In Saturday’s Concacaf Champions Cup final, the Columbus Crew are looking to break new ground for MLS.
A victory over Pachuca would not, in and of itself, be a first. MLS has been tormented by this tournament over the years, but the league has not quite been Sisyphus pushing his boulder up a hill in Tartarus.
The Seattle Sounders were widely lauded for claiming a place as Concacaf’s top club in 2022. That triumph ended a decades-long spell that saw MLS clubs suffer a few heartbreakingly narrow losses in the final, and rather more morale-sapping blowout defeats at various Liga MX stadiums. That Sounders team wasn’t a first, either, though Champions Cup wins by D.C. United (1998) and the LA Galaxy (2000) are often unfairly waved away as ancient oddities.
What Columbus is attempting to do is different, from two important angles.
First, there’s the practical side. D.C. and the Galaxy had to come through three games from start to finish, most of which were played at home in one-week events. Concacaf’s premier club competition is a far more daunting task these days.
The Sounders, through no fault of their own, had a path that involved Honduran side Motagua and fellow MLS club New York City FC. Seattle did knock off two Liga MX sides in Club León and Pumas, but that league’s true giants never got in the way.
Contrast that with the Crew, who after disposing of the Houston Dynamo in the round of 16 have only faced Mexican opposition. The last two rounds have involved seeing off Tigres — a team that, perhaps more than any other, has been an MLS killer over the years — and Monterrey, the region’s most expensively-assembled squad.
So yes, the Crew have taken the hard road to this final. However, just how Wilfried Nancy’s team has accomplished that is even more notable.
MLS teams have generally crept through the Champions Cup (or, for most of its recent existence, the Champions League) hoping to snatch narrow victories on the basis of defensive organization, the avoidance of errors, and a little luck. It’s been about grit, intensity, and opportunism, but MLS teams — whether they won it all like Seattle, or got humbled like so many other examples — have avoided the burden of being the protagonist in this tournament.
Taking risks? In Mexico? It’s simply not done.
And yet the Crew stuck to their guns while staring down stared down André-Pierre Gignac, coming back from a goal down in both legs to force penalties. Tigres fans, stunned though they were, applauded Columbus off the pitch at El Volcán.
Columbus then returned to Nuevo Leon to take on Monterrey, again welcoming pressure and maneuvering through it. A first-leg win at home seemed to point to a conservative approach in Mexico, and Columbus instead played its unique, high-risk style. Monterrey chased ghosts for most of that second leg, then watched on in disbelief as the Crew turned all that effort against their hosts.
In MLS, these things just do not happen. It’s not just conventional wisdom that says to park the bus when playing in Mexico; it’s hard-won knowledge, a response stemming from justifiable fear.
Years of heavy losses showed that between the charged atmosphere and the different caliber of player available to Liga MX clubs, MLS teams had a very limited range of options to select from to advance in Concacaf knockout play.
The script goes something like this: Somehow win at home by multiple goals, then go to Mexico and hang on for dear life. If your goalkeeper plays out of his skull, and the referee isn’t completely cowed, and you get some good fortune on top of that, then — maybe, and only once in a while — you survive.
Columbus has not simply survived in this Champions Cup, nor have they been carried by a transcendent superstar. They were every bit as good as Tigres in the quarterfinal, and deserved their victories in both legs over Monterrey. Cucho Hernández, between team discipline and injury, hasn’t been the hero. Diego Rossi is the Crew’s leading scorer in this competition, while goalkeeper Patrick Schulte was the star of a penalty-kick triumph over Tigres.
In terms of approach, this Crew team functions outside of MLS norms, particularly given the league’s history of playing follow-the-leader when it comes to tactics. Going all the way back to the league’s formative years, the rhythm involves one team succeeding with a given approach — going all-in on a playmaker like Marco Etcheverry, or the counter-attacking nightmare that was the Galaxy side built around Landon Donovan and Robbie Keane — and the others falling in line.
Columbus has its success, and has been showered with praise for its stylish play, but what it doesn’t yet have is a copycat. The Crew’s willingness to welcome pressure comes in a league full of high-pressing teams. Possession-oriented teams in MLS are fairly traditional, or are looking towards the positional play espoused by Manchester City under Pep Guardiola. No one else wants to give the Crew’s approach a shot.
And yet, in so many ways Columbus is MLS. This club has hit all the familiar notes since coming online for the league’s first season: a weird logo, a historic (if rustic) home venue, and an existential threat. You’re not an MLS original without those experiences.
Columbus pulls its club legends from the same two groups (CONMEBOL attackers arriving towards the end of their prime years, or hard-working U.S. men’s national team standouts) that most of MLS has gone to over the years.
The current version is, in some ways, not an exception at all. Cucho required major Designated Player spending, but most teams have a player that cost more than $5 million to bring in from abroad at this point.
Schulte came to the club via the SuperDraft, while the club’s academy system — bolstered by its successful MLS Next Pro squad — has produced players like Aidan Morris and Sean Zawadski. Astute trades have landed a foundational player in Darlington Nagbe as well as defensive starters like Rudy Camacho and Malte Amundsen.
In other words, Columbus hasn’t reinvented the wheel, nor are they pushing the outer limits of the rulebook like Inter Miami. The Crew are just better at being a normal MLS team than anyone else has been in recent years.
MLS has always hoped to see its teams not just win at this level, but to win “the right way,” whatever that means during a given period’s trends. The league’s structure doesn’t include the punishment of relegation, and the frankly unhealthy levels of pressure seen in some places don’t exist here. A player that misses a stoppage-time penalty kick on Saturday can go grocery shopping on Sunday without fear of being accosted.
And yet, over the years so few teams have actually taken this opening to be distinctive, to do something no one else in the league has really done. One of the league’s great heartbreaks in Concacaf play came when a Real Salt Lake team built with an unusual commitment to keeping the ball fell to Monterrey in the 2011 final.
That side stood out not just because MLS had failed to send a team to a Concacaf final in the preceding decade, but because RSL played “the right way.” Their defeat was mourned because they didn’t get the reward for coloring outside of MLS’s lines.
Columbus, by just about any definition, plays “the right way.” In a sea of high-pressing teams who play the percentages, work extremely hard, and get physical, the Crew are an island. Columbus sees a team that wants to deploy a high line of contention, and is glad. The Crew encourage teams: come closer, pressure the ball, chase it!
Somehow the major recurring image of a Crew game under Nancy is Crew defender Steven Moreira standing still, the ball at his feet…and it’s exhilarating to watch. It calls to mind the primal, empathetic fight-or-flight response evoked by a matador, just without the nihilistic violence of a bullfight.
Wilfried Nancy for king imo.https://t.co/6gxmDr1kov pic.twitter.com/uYArbTnLOZ
— Matthew Doyle (@MattDoyle76) April 25, 2024
Monterrey doesn’t plan on sending seven players within 30 yards of the Crew goal in this sequence. It’s not what they want at all. And yet, they keep being convinced to risk just a little bit more: one more five-yard sprint, one more player stepping high. You can almost hear them buzzing with anticipation of winning the ball in the attacking third.
And yet, like the unwitting supporting players in a slasher flick, every player making that individual choice to step high and leave a safe position is jogging to their doom.
Los Rayados start the above sequence with one player holding space up high. By the time the Crew break the press, fully seven blue-and-white-striped shirts are 80 or more yards away from their own goal, watching as Columbus breaks the other way.
MLS teams have long talked a big game in terms of aspiring to a style of play, but when push has come to shove, most choose safety over dogma. There have been a few “this is who we are” true believers over the years, but none have been able to execute at this high a level. Again: this is the Crew doing this to Monterrey, a club serving as pioneers in Concacaf in terms of expenditure on players.
Aidan Morris, in a quote published by MLSsoccer.com, summed up the Crew, but also gave away how very unlike its MLS peers this team really is.
“[Nancy] says it’s an infinite game, so he’s always pushing us to try new things [and] experiment,” said the young USMNT prospect. The idea of a coach approaching Concacaf play and talking about infinite possibilities — of opening the tactical door to more, rather than less — is unprecedented.
This Columbus side will live long in the memory regardless of what happens on Saturday; their accomplishments, as Crew fans will surely tell you, are already massive.
However, a win at Estadio Hidalgo will mark not just the biggest moment in the club’s 29-year history. It would be a high-water mark for what is possible for MLS as a league, as well as an extraordinarily clear example of what can be done in this restrictive league with the right players, coach, and framework.
A win on Saturday doesn’t just cement this Crew team as one of MLS’s great sides. This is the chance to shift the entire trajectory of a league, to show every other club what lies beyond the horizon.
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