a departure.
Meanwhile, reputable publications based in the U.K. – The Guardian, Sky Sports, The Herald of Scotland and the Edinburgh News, among others – were reporting that Nancy had Haslam Sports Group's permission to speak to Celtic and would be meeting with team officials in London. And the hope was to have him installed as Celtic coach ahead of a game against St Mirren on Saturday, Nov. 22, one week from today.
The Scottish Premiership is not among the world's most prominent leagues, but the well-heeled Glasgow teams, Celtic and Rangers, are the big fish in the River Clyde. The largest shareholder in Celtic is billionaire Dermot Desmond, who has dabbled in airports and gambling concerns, among other things. He is aggressive when it comes to his club. Reportedly, Nancy's salary at Celtic could be worth more than $2 million annually and the buyout it would take to get him out of the last year of his Crew contract could climb close to $2 million.
Ewan Murray
Crew fans always knew that Nancy, the most successful coach in the 30-year history of the club and arguably the best in the MLS business right now, would be leaving Columbus sooner or later. Crew fans also knew that HSG, the majority owners of the team, are not likely to make any counter-offers – not when they can pocket a $1 million to $2 million buyout fee. They're trying to build a dome for their Cleveland Browns on a post-industrial hellscape in suburban Brook Park and, presumably, they need to show bankers as much liquidity as possible.
HSG hired Tim Bezbatchenko, the best GM in the league, in 2019. Bezbatchenko delivered an MLS Cup in 2020, hired Nancy in 2023 – and delivered another MLS Cup and a Leagues Cup. Bezbatchenko in the middle of the 2024 season left for England to be director of Black Knight Football Club, which features Bournemouth of the EPL in its portfolio of teams.
Bezbatchenko paid a $10-million transfer fee to get forward Cucho Hernandez from Watford of the EPL in 2022. Cucho in 2024 was, arguably, the best player in MLS. He led Nancy's teams to glory before he was transferred, in what felt like a fire sale, to Spain's Real Betis on the eve of the 2025 MLS season. The transfer fee was reported to be $16 million, but I've heard other numbers – $13.5 million, or as little as $8 million. What I know for sure is there were some in upper echelon of the Crew front office who were unaware there was any Cucho move afoot until 48 hours before the deal went down.
The league's best GM, the league's best player (arguably) and now, apparently, the league's best coach ...
They're all gone. And so is Darlington Nagbe, maybe the best No. 6 in league history. Retired. Wait ... Am I hearing about another starter who's on his way out, too?
More to come as things develop.
Posts
Monday: Wherefore Wilfried Nancy? Who replaces Darlington Nagbe? How many windows will close before a center back is signed? What to do with Daniel Gazdag? Wherefore Max Arfsten? Is Issa the guy?
As events unfolded on Friday, there are more questions. I've got a pile of material gathered from exit interviews that I'll be trotting out in the coming days.
Michael Arace
Wednesday: The Blue Jackets are closing in on 20 games played – just about a quarter of their season is nearly gone. The NHL is in the throes of change; a group of teams that were rebuilding are beginning to rise, powered by superstar youngsters; it's fair to question whether the Jackets will be among the rising teams that scale above the playoff bar and whether their young talent ranks with their peers in places like Anaheim, Chicago and San Jose.
Michael Arace
Friday: For many years, snobby soccer types have cried for MLS to adapt a fall-to-spring schedule to match the rest of the world. Now, it is done. Here are all the details along with my own view – I don't like it.
Michael Arace
Northern Lights in the South
I missed it. Did you?
The phenomenon known as aurora borealis – the Northern Lights – made a rare appearance in Ohio at midweek. The lights could be seen as far south as Mississippi Tuesday night. It's a rare plasma-blob display.
Here's Scientific American magazine:
Auroras occur after the sun emits what scientists call a coronal mass ejection, or CME, in the direction of Earth. A CME is essentially a blob of the plasma and magnetic field that makes up our star. When this material interacts with the gases in Earth’s atmosphere, the resulting energy transfers light up the skies.
(Tuesday) night’s auroras were the result of CMEs released on Sunday and Monday, but Tuesday also saw such an outburst from the sun, and experts expect it will reach Earth in the coming hours. An initial aurora forecast ... suggests the spectacle could continue (Wednesday night) only for a more northern portion of the country.
Meghan Bartels
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has an "Aurora Dashboard" if you want to track space forecasts. I can think of worse things to do, like betting (fill in name of bottom-six Blue Jackets forward here) to be any anytime scorer at FanDuel.
Dive Deeper Into the Science of the Aurora
I've seen the Northern Lights once. It was after a Blue Jackets-at-Edmonton game in the early 2000s. I was driving back to Calgary and, before I got on Highway 2, I pulled over to call the desk to see if there were any questions on my game story. That was when there were such things as newspaper "desks" and "copy editors," things that have gone the way of telephone operators and stenographers and democracy.
I'm on the phone with a copy editor and I look out the window of the rental car and I say, "Gadzooks!" or something such like. I say, "It's the Northern Lights!" It was an amazingly clear night and the colors were all over the spectrum, and vivid. Was there pulsing? I want to say there was.
I pulled on to Highway 2 and, not halfway through the two-hour drive across the high desert plain of Alberta, before I even got to Red Deer, it started snowing. Actually, "snowing" doesn't quite cover it. IT WAS SNOWING LIKE A BASTARD, and you know how bastards can snow.
I couldn't see 12 inches in front of the windshield. It was well after midnight. I was trapped in a whiteout. I thought, "Well, they'll find me in the spring."
I pulled onto the apron and prayed that I'd scooched over enough that I wouldn't be hit by a tractor-trailer. I couldn't see enough to know for sure. These trucks were whizzing by every five or 10 minutes. I could see that much. How could they see at all?
Finally, I pulled back on Highway 2, dropped my rental car behind a semi and focused on the tail lights. I surfed that truck all the way back to Calgary. By the time I got back to my hotel, the skies had cleared.
Is that a metaphor for something Blue Jackets? Or Crew? Leave a comment below.
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Michael Arace
