Write On Sports LLC - "Columbus Crew 2006: Curse of the Yellow Jersey" by Jeff Bull

Columbus Crew 2006: Curse of the Yellow Jersey

2006-12-11 19:31:16 | By: Jeff Bull

"Unfortunately, we still wear the same jerseys so we have the same negative things for people to say about us."
- Kyle Martino, MLSnet.com, 3/24/2006

I stumbled across this old quote from former Columbus Crew midfielder Kyle Martino just as I was thinking about how to frame the Crew’s miserable 2006. Martino has moved on - to the Los Angeles Galaxy - but the Columbus Crew has not. With a new coach and a slew of new players, Crew fans and staff anticipated a dreaded “transitional” season. All in all, Columbus enjoyed a “transition” as successful as the cast of Different Strokes made to adulthood. It gets one wondering: maybe Martino said more than he knew when he mentioned those yellow jerseys?

New Men

After missing out on the 2005 post-season, Columbus did more than make some changes: they organized a veritable parade of personnel coming and going. The biggest loss from 2005 was Simon Elliott, who joined Fulham FC in the English Premier League; that loss wasn’t covered till fellow Kiwi (that’s a New Zealander) Duncan Oughton returned in September. But the Crew more than made up for the quantity side of the equation. If nothing else, the hiring of Sigi Schmid as head coach, who had previously enjoyed some success with the LA Galaxy, pre-figured some movement. Coaches tend to seek out familiar players and Schmid was no different, arranging early-season trades - notably, with his old club in LA. He brought in midfielder Ned Grabavoy and forward Joseph Ngwenya while shipping out long-time Crew key-man Kyle Martino and striker John Wolyniec, one of the league’s true journeymen; in another move he acquired Ezra Hendrickson.

Schmid did plenty of shopping outside LA as well, going as far afield as Chile to pick up defender Marcos Gonzalez and midfielder Sebastian Rozental; expectations were high for the latter in particular. Trades with Red Bull New York followed: crafty midfielder Eddie Gaven and defender Chris Leitch came to central Ohio while Edson Buddle, a forward Columbus had waited on to blossom for years, left for the Big Apple; they picked up Tim Ward by the same route, sending veteran midfielder Chris Henderson the other way. There were more changes still: American midfielder Jacob Thomas came home from Germany’s third division; Ricardo Virtuoso came up from Brazil; and draft-day 2006 saw Schmid earn an “A” for brining in players like Kei Kamara, Brandon Moss, and Jason Garey to name a few. Wholesale change only begins to describe it.

The Bad

A losing streak in league play that stretched from June to August suggested the Crew sought to lay official claim to “worst-in-league” status by topping Real Salt Lake’s epic 18-game winless-games streak. The Crew ended well shy of it - at 13-games, for the record - but the frustration was so deep by then that Schmid conceded he may be the problem during a post-game interview and talked about resigning. Schmid never resigned and the Crew, to some observers at least, ended the season on an up. But something he said during that same dispirited interview captured Columbus’ season as well as anything:

"The one constant besides injuries for us is that there is always somebody that comes up with an awful game."

The worst of a bad season can be summed up in one word: injuries. The problem never abated entirely, but the Crew hit bottom early in the season - and hit it hard. Following a May 20 loss to DC United, the Crew’s four starting defenders were either injured or recovering; in midfield, with Gaven and Thomas hobbled, Rozental unfit by his own admission and promising young players like Danny Szetela laid up for close to the entire season Schmid’s game-day line-up looked Napoleon’s army heading back from Russia. And the field didn’t hold a candle to injury problems in goal. The two expected starters - John Busch and U.S. National team bubble candidate Johnny Walker - both went down early. By mid-May, when none of the four ‘keepers on the roster were healthy enough to start, circumstances forced Schmid to plug the hole by acquiring a rookie named Noah Palmer from Real Salt Lake and starting a player named Dan Popik who is no longer with the team. Though the Crew eventually closed out the season with Bill Gaudette as the (almost) regular starter, the unsettled situation at the back unsettled the entire team.

Injuries aside, the players the Crew could field struggled plenty through inexperience or plain bad play. The record speaks for itself: apart from threatening the winless mark, the Crew set the current low-water mark for goals-per-game average by scoring 30 goals in 32 games; it would have taken only two fewer goals to slip under the lowest-ever goals total, which was set in 2004 by the Colorado Rapids at 29 over 30 games. Closer to home, they managed the lowest home-win total in club history (4 wins from 16 home games). And that brings us to the hard part...

The Good

A few individual players showed some promise - specifically, Garey at forward and Virtuoso, who had a personal coming-out party on September 2 against the New England Revolution. But what good comes from a season in which your team not only picked up the “honors” cited above, but was also the first eliminated from the post-season? Not much. If one squints hard enough, they can make a case for the Crew defense, which ranked comfortably in the league’s average.

Wrap-Up

Truth to tell, 2006 was one ugly year in central Ohio. It was as if fate took the miseries that typically visit a professional sporting team and multiplied them by a factor of two. Before and after that musing about resigning in August, though, Schmid maintained considerable poise in the face of what seems fair to call a cursed season and he looks set to continue to do so. Again, maybe it’s the jerseys, the Crew’s somber history suffocating the merest breath of optimism before it grows into something players and fans don’t understand.

The Future

After reviewing all that, it’s possible readers can forgive me for remaining pessimistic about the Crew’s future. To begin, they’ll still play in the tough Eastern Conference; the addition of Toronto FC won’t help them because the number of available playoff spots doesn’t expand with their arrival. Columbus appears unlikely to take advantage of factors like the designated-player - aka, the Beckham Rule - to bring in a top-caliber talent; they could trade it away as Chivas USA did, but it’s hard to picture anyone big getting too excited life in Ohio (I know; I was born there). The Crew’s best hope lies in a stable year, a chance for young players like Garey, Virtuoso, and Gaven to get more time together; it’s also another season for players like Rozental to enter the season not only fit and ready to play, but more familiar with the league. Columbus has the players to compete well enough, but they’ve got to stay healthy for that to matter.

All in all, though, it’s hard to hope, though. For starters, there’s that curse to cope with....

Editor's Note: This is part of a series wrapping up the 2006 season for each of Major League Soccer's 12 teams. Readers can find other entries in the series by clicking on the author's byline.

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