Columbus Crew: Who are these guys?

PHOENIX, Ariz. – I can go down the MLS roster and, more or less, tell you the preferred starting lineup for every team. (Well, not for newbies Vancouver and Portland. Not yet anyway.)

It’s my job to know the names and faces around MLS.

So I was floored when I got to the Columbus Crew practice Sunday in sunny Glendale, just outside Phoenix.

There could be no mistaking the team. Colorado was finishing up on another field, and the U.S. under-18s had just finished nearby, too. The dead giveaway, of course, is the Crew’s yellow and black color combo.

And yet when I wandered over to check out the goings-on, I wasn’t quite certain. I thought maybe I had found my way to a local club team that happened to use the same color scheme. Why another club would choose such a color confection, I couldn’t say. But I just didn’t recognize faces. And these guys were SO young.

Soon enough I soon spotted Chad Marshall. Then William Hesmer. Then Jeff Cunningham and a couple of others. Whew! “I’m in the right place, after all,” I thought.

Still, who are these other guys? I had to be really sneaky and pull out my little Google Phone and look up the roster so I could start telling who is who.

We all knew that Robert Warzycha’s team was going through a transition period. Gone are Guillermo Barros Schelotto, Frankie Hejduk, Brian Carroll, Gino Padula and others. In their places are … well, a lot of dudes I just don’t know. I was aware of that coming here. Still, it doesn’t hit you until you’re out there, watching the players go through paces and run around cones. Then you start to contemplate, for reals, just how different this side will be.

(Schelotto, by the way, has been spotted in Argentina playing for something called Gimnasia y Esgrima de la Plata. I got something like that once in college. Luckily, the doc had something that knocked it right out.)

Back to the Crew. In a little 11 v. 11 walk-through on Sunday, Kevin Burns and Dilly Duka were in the middle of a 4-4-2. I don’t know if that’s how it will be in upcoming Champions League games or in MLS matches in a month, but that kind of assembly can’t inspire a lot of confidence around Crew Stadium.

I spoke to Warzycha for a while after practice. He talked about Hesmer’s year and how well the guy was playing before his late-season injury. Hesmer will need to be out-of-his-skull brilliant pretty much every night out by my reckoning. We talked about Robbie Rogers and his need to be more productive. Warzycha thinks the Crew has always used him as “a sprinter.” This year, the coach wants him to be a little bit more of a soccer player.

But here was the real take-away from our talk. I asked Warzycha if it’s realistic to set the playoffs as a goal? “Absolutely.”

He admits that there was more change than he would have liked, his own choices for transition exacerbated by the expansion draft. But he expects the side to be very competitive. And seeing as Columbus resides in the weaker Eastern Conference, maybe the side can, in fact, sneak into the playoffs.

Warzycha mentioned how New York went from last place in 2009 to a spot in the playoffs last year. That’s the model, I suppose.

Then again, I don’t see anyone named Rafa or Thierry or even Juan Pablo running around at the Crew practice. Hell, I barely see guys I recognize.