The Columbus Crew has fired head coach Henrik Rydström, the club announced Sunday.
Rydström joined the Crew this winter and departs after just 14 league games in charge. The Crew has 13 points and next play on Wednesday in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open Cup.
“You have to look at it from three sides,” GM Issa Tall told The Athletic. “One is obviously results, we have three wins in 14 games. … Two is in the way we want to play. It’s been better now than earlier in the season, but it’s still not there. An example is last night. Lastly, culturally it did not click. We believe a change was much-needed.”
Assistant coach Laurent Courtois will take over as interim head coach. Assistant coach Theodor Olsson and analyst Mak Pakhei have also departed the club. The Crew has one more league match remaining before MLS takes a six-week break for the World Cup.
“We’re not here to lower expectations,” Tall said. “I think with 20 games to go, we will turn it around.”
More than the disappointing results, the Crew played like a shell of themselves from previous years. Under former boss Wilfried Nancy they were aesthetically pleasing to watch, focused on dominant and vertical possession, with a lot of goals. The Crew scored 19 times in 14 games this year, were 23rd in expected goals and 20th in chances created.
Rydström never won the players’ buy-in, sources briefed on the situation say.
“Similar to a player signing, you never truly know until they are here,” Tall said. “You can do all the scouting reports, data analysis and then it doesn’t work out for some reason. With Henrik, we ran a great process, in my opinion. Talking and meeting with him multiple times, going through the data, background checks and references. Then he came here and there was just a disconnect.”
Before Columbus, Rydström was previously manager of Malmö in Sweden, where he won two league titles. He took over this winter after highly successful Crew coach Nancy departed to take over at Celtic.
“You don’t have to be an expert to sense something was off,” Tall added.
Columbus Crew general manager Issa Tall. (Jason Mowry / Getty Images)
Courtois re-joined the Crew this winter as an assistant. He originally joined the organization in 2019 as an academy coach before becoming the head coach for the Crew’s second team in their inaugural MLS Next Pro season in 2022. He won the league and was named Head Coach of the Year and was then hired by CF Montréal as head coach.
“If Laurent wasn’t with us, we probably would have waited (to make a change),” Tall admitted. “Laurent is one of us. He has clear ideas on how he wants to play, we saw that here and in Montréal, we’re excited about working closely with him.”
Nancy is still without a club following his quick dismissal from Celtic, but Tall deflected a question about Nancy’s future.
“Look, we want to give Laurent a shot and he deserves it,” Tall said. “Last I remember, Wilfried has European aspirations. We want to stick to Laurent and give him the best tools to succeed.”
Columbus is the fourth team to make a coaching change already this season (Orlando City, Inter Miami, CF Montréal).
The Crew doesn’t have a ton of high-level roster flexibility without departures. All three designated player slots are filled. One is star Diego Rossi, another is injured forward Wessam Abou Ali and the third is Daniel Gazdag. Gazdag, acquired last Spring, has struggled mightily since arriving from the Philadelphia Union.
Abou Ali is out for the season and could be placed on the season-ending injured list to open one DP slot up for now.
All three U-22 initiative slots are filled and the club has a number of TAM-level contracts, meaning much of the salary cap is tied up. U.S. national team wingback Max Arfsten has had clubs interested abroad for some time, including rejected bids from Toulouse and Middlesbrough in the past.
Still, Tall believes there is enough flexibility to improve the team.
“We plan on bringing in players to strengthen the roster, I think we have flexibility,” Tall said.
