Roster mismanagement led to Crew having no backup GK

A field player playing as a goalkeeper is almost always cause for attention. The only time it’s happened in Seattle Sounders history is the thing of virtual legend, when Alex Roldan strapped on the gloves after Stefan Frei was injured in second-half stoppage time and was credited with three saves to preserve a 1-0 victory over the San Jose Earthquakes in 2021.

Sean Zawadzki’s 45-minute-plus appearance as the Columbus Crew goalkeeper will be remembered for very different reasons. It wasn’t just that the Sounders scored four goals against Zawadzki or even that his play was particularly notable, it’s the circumstances that led him to being there that are already getting the most attention. This should go down in history as a classic example of roster mismanagement.

The Crew centerback was forced into goal when starting goalkeeper Abraham Romero was red-carded after he came way off his line in an attempt to stop a breakaway during first-half stoppage time. In the process of doing so, he collided with Jordan Morris and was sent off.

While hardly ideal, a goalkeeper being sent off before halftime is the type of thing that happens with some regularity. Normally, the backup goalkeeper will replace one of the field players and the game proceeds with little fanfare.

In this case, however, there was no backup goalkeeper to replace Romero, which left the versatile Zawadzki to fill in.

This predicament – and who’s to blame – is what will likely ensure that this game is remembered long beyond the 4-0 scoreline or even that it may have effectively clinched the Supporters’ Shield for Inter Miami.

To hear the Crew and head coach Wilfried Nancy tell the story, the fault is entirely with the league office, who refused to allow Columbus to sign one of their MLS Next Pro goalkeepers to a short-term loan after having used up their allotment.

There’s a lot to unpack in here and most of the reporting around this has effectively taken Nancy at his word. But digging just a little bit deeper illustrates how the Crew really only had themselves to blame.

Here’s a timeline of events that sets the scene:

• The Crew opened the season with three goalkeepers signed to first-team contracts – Patrick Schulte, Evan Bush and Nicholas Hagen.
• Bush, who was the backup, suffered an arm injury in his second appearance of the season on April 16. That left the Crew with just two first-team goalkeepers.
• On four separate occasions apiece, the Crew called up their two MLS Next Pro goalkeepers, Stanislav Lapkes and Cole Johnson, when they needed an extra player. Among those call-ups, three were so they could be the third keeper on the roster for Concacaf Champions Cup matches and another was for a friendly that was played during the Crew’s Leagues Cup bye week. Neither of them ended up getting on the field in any of those matches.
• To further bolster their goalkeeper ranks, the Crew traded $50,000 in GAM to LAFC for second-team goalkeeper Romero on Aug. 16.
• Meanwhile, the Sounders’ match at Columbus was rescheduled from June 1 to Sept. 7 due to the Crew playing in the CCC final on the same day.
• The rescheduled date fell during a FIFA international window, which was the only weekend both teams had open. In case you were wondering, both teams didn’t have an open midweek date outside of an international window, either, thanks in large part to Leagues Cup.
• As luck would have it, both Schulte (USA) and Hagen (Guatemala) were called into international duty the week of the rescheduled game. That left Romero as the only healthy first-team goalkeeper available.
• The Crew apparently tried to convince MLS to grant them a waiver that would allow them to sign either Lapkes or Johnson to an extra short-term loan but were denied.

That basically brings us up to speed to where we were before the game. The prevailing narrative coming out of this seems to be that MLS was unnecessarily obtuse in how they enforced the short-term loan limit, and that it would have been simple enough to give the Crew a waiver.

While that certainly would have been a relatively simple way to handle it, the reason for denying the waiver is equally straightforward. Essentially, the Crew were asking to circumvent the CBA. The loan limit is designed to keep teams from taking advantage of players, with the thinking being that if a player is good enough to warrant more than four loans that they should just be signed to a MLS contract.

The Crew were effectively claiming that their situation deserved an “undue hardship” consideration. The problem was that the hardship was entirely of their own making and there were numerous ways for them to address it short of getting a waiver.

The only reason the Lapkes and Johnson were out of short-term loans was because the Crew used those unnecessarily. Although Nancy suggested that Concacaf somehow forced the Crew to have three goalkeepers on their gameday roster for CCC matches, the tournament’s rules directly counter that.

As if that wasn’t clear enough, there were numerous examples of teams rostering just two goalkeepers throughout the tournament. That included the Houston Dynamo in both legs in the Round of 16 against the Crew and Pachuca in the final.

The Crew also could have chosen to sign literally any out-of-contract goalkeeper they wanted to a four-day contract to sit on the bench for the friendly against Aston Villa, but used another short-term loan in that game as well.

Even after exhausting those loans, the Crew still had plenty of other options ahead of the Sounders game to ensure they had a backup goalkeeper. The simplest thing would have been signing Lapkes or Johnson to an MLS contract, the pro-rated portion of which likely would have cost no more than $10,000.

Since Nancy said they felt that might send the wrong message, the Crew also could have signed someone else to a MLS Next Pro contract and then loaned him up. If that’s too complicated, they could have signed any free-agent goalkeeper and put him on a four-day contract, as well. Those moves probably could have been executed for as little as $2,000. The only thing they weren’t allowed to do was do another loan specifically for Lapkes or Johnson.

The Crew, of course, chose to do none of those. They got burned.