Offense will again feature two systems
Crew SC coach Gregg Berhalter and his staff pored over film of English Premier League teams Tottenham and Chelsea, and Italian team Juventus as they built the framework last offseason for a three-center-back system.
Then came the challenging part: Teaching two systems — a 3-4-2-1 and 4-2-3-1 — simultaneously to a team that isn’t Tottenham, Chelsea or Juventus.
The Crew worked through pushback and inconsistencies in 2017 before finding an equilibrium in which it had the personnel to be effective in a 4-2-3-1 while also the unpredictability that came with having played many games in a 3-4-2-1.
Berhalter said not to expect too much change from that setup this season.
“I would guess that you’re gonna see two 1 p.m. Saturday Ch. 6 WWCD-FM (102.5)
systems throughout this year,” he said. “I’m pretty confident in that.”
In that sense, the Crew’s biggest advantage in 2018 might be continuity. It lost its top two scorers in Justin Meram and Ola Kamara to offseason trades but brought back 18 players who have a working knowledge of the team’s systems, making much of the preseason an exercise in reinforcement rather than installation.
“We didn’t delve into a whole new system,” Berhalter said. “There was less (teaching) but we also had new guys we needed to integrate and because of that we wanted to keep it as simple as possible and really focus on our core principles and how we want to play, and we’ve been doing that.”
The Crew went 3-0 to win the Carolina Challenge Cup preseason tournament in Charleston, South Carolina. Wil Trapp, who begins the season alongside Artur, his same midfield partner for much of last season, noted the team’s cohesiveness over its three-game stay.
“I think that will be something that bodes well for us as long as we don’t take anything for granted,” Trapp said. “We have a whole another year of guys that know the system, have been battle-tested and know what it requires.”
Midfielder Pedro Santos played in a system similar to the Crew’s with Braga in Portugal but was thrown into the deep end — and into a playoff race — when he was acquired from the Portuguese club in August. With his first full Major League Soccer preseason under his belt, the 29-year-old wing feels he is better prepared going into the season.
“When you arrive in the middle of the season, you need time to adjust to the team and know the players,” Santos said. “I think it’s important to start in the beginning (of the season).”
Santos and the rest of the Crew’s returners begin 2018 with a better sense of the team’s purpose after a season that was for months a feeling-out process as players tried to build comfort amid a flood of information.
“It’s almost like once you get it, then tinkering little stuff here and there doesn’t seem like such a big project,” defender Josh Williams said. “That’s just a little part of the field we can tinker with and everything else stays the same.”