The 3 biggest questions facing the Columbus Crew in 2023
After a tumultuous 2022 season that saw the Crew struggle mightily in late-game situations and miss the playoffs for the second consecutive year, general manager Tim Bezbatchenko knew he needed to make a change.
Immediately following the season-ending loss to Orlando City, Bezbatchenko fired coach Caleb Porter. Two months later he hired Wilfried Nancy away from CF Montreal.
Just under three months after Nancy’s hiring, the Crew are opening the 2023 season tonight at Philadelphia. Here are the five biggest questions facing the Crew as they head into the new season.
How quickly will the Crew adapt to Nancy’s style of play?
When Nancy took over at CF Montreal ahead of the 2021 season, it took his team some time to fully adapt to his philosophies. Some players even described it as having to re-learn what they’d previously known about soccer.
In 2021, Montreal went 12-12-10 and finished 10th in the Eastern Conference. In 2022, Montreal produced the best season in the history of the franchise, with a 20-9-5 record that landed the club second in the Eastern Conference and third in the overall league standings.
The Crew are starting from a stronger place in terms of roster talent than Montreal did in 2021, but they will still be far from a finished product in the beginning. Nancy said throughout preseason that the Crew were on track with where he wanted them to be, and he took a methodical approach to installing his tactics.
But the regular season is a different beast than preseason, and in the early going the speed with which the Crew adapt to Nancy’s tactics will be one of the top questions.
“What I’ve been really impressed with is Wilfried’s understanding of the principles we’re trying to execute in preseason, and they’re going to be different than we will be trying to do in mid-summer, and then different in the fall,” Bezbatchenko said. “The team is going to look one way now, and obviously we’re going to try to pick up as many wins as we possibly can in the beginning of the year, but then how does it progress and evolve and become better throughout the year? That’s something that is exciting to see Wilfried understand, as well as the coaching staff.”
Will the lack of proven depth be a problem?
Bezbatchenko and Nancy have expressed confidence in their roster, and there’s
an intention to involve younger players more. That intention aligns with the Crew’s long-term plan, but at the moment it means the Crew head into 2023 with a roster relatively light on seasoned veterans in depth positions.
The core of the roster features plenty of experience — goalkeeper Eloy Room, striker Cucho Hernandez, midfielders Lucas Zelarayan and Darlington Nagbe, among a handful of others — but beyond that the Crew will be relying on a mostly unproven group. Midfielder Aidan Morris is on the edge of being a core
player, heading into his first full season as a starter, but backups are homegrown players Isaiah Parente and Sean Zawadzki, who have played a combined 500 minutes at the MLS level.
Kevin Molino and Steven Moreira add experience to the likely starting group, and Moreira in particular could be a core player but is being challenged to play a new position at center back, and that comes with a learning curve.
Evan Bush at goalkeeper, Jimmy Medranda at left wingback, Christian Ramirez at striker and Josh Williams at center back are
the only presumed backups with significant experience.
To an extent, this is a required part of the Crew trying to get younger. At some point, players who haven’t played much before have to see significant time, or the development pathway the Crew are working to create will end at the bench of the first team.
But, as it stands, the Crew are only a couple of injuries away from having to lean heavily on an unproven group of players, and that could be problematic in the depths of the season.
Will the Crew qualify for the playoffs after missing two years in a row?
This is the fundamental question facing every team ahead of a new season, but it’s still an important one for the Crew. Missing the playoffs in both 2021 and 20222, after winning MLS Cup in 2020, cost Porter his job.
On Tuesday, MLS announced the 2023 playoff structure. After instituting a single-elimination structure in 2019, the league has gone back to playing a series for the first round. Additionally, nine teams per conference will make the playoffs — an increase over the seven teams per conference who qualified previously.
The eighth and ninth seeds in each conference will play a single-elimination wild card game, and following that the eight teams remaining in the playoffs will play a bestof-three series for the first round. The playoffs return to single elimination for the conference semifinals, conference finals and MLS Cup.
With nine teams making the playoffs, the Crew’s path is easier than last year. The front office and coaching staff maintain a belief that last year’s roster was talented enough to make the playoffs and was doomed by the lategame collapses, so if that problem is solved this year, making the playoffs should be straightforward for the Crew.