Columbus Crew Finally Feel Cucho Hernandez Absence During Painful Week | OneFootball

Columbus Crew manager Wilfried Nancy has already gained a reputation as a borderline miracle-worker for his seemingly infinite ability to plug and play different footballers into his system and accrue similar results.

But after Real Betis swooped in to pry Cucho Hernandez away from the 2023 MLS cup and 2024 Leagues Cup champions at the European winter transfer deadline, Nancy appeared to elevate his craft even higher early in the 2025 MLS campaign. Unitl this week.

After succumbing to a 3-0 defeat in Concacaf Champions Cup play at LAFC in midweek, Columbus followed that with a thoroughly boring 0-0 draw against a Houston Dynamo side that -- understandably, given their own roster situation -- didn't show a whole lot of interest in attacking.

It's OK, and maybe even important, for clubs to test the limits of what they can achieve with their current rosters before seeking reinforcements. But now sporting director Marc Nicolls should understand two different types of Kryptonite his current squad are vulnerable to without a playmaker of Cucho's MVP-finalist caliber:

On Bouanga-like brilliance

It's unclear anyone could've contained the LAFC talisman Bouanga in the kind of mood he was in at BMO Stadium in Leg 1 of a Concacaf Champions Cup series on Tuesday night.

Yes, it was a group approach that put LAFC on the front foot as a team. But the decisive difference in the game was two spectacular, if staggeringly different individual efforts from the Gabon international.

Sometimes your best players have your best games, and you tip your cap. And to a certain extant that was the case in Southern California. But you could certainly argue Cucho might have been able to counter with a moment of his own to get a crucial away goal in the two-leg tie.

Or maybe his presence in Nancy's lineup would've made LAFC far more cautious once going up 2-0, instead of throwing the numbers forward that they did in search of the third that eventually came off Nathan Ordaz's thunderous volley.

On Bennyball

Then on Saturday afternoon, Nancy's crew faced more or less the exact opposite challenge in a Dynamo squad that has lost even more key pieces from last season than Columbus has, and one that was desperate to get its first point of 2025 no matter how ugly it looked.

That's a pragmatic way to play when you're still trying to figure out how to replace the production of Hector Herrera and Adalberto Carrasquilla. But it should be a fatiguing one, and one that at least leads to some quality chances the longer a game wears on.

And yet four days removed from their trip West, what stands out most about Columbus' numbers is just how little goal threat they generated after halftime.

The Crew finished with 0.9 expected goals, but more than half of that resulted from Mo Farsi's one dangerous chance moments before halftime, forcing Andrew Tarbell's lone difficult save. According to the data, Columbus' most dangerous chance of the second half had only a 0.05 xG value.

That lack of goal threat could not have been more opposite from the Crew last season, who were second in MLS in goals-per-shot in 2024 and fourth in the league in expected goals per shot. Cucho wasn't directly responsible for that; in fact he dragged Columbus' xG-per-shot numbers down with his own efforts on goal.

But his willingness and ability to try the unpredictable was an important key to unlocking approaches like the Dynamo, which are all about keeping shape and stopping the predictable.

What now?

The good news is that Columbus is still a very good roster, and will likely see its competitive burden lessened soon unless they pull off a miracle reversal in Leg 2 at home against LAFC in the aggregate goals series.

But any thouhts that Diego Rossi could assume the creative reigns for Cucho to keep the Crew at the level they were at are probably overly optimistic. There's enough to keep this Columbus team in the playoff places in the short term. However, to be the caliber of team they've been in the previous two seasons, reinforcements are clearly needed. If there was any doubt, this was the week that showed it.