‘WE FELL SHORT’
Even with title, Porter’s time with Crew was uninspired mediocrity
"We assessed the 2022 season as a whole and it’s clear that we fell short in our collective goals. Namely, our goal is to consistently contend for championships. This starts with making the playoffs and then securing a home match as a top-four team in the conference. We all share in the responsibility of the results and unmet objectives this season, including myself. As part of our evaluation, we believe that we have a talented core of our roster in place and felt we needed to make a change this offseason as we position ourselves for success in 2023 and beyond.” Tim Bezbatchenko Crew president and general manager
The Columbus Crew, the first chartered team in MLS, have won three Supporters' Shields, two MLS Cups, one Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup and a Campeones Cup. That's 6 3/8 trophies, and coach Caleb Porter is responsible for 1 3/8 of them − the 2020 MLS Cup and the 2021 Campeones thingy.
The former is sometimes known as the COVID Cup and given an asterisk, as it came in a pandemic-scarred season and was won by a team that posted exactly zero road victories, and the latter is a made-for-tv event, like tournament cornhole. That said, Porter deserves credit for seizing on good fortune and winning the MLS Cup. He beat Seattle, where soccer was invented. As far as the Campeones thingy, well, it meant something to the players and to the corporate accounts of ESPN, MLS and CONCACAF.
There, in two paragraphs, was the extent of Porter's success during his three-plus years, or 1,375 days, on the job in Columbus before being fired Monday: A meaningful Cup in December 2020, and a victory over Cruz Azul in September 2021.
The rest was an uninspiring draw.
Porter's regular-season record with the Crew was 45-43-37. Over the past two seasons, as the team's payroll has risen into the top third in the league, his record was 23-23-24. It is the quintessence of mediocrity.
Porter was 14-8-8 at Lower.com Field, which is to say his Crew teams won fewer than half their games at home, which is not “elite” in the soccer world. The LDC cost some $320 million to build, not counting the tax money that went into infrastructure. It was made to host playoff games. Porter did not deliver.
Porter is a decent human being, and it's not a happy day when a decent human being gets axed. But he has to look in the mirror. He had some elite talent – up the spine with midfielder Darlington Nagbe, attacking midfielder Lucas Zelarayan, striker Cucho Hernandez – and he had the pieces to build a formidable attack. He did not get the most out of these players.
Remember, this was a team that was touted to be ahead of schedule after winning the top prize two years ago. They haven't made the playoffs since. And the question begs: Are they still in a championship window?
This year, the Crew, despite an expensive and relatively healthy roster, had identity problems.
It was a team that could attack with alacrity, but instead plodded forward. It was a team that was solid defensively, but broke down at crunch time. It had no game-in, game-out style and it did not adapt well to its opponents' changing tactics.
This year's Crew became infamous for choking. I am sorry, but there is no delicate way to put it. No one who has watched this team was surprised Sunday when the Crew blew a lead late in the second half, lost 2-1 in Orlando and piped away their chance to make the playoffs on the last day of the regular season. No one was surprised because this was a Crew team that gave up 17 goals in the 75th minute or later, including seven in the 90th minute or later.
This year's Crew set an MLS record by dropping 11 points in second-half stoppage time. If they just finished off a few more games they had a chance to win, even accidentally, they'd be in the playoffs. If they had any kind of killer instinct whatsoever, they would have been in the running for the Supporters' Shield, given to the MLS team with the best regular season record.
Porter is only the third coach in Crew history to miss the playoffs two years in a row. The first was the great Sigi Schmid, who missed three years in a row (2005, ‘06, ‘07). But he inherited a mess and, as was then custom with the Crew, he had a payroll that could fit in a sandwich bag.
Schmid's team was on the rise in 2007, when the incomparable Guillermo Barros Schelotto arrived. In 2008, the Crew dominated the league and won their second Supporters' Shield and first MLS Cup. Schmid's successor, Robert Warzycha, missed the playoffs in 2012 and his 2013 team was on its way to missing again when he was fired in early September of that year.
The Haslam and Edwards families stepped forward to buy the franchise in late 2018, when it gave the Save the Crew movement its ultimate victory. Porter was hired as coach before Tim Bezbatchenko was tapped to be the new president/general manager. Generally speaking, GMS hire coaches and, in this case, the owners hired Porter. I have oft wondered about that dynamic, about where the power concentrated in Columbus after it flowed down from Cleveland, home of the Haslam Sports Group.
On the field, Porter's teams were plagued by horrific streaks. The Crew had two five-game losing streaks, part of a 1-13-1 skid, in 2019. They lost six in a row in the midsummer of 2021, part of a 1-9 stumble, and it killed their playoff chances. This year, their penchant for conceding late-game goals persisted to the last day of the season; with control of their postseason fate in their hands, they won just two of their last 11 games.
Fan frustration is roiling after four years of the new administration. The Crew's record in Porter's three full seasons, i.e., those seasons not shortened by the pandemic, is 33-46-32 with zero playoff appearances. This year, the team clearly underperformed and, worse, was difficult to watch − especially with Josh Wolff, a former Crew assistant who was a candidate for the head job four years ago, and Pat Noonan, a former Crew player, emerging as Coach of the Year candidates in Austin and Cincinnati, respectively.
If anything, the decision to give the players a new voice was made tardily.
marace@dispatch.com