New coach Wilfried Nancy brings a gale of fresh air to the Crew's offense | Michael Arace
The Crew have a new coach, Wilfried Nancy, who brings with him a new system. It cannot be installed overnight. In fact, it’s not yet fully installed, not even after six weeks of training camp.
“I’m impressed with how far we’ve come,” team president and general manager Tim Bezbatchenko said, “but I don’t think we’re there yet.”
Bezbatchenko described Nancy as layering on concepts.
“He’s still holding some stuff back,” Bezbatchenko said. “He doesn’t want to throw too much at them at one time.”
For an idea of the process, here’s a story from someone who played for Nancy in Montreal:
Alistair Johnston might be a fantastic name for a British author of Cold War espionage fiction, but in this case, we're talking about the defender with a couple of pretty good years in Nashville before being traded to Montreal in 2021. He had a career year under Nancy in 2022, and Johnston followed that with a fine showing for Canada at the World Cup, leading to his contract being sold to powerhouse Celtic of the Scottish Premier League.
In sum, Johnston (and a few of his Montreal teammates) went from MLS good to internationally coveted in one year.
“It was difficult coming into this system,” Johnston said of Nancy. “And the coaching staff was very clear with me. They said, ‘You’re going to have to forget how you were taught to play, to a certain degree.’ Because as a defender, you’re instinctively taught, how fast can I move the ball forward? Whereas here, it’s like, how long can you wait, until a striker steps on your toe, before you pass the ball.”
Nancy hasn’t gone into great detail about what he’s going to trot out for the season opener against the mighty Philadelphia Union at Subaru Park in Chester, Pennsylvania, Saturday night. Yet, it’s no secret he cottons to a version of a 3-5-2 formation. In Montreal, his base was a 3-4-2-1, with three backs, two wing backs flanking two holding midfielders and three attackers.
There are a lot of moving parts and communication is imperative. Once the concepts are mastered, there’s a lot of freelancing, especially in the attacking third. The formation can be flipped, too, into a defensive posture with five backs, who might also look for counter-attacking opportunities.
The design is to push the opponent to defend. Optimally, the Crew will be going forward, pressuring, and looking to capitalize on mismatches and mistakes. All of his requires a lot of rewiring of players – backs (like Johnston) who are comfortable with the ball under pressure; wingbacks with big engines and one-on-one capabilities; creative attackers who can read the defense, and their teammates, and improvise.
As Charles Boem of mlssoccer.com described the 2022 Montreal team, Nancy created “a happy, egalitarian collective (and also instilled) one of MLS’s most intriguing tactical identities, a methodical approach to possession buildup that seeks to draw out opponents, frustrate, then expose them.”
Ambition!
Last season, Nancy’s Montreal team ranked second in the league in victories (20), third in points (65), fifth in goals (63), fifth in goal differential (plus-13) and was among the top five in a host of attacking statistics, including goals scored from inside the box. Why did he leave? If one phrase would do, it would be “meddling owner.” One might also note that Bezbatchenko, after parting ways with Caleb Porter, had a laser focus on Nancy.
Porter won an MLS Cup in 2020. In his three seasons that were not shortened for pandemic reasons, Porter was 33-46-32 with zero playoff appearances. Whenever his high-possession, 4-2-3-1 formation got moldy, he tended to carp about a lack of personnel. There’s no need to delve, once again, into last season’s choke-o-rama – but one might note that Nancy is regarded as one of the brightest on-field tacticians in the league, and he tends to own the second half. (See: what he did against the Crew on August 3, 2022.)
“We’re going to evolve and improve over time,” Bezbatchenko said. “Maybe that’s something we didn’t do the last two years – get better and show more flexibility as we go along, even during a match.”
Crew fans might be concerned about holes in the roster, particularly after center back/captain Jonathan Mensah was traded to San Jose earlier this month. Bezbatchenko is asking for patience, which is a tough sell after two years of boring soccer and abject frustration.
“We want to see what our Crew 2 players can do,” Bezbatchenko said. “The old line is, after 10 games, you really see what you are. We probably have a five- to 10-game period where we’ll be asking, ‘What are we?’ We’ll get a read. We have the cap (space) and the GAM (general allocation money) to add, and we have until the end of April to do it.”
The past two seasons have been as joyless as a 2-1 loss with zero shots on goal in the second half and a blown lead in extra time. At the outset of a new era, Nancy may be offering a 5-3 loss or two, and if you’re a Crew fan, you can probably handle that if there is the promise of victorious romps in the not-too-distant future.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Are the Columbus Crew and MLS playoff team? We have to wait and see
