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| An inside straight, in human form. |
They may come from a(/the greatest) flyover state, but the Columbus Crew, now Columbus Crew SC (a name that launched a thousand typos, e.g., “Columbus Screw”), have long had a knack for signing exotic players. Like any MLS side, they’ve signed plenty of guys who fit the working-class image of their original crest (faceless, yet somehow still leering construction workers) – e.g., Brian McBride stands out there, but they also got good seasons/mileage out of Josh Williams, Chad Marshall, Jonathan Mensah and, perhaps to a lesser extent, Artur and, briefly, Aidan Morris – but they put their stamp on league history through guys like Guillermo Barros-Schelotto, Lucas Zelarayan and, most recently, Cucho Hernandez. That little sprinkling of fairy dust came later. Toiling under the shadow of the early greats, DC United, the Los Angeles Galaxy and, to a lesser extent, the Chicago Fire and Sporting Kansas City, the Crew spent most of their first decade bumping against their achievements. They yanked a Supporters’ Shield out of their asses in 2004, but they also missed the playoffs five times between 2000 and 2007 and felt the sting of the Wooden Spoon in 2006. A mere two seasons later, though, Columbus became the smoothest, smartest team in MLS. Coached by Sigi Schmid, guided by Schelotto and back-stopped by a (hey!) working-class defense and midfield built around Marshall, Brian Carroll, and Brad Evans – incidentally, all players who went on to anchor expansion teams – the Crew picked up a double in 2008, plus another Supporters’ Shield in 2009. They’d cracked a unique approach to the designated player code: finding great talents that few people States-side had heard of. And it paid off smartly until it abruptly did not – or at least until they re-learned the old trick. Between 2012 and 2022, Columbus missed the playoffs as many times as they made them and, despite being the home to the first (and, fair point, super-basic) soccer-specific stadium in MLS history, Columbus barely survived a bid to relocate the team after the 2018 season. The fans pulled together to fight that off and, a couple seasons later, Columbus reclaimed their crown as the best team between the coasts in Major League Soccer. They won two more MLS Cups – one in 2020 (aka, The Weird Season) and again in 2023, both games at a saucy stroll – and they might have had one more trophy had they not screwed themselves over in MLS Cup 2015 (see: Clark, Steve and Valeri, Diego). For all their failures, and they’ve had a few, Columbus does have a bless’d eye for spotting talent. Checking Columbus' all-time roster and scrolling down is a genuinely worthwhile exercise, if just to see all the names that (arguably, in some cases) became more famous on other teams around the league. Per the Joy Points Scale, this is the third most-successful team in MLS history and all of the various powers-that-be that have guided them through damn near three decades’ worth of history deserve credit for accomplishing everything that they did in a…let’s go with unexpected market.
Total Joy Points: 46
How They Earned Them (& How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
Supporters’ Shield: 2004, 2008, 2009,
MLS Cup: 2008, 2020, 2023
MLS Cup Runner-Up: 2015,
MLS Semifinals: 1997, 1999, 2017
MLS Playoffs: 1996, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2009, 2010. 2014, 2018
Wooden Spoon: 2006
CCL Quarterfinal: 2010, 2011, 2021
CCL Runner-Up: 2024
Leagues Cup Winner: 2024
U.S. Open Cup Winner: 2002
U.S. Open Cup Runner-Up: 1998, 2010
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| Another inside straight. |
Odd outliers aside – e.g., a couple of the seasons they missed the playoffs on the bad end and, on the good end, the double-winning season in 2008 and the freakish attacking stats over their past two seasons – 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 clear pattern sticks out over time: when Columbus fails to make the playoffs, the problem reliably follows from trouble with scoring. Bad defenses have throttled their dreams here and there – e.g., 2000 and 2016 – but Columbus has a history of fielding good and strong defenses, and to the tune of going over the average for goals allowed just five times during their time in MLS (fwiw, the went well over on four of those unlucky occasions). They got at or around the average eight times, but that’s still 16 seasons of fielding good defenses, i.e., enough to call that their norm.
Their 2024 Season & Recent Trends
I had everything but savings on Columbus to win MLS Cup and still honestly have no idea how they tripped over Red Bull New York on their way to the Eastern Conference title, particularly over two legs. Maybe it was simple as Columbus’ legs giving out? Due to schedule congestion that could brick up an elephant, the Crew staggered through the opening 10-12 weeks of the regular season, but they hit their stride, won the Leagues Cup and finished second in the whole goddamn league by Decision Day. Thanks to a roster deep enough to survive the departure of Aidan Morris (how’s he doing, btw? and hello Sean Zawadski) and that kept adding talent as the season went on (e.g., DeJuan Jones with the post-season in view), Columbus posted the widest goal differential in MLS this season. Under one of the sexiest coaches in MLS history, they could score from anywhere, dictate most games, all while fielding the league’s fourth-best defense. They’re (kinda) deep at every position, they have an elite play-maker in Cucho, Patrick Schulte looks like a real one in goal…I mean, everything looked right. They had a stellar season on both sides of the ball, and yet...
Questions for Their 2025 Season
First and foremost, how all concerned rebound from falling short in every competition that matters (hi, Leagues Cup, love you!). There will be watching which players that pass out of that stacked roster – at time of posting, I see only Alexandru Matan and Yaw Yeboah on the outs – and whether Columbus can add anyone (no, right?). They’ll have clutter to play through again to start 2025 – the Round of 16 for the CONCACAF Champions’ Cup plays over the first half of March, and they’ll have to do it all again in April and March if they escape that round – and maybe that’s more of the same, but, again, everything from the coaching staff, to the roster, to an ownership group that sure as hell operates as if it’s dialed-/all-in, it’s very, very hard to see the Crew as anything but fully competitive in 2025. That’s unless they fail to rebound. I didn’t flag this in the notes above, but Columbus does have an actual pattern of doing great for 2-3 seasons before running headlong into a wall made of doubt.
The next chapter in this series will be out soon. And it will involve a name now curs’d.
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