After an evening receiving more boos than a Philadelphia Santa Claus Convention, Michael Bradley wanted to set the record straight about his long-ago comments during the Crew’s attempted relocation. Comments that continue to reverberate to this day. In his eardrums. Every time he visits Central Ohio.

In November of 2017, barely a month after Anthony Precourt announced his intention to “parallel path” the first club in Major League Soccer out of Columbus and into his beloved queso-drenched bachelor party locale of Austin TX, Bradley, the Toronto FC midfielder and then-U.S. Men’s National Team captain who had played in Columbus many times, was given the opportunity to address the relocation situation. His response was not in any way supportive of Columbus. Crew fans boo him for it to this day.

So, Saturday night, after enduring a 2-0 thrashing in front of a sold-out crowd by the club whose survival plight he was publicly indifferent to, Bradley told Columbus Dispatch beat reporter Adam Jardy:

“People should go back and look at exactly what I said and see if I was really being critical of the fans themselves or the infrastructure and the investment and the stadium experience and all of those things. People should go back and read those comments word for word and understand that I’ve always enjoyed coming here.”

Fair enough! Let’s do that!

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This was the question posed to Michael Bradley on November 21, 2017:

Your thoughts on the Crew potentially not being here?

That question was a blank canvas. It did not pigeonhole him in any way. He was free to say whatever he wanted in response, if he even opted to offer a comment at all. The choice was entirely his.

So, as he has invited us to do, let’s go back and read his comments from November 21, 2017, word for word.

“On..”

“On” is a preposition. It….this is going to take forever. Let’s do it paragraph by paragraph instead.

“On one hand, you have to feel for the small group of loyal supporters they have, who have been there since the beginning, who continue to support the team and continue to come out week after week.”

Yikes. Bad start. Just weeks earlier, Precourt hatchet man Dave Greeley was infamously and hilariously duped into thinking he was corresponding with MLS exec Mark Abbott and told his catfisher that the support in Columbus was “an inch wide and a mile deep.” And here, Bradley starts out his response by echoing that sentiment with his “small group of loyal supporters” comment. When your opening remark mirrors Dave Greeley’s smear tactics against Columbus, people notice.  

“On the other hand, you can’t deny the fact that things here have really fallen behind in terms of the atmosphere in the stadium, the quality of the stadium, what it’s like to play here. I don’t know who’s at fault for that.”

Precourt and Greeley had already been blaming the fans and the city for that. Bradley never acknowledges that perhaps ownership could have any role in these failures. The only thing he has called out in his comments so far is that there is a “small group of loyal supporters.” He hasn’t called out those supporters specifically, just that there aren’t enough of them. So again, the only finger pointed thus far has been directed at the city’s fan support.

“From what I gather, there’s a lot going on and I get that and as an outsider I don’t know what that falls on, but again, the reality is that, as the league has continued to grow and grow, and that’s not the only one, but this is one of a few markets that has not kept pace.”

So Bradley says he doesn’t know who to blame, but the league has grown and Columbus has not kept up. Bland on the surface, but again, other than an admission that he doesn’t know who to blame which could theoretically mean anyone is to blame, the only group specifically mentioned in Bradley’s entire response was the “small” fanbase, which was the very propaganda being pushed by Precourt and Greeley as justification for stealing the team away to Austin.

When Columbus, the home of so many Dos a Ceros, needed the leadership and support of the U.S. Men’s National Team captain during those early #SaveTheCrew times, he just mentioned a small fanbase, said Columbus wasn’t good enough for MLS anymore, and essentially shrugged his shoulders.

And for that, he is booed. Seems simple enough. Michael Bradley said what he said in 2017 and asking us to re-read it only reaffirms that he said what we said he said. It also brings to mind all the things he easily could have said in support of our club’s continued existence, but didn’t.

In stadiums around the world, opposing players are booed for a lot less.

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People who represent themselves in court tend to fail badly. It appears this applies to the court of public opinion as well. It has now been six years since Bradley made those comments. After getting relentlessly booed by the 11^th consecutive sellout crowd in the vibrant, downtown LDC Death Star, Bradley attempted to relitigate his 2017 statements. In a total commitment to fairness, perhaps we should read those arguments word for word as well?

“People should go back and look at exactly what I said and see if I was really being critical of the fans themselves or the infrastructure and the investment and the stadium experience and all of those things. People should go back and read those comments word for word and understand that I’ve always enjoyed coming here.”

As we have established, he was not critical of the “small but loyal” fanbase, other than the Columbus fanbase being “small.” Six years later, he now says he was critical of the “investment,” but he made no such comments in 2017. He did comment on the stadium experience (i.e. fan support) and the stadium’s quality, but pointed no fingers except to mention the small fanbase, which was the exact pretext used by Precourt and Greely to justify withholding investment in Columbus and relocating to Austin instead.

He also says people should understand that he’s always enjoyed playing in Columbus. Well, that would have been a very helpful thing to tell the world about in 2017, rather than 2023. Where was his expression of his enjoyment for playing in Columbus when Columbus needed him most? His talk of all those iconic Dos a Cero matches in the spiritual home of the U.S. Men’s National Team? Maybe some words about how Columbus had already been proven to be an incredible American soccer city, and something was now amiss, and even if he doesn’t know who or what to blame, he hopes there is a solution because it’s difficult to fathom how everything could suddenly fall off like that? That there has got to be a way for someone to figure it out because it would be a real shame to lose such an important part of the league’s and our nation’s soccer history? That he doesn’t have all the facts and doesn’t know what the answer is as an outsider, but he is hoping for Columbus and the Crew to somehow come out of this better and stronger?

It would have been so easy to ruffle no feathers on any side with a blandly supportive statement like, “I know this is a business, and I don’t know all the specifics as to why things are so down right now, but based on my personal experience, I hope something works out for the better in Columbus because it has shown in the past that it can be a great soccer town,” but he neither said nor even hinted at anything like that in postgame comments in 2017. He could have saved everyone a lot of bother had he actually spoken words of even mild support six years ago.

“Fans here were not happy with the owner at the time. When you dug a little deeper and you started to understand how the things he was doing and wasn’t doing behind the scenes, the way that there had been no real effort made in the community to reach out to small businesses and make connections with supporters groups. The old Crew Stadium was the first soccer-specific stadium in this country. At that time, it had gotten to the point where the stadium itself, the structure itself, was outdated.”

Yes, the fans were not happy with the owner at the time. Very perceptive. If I may summarize as to why, they were upset about the things he was doing and wasn’t doing behind the scenes, the way there had been no real effort made in the community to reach out to small businesses and make connections with the supporters groups. You know, stuff like that. And trying to steal the team.

From day one of the relocation saga, Crew fans and local leaders were vocal about ownership’s sandbagging as a pretext for stealing the team away to Texas. One didn’t have to dig deep to know about such claims. So when a comment begins with Greeley’s small but loyal fanbase canard and makes no direct reference to any potential ownership culpability, despite ownership’s dereliction in furtherance of their premeditated relocation narrative, perhaps that is a sign that one’s comments were the problem, not the receivers of those comments.

And yes, the stadium was falling apart. Crew fans did a heroic job documenting things like leaking water, inoperable toilet stall doors hanging by a single hinge, and so forth. The stadium was being left to rot by a guy who wanted to be in Texas. But again, Bradley only specifically mentioned the “small” fanbase, which played perfectly into ownership’s relocation narrative.

“On one hand, I get it. It was an emotional time for people here, but the comments at the time were completely misconstrued.”

The words themselves were never misconstrued. Those were Bradley’s actual words at the actual time of what was actually happening. He had ample opportunity to offer his support and offered none. He echoed a prime ownership talking point leveled directly at the city’s fan support while never directly taking aim at anything else. Facts are facts. It’s all there in black and white. He insists that we re-read his actual words, when it is he who needs to do so. He refers to the original words perhaps in the naïve hope that people won’t be able to find them, as if Columbus fans didn’t already have all the receipts filed under B for “Boo, People To.”

If Bradley’s intent and true feelings were misconstrued, that’s entirely on him for not communicating clearly. One might expect a venerated leader to take responsibility for his communication failure. If that’s how he truly felt, he’d say he completely understands why fans boo him for his comments, and looking back at his words, he sees where he did a poor job expressing his true thoughts and he’s sorry that he didn’t do a better job when the fans of Columbus needed him on their side, because he has always enjoyed playing there with the National Team and even as an opponent.

But not only does he still fail to acknowledge the reality of his actual words, now it gets even worse. He told Jardy of the following in-game fan encounter at the south end of the stadium on Saturday night:

“I say this with complete humility: I joked with one of the guys behind the goal, ‘I probably played some small part in helping you guys bring a little bit of attention to your effort to save your team.’ Again, I say that humbly, but it’s always been interesting and unfortunate for me that now as the years have gone by people have taken the comments completely out of context.”

As if his Saturday night comments to that point weren’t already a symphony of gaslighting gasbaggery, he takes it all to a whole new level by “humbly” “joking” with “humility” that he played a small role in bringing attention toward saving the Crew.

DR. PETE: Even though I have seen this club up close and personal in this community for more than 20 years, I was completely unmoved by the #SaveTheCrew movement, but then Michael Bradley made some comments about a small fanbase and how Columbus hasn’t kept up with MLS, and those comments were brought to my attention, and now I’m kinda, sorta interested in saving the team. I guess. You in?

DEE & JIMMY: Sorry, we were zoning out during all this soccer talk, but did you say something about someone saying something about a small fanbase?

DR. PETE: Despite being a successful doctor, surgeon, and businessman, I am probably misconstruing his actual comments and should go back and read them word for word because the fault is surely mine for being too dense to understand what he meant, but yeah, something like that.

DEE & JIMMY:  Well, those Columbus people are going to need a nicer place to wrongfully boo that guy over their misunderstanding of his words. We can offer as many hundreds of millions of dollars as it takes for a magnificent downtown soccer stadium and majority ownership of the team. We’re all in on soccer now!

ANTHONY PRECOURT: I would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for all the attention brought on by Michael Bradley’s perfect word-for-word comments that those dumb Columbus people were too stupid to properly construe!

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There exists people, even some not named Michael Bradley, who suffer from the Bradley Boo Blues, who boohoo the boobirds, insisting Columbus fans should just let this go and it’s long past time to stop booing him. After all, Columbus won in every conceivable way. Columbus saved the Crew. Columbus celebrated another MLS Cup championship in 2020. Columbus currently has one of the most exciting teams in club history playing in a routinely sold out state-of-the-art downtown stadium. It’s time to let go and stop booing, the argument goes.

I am not in the minority making that argument. Not that I would ever personally boo Michael Bradley, because I don’t even think of Anthony Precourt anymore, much less Bradley’s blip in the overall #SaveTheCrew saga. (At least not until he suggests I re-examine that moment word for word.)

But if people want to boo Michael Bradley every time he touches the ball in Columbus, go for it. The man has played in World Cups and competed at piss-bag dodgeball in Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium. I doubt being booed by Columbus fans has the slightest impact on him. But it’s fun. People are passionate and engaged in the game. In a way, it’s an expression of civic pride and a celebration of our victory over those who were indifferent to our plight.

Someone I know complained they were asked eight different times why people were booing Bradley, which he took as evidence that the practice is outdated and irrelevant and should stop. I, on the other hand, see such queries as a wonderful opportunity to talk about our club’s history and to explain this is why people boo him. Then the curious people can do what they will with that information. Boo, probably.

Booing Michael Bradley has become such a known Crew tradition that fans snacked on black and gold “BOO” cookies at the pregame tailgate. A man once apathetic to a brazen attempt to pull our community apart now has a small role in bringing our community together. To boo him. After eating cookies that boo him.

There will come a day when Michael Bradley retires and the booing will stop. The Columbus Crew, however, will carry on. That’s all we ever wanted. That’s what we fought for. That’s the battle we won.

And we did it, as the transcript has shown, without the barest minimum of support from Michael Bradley.