 |
Smoke Lucky Strikes
|
[Standing Disclaimer: While I have watched…just a stupid amount of MLS over the years, I don’t watch the vast majority of games, never mind all of them. As such, it’s fair to take anything below that isn’t a hard number or a physical trophy as an impression, a couple steps removed.]Thumbnail History If nothing else, Columbus Crew SC provided a fair chunk of the start-up talent that
the Seattle Sounders leveraged to leap-frog them on my patented “Joy Points” scale (see the end of the post for methodology*); hell, Chad Marshall was central enough to both teams’ success that I’m counting him twice. But, to backup: the Columbus Crew came in as an MLS original...man, does anyone else miss the old “leering construction worker' crest? Ahem. The Crew started undistinguished – i.e., they made playoffs, only without going anywhere – before hitting what, despite a wild-hair Supporters’ Shield in 2004, can only be described as a rough patch. They missed the playoffs five times between 2000 and 2007 and even picked up a Wooden Spoon two seasons after that wild-hair Shield. From that point forward – and, damn my amnesia, it continues to the present day – Columbus has developed a pattern that goes something like so: they bring in an attacking ringer – e.g., Guillermo Barros Schelotto, Lucas Zelarayan or Cucho Hernandez – that raises a broadly competent core to glory, only to have that latest model run out of
actual steam after two or three seasons. To drive home the point, in the twelve seasons since their first, best run (see immediately below) – starting in 2012, basically - the Crew have a 50/50 hit-rate for just making the point-season. Despite That’s not all bad, clearly, seeing that they’ve won two MLS Cups over that same period (2020, aka, The Weird Season, and 2023) and they went into a third final as the seeded team…where, honestly, they got lightly screwed, even if they did half the screwing themselves (see: Clark, Steve and Valeri, Diego). I’m saying that as Portland Timbers fan, for what it’s worth…
Best Season(s)For all their slips, Columbus has fielded some genuinely impressive teams – and I very much count the 2020 and 2023 Cup-winning teams among them – but those late 2000s teams that they built around Schelotto just…
did things to teams that, often, left them on the side of the road staring at the sky with a headful of nightmares. That team paired an MLS Cup with their second Shield in 2008 and they added a third Shield in 2009. Those other Columbus teams absolutely kept them on the map/board, but it was the 2008-12 team that put them on it.
Long-Term TendenciesA bit surprising in that they don’t show a ton of wild deviations from average when it comes to goals scored and allowed. Odd outliers aside – e.g., a couple of the seasons they missed the playoffs, the double-winning season in 2008, and 2023’s freakish attacking stats – Columbus generally stick at or around average of goals scored and allowed. Heck, they had a four-season stretch from 2010-2013 where they hit MLS’s middling sweet-spot – i.e., they either scored or allowed the average number of goals - six out of eight times. Even so, a soft pattern sticks out in all that: in most of the seasons when they missed the playoffs, it was problems with scoring that kept them out. The defense throttled their dreams a couple of times – e.g., 2000 and 2016 – but Columbus has a history of fielding good and strong defenses, and to the tune of being at or well-below average (10 times!) in 22 of 28 seasons. In other words, small wonder they sweat the attack.
IdentityA magician pulling rabbits out of a hat.
Joy Points: 21, or good enough for 5th place all time (based on an admittedly warped scale)
10 Names to Know (with regards to Zac Steffen, I stiffed the goalkeepers)
Brian McBride (1996-2003)
Whenever I think of McBride, I see him with either a swollen eye or a bandage wrapped around his head. Though famous for headed goals and hold-up play, he could wind up a decent shot too. McBride played like a warrior and scored 62 goals along the way. One of MLS’s first “homegrown” stars.
 |
Not pictured here (if you know, you know.)
|
Stern John (1998-1999)
He came, he saw, he scored goals at a fucking ridiculous clip (44 in 55 appearances, wha….?). John played just two seasons in Columbus [EDIT, corrected to read 1998-99; thanks, commenter!]; and did he even finish both?), but he’s a good legend from early MLS history. Again, Columbus is to good players what Sudbury is to unbelievably attractive women.
Jeff Cunningham (1998-2004)
Nearly as effective as McBride in his time with Columbus, but a totally different player, Cunningham started his career/MLS legend with them. He combined a soft touch with next-level speed, a lethal combination for both MLS 1.0 and 2.0 defenses, and that’s why he’s still fourth all-time for career goals scored in MLS – and without a challenger in sight.
Eddie Gaven (2006-2013)
While Columbus would later become famous for the attacking ringers mentioned above, they also have a strong record with recognizing young talent within MLS and letting them thrive. For all that he looked like a strong breeze could carry him off, Gaven fells like a prototype for one of those forever-buzzing, catch-me-if-you-can midfielders that disrupt defenses. And he played and grew throughout Columbus’ best seasons (as nominated above).
Chad Marshall (2004-2013)
Simply put, a brick wall with a screen tied to the top that catches 90% of anything that threatens to fly above it. An incredible defender for two teams, but he started with, starred in, and anchored the Crew’s defense through its first glory years.
Guillermo Barros Schelotto (aka, GBS) (2007-2010)
For me, Columbus won the race to sign the first, best designated player in MLS history. But for the shaggy hair, he looked more like a math teacher than a professional athlete. The league had seen decent attacking mids before, but none of them opened the game for everyone around them quite the way GBS did.
Frankie Hejduk (2003-2010, ambassador till death)
I did a “who’s Mr. Sporting Kansas City” for the last post in this series, but it’s Hejduk for me. The rare eccentric in a league that either can’t find them or somehow discourages them, a surfer in Central Ohio, etc. But Hejduk backed it all the way up on the field, both for Columbus and the U.S. Men. And I hear he still shows up at the stadium. Just wonderful…
Federico Higuain (2012-2019)
The next in Columbus’ frankly remarkable succession of attacking wizards, he continued the GBS tradition of providing regular goals and assists (I remember him for his free-kicks). He was similar down to the build, but also played in a more-evolved MLS – which may explain the mind-blowing fact that Columbus never won a trophy with him.
Jonathan Mensah (2017-2022)
A successor to another tradition, Mensah may not have been as dominant as Marshall, but I can think of no better way to explain how highly I rate him besides saying that I’m still shocked to this day that they traded him. Still, he anchored a defense that won Columbus a Cup. Which tends to be enough for them because…
Lucas Zelarayan (2020-2023)
They keep finding players like, say, Zelarayan, aka, a midfielder that could fuck up a defense at least three different ways (e.g., off the dribble, free-kicks, and waltzing through a defense with a teammate). If there’s a greater mystery in MLS than how a team from Central Nowhere U.S.A. keeps finding players like this, I don’t know what it is. To be clear, I don’t mean that “Central Nowhere” thing as an insult – I was born in Cincinnati and went to high school in Pullman, WA for fuck’s sake – but to acknowledge that Columbus, Ohio has a limited international foot-print.
Where They Finished in 2023 & What the Past Says About That, If Anything
Third-place in the East with a Santa’s sack full of goals, a lopsided goal-differential and, ultimately, their third MLS Cup. Not bad, in other words. Once you see the pattern, last season lines up nicely with…call it the last 20 seasons of Columbus’ history. Again, they have a history of finding great-for-MLS players, which continued with Cucho Hernandez and only got better with the addition of Christian Ramirez and Diego Rossi, and the historically strong defense held up, if with a big, elegant assist from the central midfield pairing of Aidan Morris and Darlington Nagbe. More to the point, after watching them all but flow through the Eastern Conference playoff bracket – again, for the record, FC Cincinnati is my second team (see birth-place) and that loss left scars – they didn’t so much win MLS Cup 2023, as run it. To circle back to the pattern, I believe this current roster has a couple strong seasons left in it – so long as the F.O. can keep it together and Wilfred Nancy in charge of it. I’m not much on coaches as transformative figures, but I only have to look at Columbus’s 2021 and 2022 to believe that he’s got something special in his noodle.
Notes/Impressions on the Current Roster/State of Ambition
Even with Columbus’, again, remarkable track record with signing good ‘n’ fun players, they hired (just learned this) hometown(-adjacent) wunderkind, Tim Bezbatchenko to keep that conveyer belt moving. Their history says a slump will come again, but they’ve put on some damned tall stilts to keep ahead of it.
* Joy Point Index
Winning the CONCACAF Champions’ League: 5 points
Claiming Supporters’ Shield : 4 points
Winning MLS Cup: 3 points
MLS Cup Runner-Up: 2 points
Winning the U.S. Open Cup: 2 points
Winning CONCACAF Champions Cup: 2 points
MLS Is Back Cup: 2 points (yeah, yeah, I’m a Timbers fan; still, that was a tough one)
CONCACAF Champions League Semifinalist: 1 point
Making the Playoffs: 1 point
Missing the Playoffs: -1 point
Missing Playoffs in 1996-97, 2002-2004 (when 80% of the league qualified): - 2 points
Wooden Spoon: -3 points
