So I’ve been working on an MLS Cup thing in dribs and drabs as circumstances allow and sometimes it feels like I will never finish, but I decided that this whole section wouldn’t make the final cut for length and flow reasons. It’s a series of tangents that would otherwise bog down the narrative of the main piece, but it was still fun and interesting stuff to me, so I thought I’d cut it all out and share it separately.

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As the celebrations unfolded on the field before me, I was struck by so many random thoughts. Here are some of them. To be clear, the thoughts were more headline-level at the time, not the fleshed-out versions that follow.

* I thought about how the Crew have now won three MLS Cups with three entirely different logos. In 2008, they won with the original hard hat badge. In 2020, they won with the beautiful roundel. In 2023, they won with the, um, current logo. If they want to repeat as champs, historical trends are clear that the Crew need to roll out a new logo for 2024 ASAP.

I originally tweeted out that the Crew are the first MLS team to win MLS Cup with three different logos, but Brian Childs (@BrianDChilds on twitter) replied to make the point that the LA Galaxy had a slight alteration between their 2002 and 2005 logos, where the Galaxy wordmark changed from dark teal to green. I guess I’d need a Supreme Court ruling on that. It’s the same logo for all practical purposes, but technically different because of a slight color tweak in the wordmark portion of the logo.

But it’s indisputable that the Crew did it will three entirely distinct logo designs, and that has never happened in MLS.

* I thought about how Sigi Schmid won his MLS Cup with the Crew in his third Columbus season. And how Caleb Porter did it in his second Columbus season. And how Wilfried Nancy did it in his first Columbus season. What a trendline, and one that has reached its mathematical end point. Nancy has also kept the streak alive whereby the Crew’s three MLS Cup-winning coaches have won MLS Cup in their only playoff season with the club. It’s an oddity Nancy will surely make obsolete by this time next year, but it’s fun to add on to it for now.

* On a related note, it’s also crazy that the Crew have won MLS Cup three times and all three times they failed to so much as make the playoffs the season before. Excluding the two teams that won MLS Cup in their first year of existence (1996 D.C. United and the 1998 Chicago Fire), only six teams have won MLS Cup after missing the playoffs the prior season. The Crew represent half that total!

TEAMS THAT WON MLS CUP AFTER MISSING THE PLAYOFFS THE PRIOR YEAR

2000 Kansas City Wizards
2008 Columbus Crew
2010 Colorado Rapids
2015 Portland Timbers
2020 Columbus Crew
2023 Columbus Crew

Also interesting that Caleb Porter has coached two of these six turnaround titles in 2015 and 2020.

Anyway, the Crew have only made the playoffs in two of the last five seasons but were crowned MLS champions both times. You often think of championship teams as progressing toward that ultimate goal over the course of a couple seasons, knocking on the door a few times and learning some hard-fought lessons before finally reaching the top. But that has never happened with the Crew. The 1990s and early 2000s teams got close multiple times but never broke through. The 2015 team built on 2014 and came painfully close, but fell just short, then missed the playoffs entirely the next season. Latter-era Berhalter teams made the playoffs but didn’t crescendo with a Cup. No, that “knocking on the door and then finally breaking through” slog is not how it works here.

Columbus Crew MLS Cup seasons are surprise parties only.

* Another amazing thing I thought about is that Aidan Morris, Darlington Nagbe, and Josh Williams common players rostered at the time of MLS Cups 2020 and 2023. Much was made back in the day how Chad Marshall, Frankie Hejduk, and Duncan Oughton were the only three holdovers from when Sigi Schmid took over the team to when they the Crew won MLS Cup in his third season, but Sigi inherited a non-playoff 2005 team and gutted it to build a contender. What we just witnessed in this three-season span was a nearly complete overhaul from the 2020 champions to the 2023 champions.

Morris was the ONLY player to start both MLS Cup 2020 and MLS Cup 2023. Or even appear in both MLS Cups at all. That is absolutely bonkers.

Doing some additional research, there have been four other instances where a club won MLS Cup exactly three years after winning an earlier one. D.C. United won in 1999 after winning in 1996, the LA Galaxy won in 2005 after winning in 2002, and again in 2014 after winning in 2011, and the Seattle Sounders won in 2019 after winning in 2016. Additionally, for this very narrow purpose, I am going to apologize to San Jose Earthquakes fans and include the 2006 Houston Dynamo, who won three years after the original Earthquakes won MLS Cup 2003, prior to their relocation. Since it was the same on-field team, I will include them as a fourth instance for comparative purposes even if they were not representing the same club.

MLS Cup 1999 D.C. United featured six identical starters and on-field players from MLS Cup 1996.

MLS Cup 2005 LA Galaxy featured two identical starters and on-field players from MLS Cup 2002.

MLS Cup 2006 Houston Dynamo featured four identical starters from MLS Cup 2003 San Jose Earthquakes, plus Dwayne DeRosario came off the bench for a fifth common on-field player in 2003 and 2006.

MLS Cup 2014 LA Galaxy featured four common starters and on-field players from MLS Cup 2011.

MLS Cup 2019 Seattle Sounders featured six common starters and on-field players from MLS Cup 2016.

MLS Cup 2023 Columbus Crew featured just one common starter and on-field player from MLS Cup 2020.

Even from these other examples, it’s clear that three years is a long time in MLS, but what Columbus did between MLS titles in 2020 and 2023 set a new record for MLS Cup winning lineup turnover for titles won just three years apart.

That 2005 LA Galaxy team that previously held the record was the worst champion in league history too. They finished .500 with a record of 13-13-8 and a minus-1 goal differential. However, they finished 8^th out of 12 teams, and two of the teams behind them were the dreadful expansion seasons for Real Salt Lake and Chivas USA, the only two teams they needed to beat out to claim the last playoff spot in the Western Conference. The Galaxy went 6-1-1 against those teams and outscored them 14-5, meaning their record against the nine other established clubs was 7-12-7 with a minus-10 goal differential. That was not a good team built to contend. They were a bad team that feasted on expansion teams to grab the last playoff spot in the West, which was basically assured before the season even kicked off given that both expansion teams were in the six-team West. Then they got hot in the playoffs and won it all.

The 2023 Crew finished 3^rd out of 29 teams, then had to go on the road to defeat the number two and number one regular season teams. To rebuild from the 2020 champions to the 2023 champions with just one common starter and on-field player from those two MLS Cup finals is astonishing.

* I’m sure every MLS club aspires to have a “one club” philosophy linking the academy to the MLS Next Pro team to the first team. Likewise, I’m sure every club envies the Crew’s success with that approach. Not only was academy product Aidan Morris the only piece of on-field continuity between the 2020 and 2023 MLS Cup finals, but three players from Crew 2’s 2022 MLS Next Pro Cup championship team saw the field in MLS Cup, including two starters in Patrick Schulte in Mo Farsi, plus substitute Sean Zawadzki. Other participants in the 2022 MLS Next Pro Cup final who appeared for the Crew in 2023 included Jacen Russell-Rowe, Philip Quinton, and Keegan Hughes. Also, Isaiah Parente, who was with the Crew prior to the creation of MLS Next Pro, nonetheless started in last year’s MLSNP Cup final.

That’s a lot of people, but Schulte, Farsi, and Zawadzki are the headliners for sure, as they were on the field for the biggest game of the year. Schulte’s growth and development was noticeable throughout the season and he came up big so many times in the playoffs, including a spectacular season-saving stop in Cincinnati that made the Crew’s legendary comeback possible. Farsi played so well and fit Nancy’s scheme so perfectly that he supplanted established MLS Cup champion Julian Gressel in the starting lineup, allowing Nancy to deploy Gressel as a super sub to great effect. (The Crew would not have won MLS Cup without Gressel, whose pinpoint crosses as a super sub were essential to the Crew winning playoff games in Orlando and Cincinnati.) In MLS Cup, Farsi was entrusted to track the league’s Golden Boot winner, Denis Bouanga. From MLS Next Pro one year to the biggest assignment in MLS Cup the next year. What a journey. And Zawadzki, a midfielder by trade, was pressed into duty as a centerback when injuries forced Nancy to experiment with his three non-centerback-centerbacks lineup for a time, and he flourished in the role, even scoring some big goals along the way.

MLS Cup 2023 was not just a triumph of “Nancyball” and a team being rewarded for playing fun and attractive soccer instead of adhering to joyless pragmatism, but it was also a triumph of the “one club” philosophy on the field of play instead of a Powerpoint mission statement.

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NEW BOOK “A Massive Collection, Volume 2” is now available!

Paperback and hardcover at Amazon.
Hardcover and paperback at Barnes & Noble.

Also, for those who want to support local businesses, signed paperback copies are available at Prologue Bookshop in the Short North.

Email: sirk65@yahoo.com
Twitter: @stevesirk