Offseason Guides: Columbus on the brink and Nashville on the rise

Only one game left in the 2025 MLS season. But we’ve still got a bunch of these guides left to do. Maybe I should’ve done six per week? Oh well.

Here are the post-mortems for MLSsoccer:

• Western Conference dregs
• Eastern Conference dregs
• Wild Card losers
• Round 1 Sweeps
• Round 1 three-gamers
• Cincy & Philly crash out
• Loons & LAFC reach the end
• SDFC set a record and NYCFC set their path

Only two of those left: Vancouver and Miami, who were – in my opinion – clearly the best teams in the league down the stretch and then in the playoffs. This is the third time in four years that we’ve seen the best of the best go head to head for MLS Cup.1

Ok, in we go:

Columbus Crew

2025 finish: 7th in the East on 54 points, as injuries and the departure of Cucho Hernandez narrowed their margins too much. Still a good team, but no longer great.

Biggest question: What do they do when Wilfried Nancy leaves?

It’s all but certain Nancy will become the next coach of Celtic FC (that’s their official name; you can call them Glasgow Celtic if you’d like, I won’t judge you) sometime in the next few days or weeks.

I’ve had my fun at the expense of Scottish soccer over the years, but Celtic’s a global club that gets Champions League games every single season, has an overwhelming talent advantage in league play and writes checks that don’t bounce. This makes much more sense for Nancy than a mid-table French club that just needs to survive the drop.2

It is a gut-punch for the Crew, though. Nancy put together a game model that was at once both free-flowing and rigidly structured. It encourages individual improvisation but also demands the highest level of collective accountability. As so:

Please watch that video. It’s the best MLS-focused coverage anyone’s produced this entire season.

Anyway, Laurent Courtois is the former Crew 2 coach who got a year with Montréal and then got shown the door. He couldn’t quite replicate Nancy’s system. Kelvin Jones succeeded Courtois with Crew 2 and had a good 2024 – playing something close to Nancy’s system – before spending this past year on Mikey Varas’s staff in San Diego. That’s the other super-committed possession team in MLS, so that’s a lot of high-level “we’re going to disorganize you with the ball” schooling.

Then there’s Crew legend Pipa Higuain, who was this year’s Crew 2 coach. Things… didn’t go great in terms of the team’s record. I’m not sure how much that’ll weigh in the decision-making process, but it’s probably not nothing.

Anyway, if CSO Issa Tall wants to stick with Nancy’s game model, it’ll likely be one of those guys, or maybe assistants Kwame Ampadu or Yoann Damet. If he wants to go in a different direction, it’ll be someone else.

I hope he sticks with Nancy’s game model and picks one of those guys. And I hope it proves to be the right choice. But man, replicating Nancy’s success? That’s a high bar.

Top winter priority: You mean besides replacing the guy who I think is the best coach in MLS history?

Well, it seems like “replace the Cucho replacement” could be way up there. I haven’t seen anything about this on our side of the Atlantic, but Scottish press is saying that Wessam Abou Ali – who only arrived in Columbus mid-season and barely played before suffering an ankle injury – is a priority target once Nancy comes aboard and the window opens in January. For a Crew team whose shortcomings were defined by their inefficiencies/ineffectiveness in both boxes, that would be a brutal double-blow, and instantly vault “center forward” up to the top of the needs list.

And this time around Tall wouldn’t be able to take his time getting a deal across the line: he’d have to move quick. Any new coach would need match-winners to give him a little bit of breathing room while the system took hold. Deprive this team of that, and you’re probably spending the final third of the year playing catch-up in what projects to be an absolutely brutal Eastern Conference.

More to the point, Tall himself probably needs to show the fans that he can get these kinds deals done on a compressed timeline. The hardcores were not happy the slow pace of last year’s roster evolution,3 and the grumbling I’m seeing will grow in volume and perhaps increase in pitch if 2026 is a redux of that.

If there’s one lesson we all should have learned over the past decade: don’t piss off Crew fans.

State of the roster: It’s filled with really good players, young and old. It’s also thin in spots – Sean Zawadzki is, with Darlington Nagbe’s retirement, both the only d-mid on the roster and an essential starting center back. If Abou Ali is sold, it’s Jacen Russell-Rowe getting another shot up top4 with Diego Rossi, and then fingers crossed Taha Habroune continues his progress and Daniel Gazdag rediscovers his form.

What happens if the right offer comes in for Max Arfsten or Mo Farsi? What if Hugo Picard never learns where the goal is? What if Steven Moreira suddenly gets old?

The good news is they have a bunch of GAM, an open U-22 roster slot, and more than $2.5m in salary coming off the books. So Tall’s got room to maneuver here.

• 2026 TAM players: Cheberko, Herrera, Moreira, Schulte
• 2026 U-22 players: Aliyu, Picard
• 2026 DPs: Abou Ali, Gazdag, Rossi

Where the XI stands now: I’m going to assume a level of year-over-year continuity in this roster, and for now that includes Abou Ali, Arfsten, Farsi and Patrick Schulte, all of whom have had significant interest over the past year or so.

Set the over/under on the number of those guys who’ll actually be on the roster come March at 2.5, though, and I might take the under.

It’s hard to overstate how much pressure Tall is under.

3-4-2-1

• GK: Schulte
• LCB: Amundsen
• CB: ???
• RCB: Moreira
• LWB: Arfsten
• DM: Zawadzki
• CM: Chambost
• RWB: Farsi
• AM: Rossi
• AM: Habroune
• FW: Abou Ali

Things to know:

• Crew fans, I’ve put it into the world a bunch already, but I’ll do it again here for your benefit: Nothing would make more sense for this team than bringing Emeka Eneli home to fill Nagbe’s shoes. Other than maybe getting in a time machine and not letting him go in the first place.

• Is a buyout possible with Gazdag? I’m still in shock at how completely he disappeared upon his arrival from Philly. That said, his underlyings remained good – 80th percentile in npxG, 77th percentile in npxG+npxA among attacking midfielders.5 Food for thought.

• This team is maybe the most obvious fit in the world for free agent Justin Haak.

Nashville SC

2025 finish: 6th in the East on 54 points, but first in the US Open Cup! Nashville at their best were an elite team, but they just didn’t have the depth to grind out top results in multiple competitions this year. IMO they were right to focus on the Open Cup, because that was their clearest path to a title.

Job done.

Biggest question: How are they gonna use that DP slot?

After 172 games across six pretty close to legendary seasons, the Walker Zimmerman era in Nashville came to an end. Zimmerman’s one of the great floor-raising center backs in league history, and about as perfect a pick-up as a new expansion team could have made.

But 1) he wasn’t playing at a DP clip anymore this year, and 2) after a brutal and scary early-season concussion, playing time opened up for a bunch of the other center backs on the roster. And while none of them were as good as peak Zimmerman, they showed collectively that they could be good enough for this team to compete at the top of the league.

And so there just couldn’t be a way to justify bringing Zimmerman back on a DP deal. He’s now a free agent and, it seems, very unlikely to return to the ‘Yotes.6

That means CSO Mike Jacobs has a very big chip to use to try to turn this team into one that can legitimately compete across multiple fronts for 10 months. And that’s what it’ll take: their season begins with Concacaf Champions Cup play in February and ends, they hope, with MLS Cup in December. It is a long, long year – 55+ games is not out of the question – and they can’t count on endless, perfect health for Hany Mukhtar and Sam Surridge.

Top winter priority: Ok yeah, I clearly think they should spend that spot in attack.

Or maybe even better, go to the 2 DP/4 U-22/ $2m GAM model7 and see if you can add contributors on basically every line? Because both fullbacks are nigh irreplaceable and old, and a midfield string-puller would be nice, and Joe Willis, like Zimmerman, is an OG who’s now a free agent.

Getting that extra GAM – they have been absolutely strapped for cash for several years now – makes a lot of roster-building sense for this team under head coach BJ Callaghan, who’s shown a willingness to develop guys who were previously on the periphery, as well as to trust younger players in bigger roles.

Even so, adding a third heat to this attack is a non-negotiable. Both Ahmed Qasem and Jonathan Pérez showed potential, but neither guy added much end product. Alex Muyl and Jacob Shaffelburg are workmanlike veterans, not match-winners, and the deep midfield in Callaghan’s 4-2-2-2 is more about shielding the backline and initiating transition moments rather than defense-splitting through-balls. More of the in-possession creativity actually comes from fullbacks Daniel Lovitz and especially Andy Najar, and like I said above, they’re old.

So somehow they need to get a wide attacker who beats defenders off the dribble AND completes plays, a reliable back-up for Surridge, heirs at both right and left back, and maybe a Hany understudy as well?

Sorry, the’s a bunch of top priorities. Jacobs will be busy.

State of the roster: Still in really good shape because the spine is mostly intact. Callaghan’s ability to get more out of those younger guys is a godsend for roster building reasons.

They should also have a good chunk of GAM to use even if they opt for the 3 DP roster model, given they declined the option on Gaston Brugman.

• 2026 TAM players: Boyd, Maher
• 2026 U-22 players: Pérez, Qasem, Yazbek
• 2026 DPs: Mukhtar, Surridge

Where the XI stands now: Very good – this team would compete for, say, Leagues Cup next season, and I wouldn’t want to face them in the playoffs, either (providing they’ve got good health). The XI is at that level.

But like I said above, they’re not built for competing in those competitions and the grind of the regular-season, and definitely not all that plus the CCC.

4-2-2-2

• GK: Schwake
• LB: Lovitz
• CB: Maher
• CB: Palacios
• RB: Najar
• DM: Yazbek
• CM: Tagseth
• LM: ???
• RM: Pérez
• FW: Mukhtar
• FW: Surridge

Things to know:

• Brian Schwake was the goalkeeper during the Open Cup run, and had very good numbers in Next Pro this past year. He’s obviously the odds-on favorite to wear the No. 1 kit in 2026 and beyond.
• Between Pérez, Matthew Corcoran and Woobens Pacius, they’ve shown a real willingness to bet on guys who were outstanding in the lower tiers. Something to keep in mind when they go shopping this winter.
• They only won once in five games following their Open Cup title. That kind of let-down isn’t at all unusual after winning a mid-season tournament, and I wouldn’t judge them too harshly. Especially since four of those games were against a Miami team that’s turned into a terrifying fucking juggernaut.

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