Issa Tall likes to speak about his vision for the Columbus Crew and how he sees the Club (big C). He talks about the DNA forged in recent seasons, which influences every decision he and his staff make.

What is that DNA?

For Tall, it goes back to well before he was involved with the Crew. Tall came to Major League Soccer in 2013, working at the league’s headquarters in the player competition department before moving to Toronto FC’s player personnel and scouting department. Late in 2013, the Crew hired Gregg Berhalter as head coach, believing in the tactical plan the former U.S. international laid out during the interview process.

When the Black & Gold took the field for the first time under Berhalter in 2014, they played a possession-dominant style, with players trained to know where to be and how to interchange. The holding midfielder often dropped between the two center backs and pushed the fullbacks up the field, morphing a 4-2-3-1 into a 3-5-2, a 4-3-3 or whatever the game plan called for.

Teams in MLS didn’t know how to handle Columbus early on, with Berhalter constantly tinkering with tactics. Tall wasn’t alone in being mesmerized by the Crew’s play that season.

“You would watch a Crew game because it’s a proper team and the way they played,” Tall told Massive Report in a recent sit-down interview. “It was always fun to the point that I think it’s the only team I can remember, and that’s not even because now I work here, but I can remember their starting lineup, especially 2014, 2015, 2016, just because I remember how well they were playing.

“I always admired Gregg’s teams, and that’s how I see the game too.”

🚨 BONUS PODCAST ALERT 🚨

Our own @_Pat_Murphy got to chat with #Crew96 head coach Henrik Rydström and General Manager Issa Tall today. Full interview and Pat's insights below. https://t.co/IxenMWYepv

— Massive Report (@MassiveReport) February 19, 2026

After working for FIFA from 2016 to 2019, Tall returned to MLS, moving to Columbus to become the Crew’s assistant general manager of player personnel and strategy under his former boss in Toronto, Tim Bezbatchenko. Tall was instrumental in building two MLS Cup winners, one in 2020 and another in 2023, serving as Bezbatchenko’s right-hand man.

When Bezbatchenko departed the club in June 2024, Tall was promoted to general manager. Throughout his time in both roles, the DNA of the Crew, the identity he associates with the Black & Gold, was “paramount” to every move he and those who work with him have made.

This includes appointing a head coach.

Heading into this offseason, Tall and technical director Marc Nicholls didn’t know Wilfried Nancy’s future. After three successful seasons as the Crew’s head coach, Nancy had attracted interest from other clubs and, during the previous season, held off on contract talks, keeping his options open. Reports of interest from Scottish club Celtic emerged, but Tall, Nicholls and Nancy went into the offseason operating as if the head coach would return in 2026.

When Celtic eventually made advances, Nancy informed Tall of his desire to take another step in his coaching career, a month into the offseason.

Despite not knowing whether Nancy would leave, Tall and Nicholls weren’t caught off guard. They had been through this process with Bezbatchenko in 2022 – the hiring cycle that led to Nancy’s appointment as head coach – and had established procedures they could refer to. Given Nancy’s success in MLS and his ambition to grow his career, they were also prepared with a list of potential candidates.

“When we knew that we needed to find a new coach, then we went back to the process (from 2022),” Tall explained. “We didn’t want to rush. We didn’t want to make assumptions; this guy is the guy. We still wanted to walk everybody through the same process. No one is skipping any stages. You have to go through one round, Round 2, Round 3 and more. And that’s what we did with Henrick and others. And the other thing as well, we didn’t want to say, we just want a coach that had MLS experience, or a foreigner, or a young guy or an old guy, because we show and we saw that there’s no correlation in terms of winning at the end. It’s just what fits for your club.”

That “fit” was easy for Tall to identify. It began when he watched Berhalter’s teams and continued with Caleb Porter from 2020 through 2022, then most recently with Nancy.

“It may sound simple, but the Crew is a fun team to watch,” Tall said. “The Crew gives you the ‘Ohs’ and ‘Ahs.’

“I remember vividly specific games, especially one in the bubble, that it was the Crew and the entertainment being a possession-oriented team. That’s when I talk about DNA. You have some teams that their identities is to be a pressing team, some that are counter-attacking teams, some being a very low block. It’s the same everywhere, even in Europe, where Atletico (Madrid) plays differently than (Barcelona). They have two different identities. And I think the Crew is one of the teams that dictate the play, have possession and ultimately is entertaining.”

As Tall and Nicholls began the interviewing process, it became clear that they weren’t the only ones who saw the Crew this way. While interviewing managers from the U.S. and abroad, it became clear that the team’s playing style had spread.

Henrick Rydström was one of the coaches Tall spoke with who already knew about the Black & Gold and identified with the possession-style of play. Columbus had caught his eye while he was with Malmö FF.

But just knowing about the Crew wasn’t enough. Tall was looking for the right fit on and off the field.

The first call with any potential coach didn’t start with tactics. Tall and Nicholls wanted to get to know the person they might hire first. Rydström, who stopped in the middle of the call to help his daughter tie her shoes, checked that box.

“He was just so natural,” Tall recalled of Rydström. “So then when we hung up on that first round, we looked at each other and we kind of smiled, ‘He’s cool.’ So let’s see how he is as a coach in the next round. But from that first interaction, he’s likable and genuine.”

After multiple rounds of interviews, Rydström was one of three finalists before being named the club’s ninth full-time head coach on New Year’s Eve. 

Since arriving in the United States early in preseason, Rydström has recalled watching the Black & Gold play. He studied the team’s performances over the last three seasons and credits Nancy for the work he did with the players to lay a foundation on which he can build.

Like Nancy, Rydström’s philosophies center on possession, but their approach to using the ball differs. Columbus’ new head coach doesn’t want his team to pass side-to-side without clear intent. He wants to be more direct, getting the ball into scoring positions more quickly. 

“Sometimes I get bored when teams just have the ball and they pass it around,” Ryström – who watches teams from Bayern Munich and Manchester City to clubs in South America – told Massive Report this week. “I like to create the feeling among the opponent and also the supporters that we go – I use this word, and that’s maybe too much, but we go for the throat. It’s not maybe a nice saying, but we attack. You try to attack. You try to put pressure on the opponent. Sometimes we play backwards to lure them up, but try to attack the penalty box.”

While Nancy follows the modern convention of spreading the field and using nearly every blade of grass, Rydström doesn’t feel that is necessary. In possession, Rydström often wants his players closer together, using their skills and combining. When they lose the ball, they are already in position to counter-press and win it back in dangerous positions.

“I started to think about it also because when we train, we are often close to each other,” Rydström explained of his tactics. “They are so good. They find solutions because they have connections. And then we start playing 11 against 11 and we get outspread and then you lose those connections. So that was the initial thought. Okay, we come closer to each other. It’s not enough, but it’s easy to start. Come closer to each other. From that, you can create principles and methods, so you make it difficult for the opponent to catch you. But do you always need full width even if you can’t have it? Do you need to? No, because we are good, so sometimes we can play through the opponent no matter what.

“So, I think I’m a little bit, if everybody does this, I like to do the opposite. But I’m more convinced and I love to win more, so I don’t do things just because other people do the opposite. But I think also there’s a benefit if you do something that not so many are doing.”

Since Tall began watching the Crew, he has seen the entertaining, possession-based style of play, but he’s also seen changes within that style. Porter’s tactics weren’t the same as Berhalter’s and Nancy’s team shifted in formation and approach. But that DNA remained.

Rydström is the latest to take that bedrock that is important to the club and put his own spin on it. 

On Saturday night, Black & Gold fans will see this version of the Crew under Rydström for the first time when Columbus travels to face the Portland Timbers. 

It is early in the Rydström era, and he has had only about a month of training and preseason friendlies to install his style of play. Even Rydström is unsure exactly what his team will look like at Providence Park, but Crew fans know fundamentally what to expect.

“The honest answer is that you never really know because you need the competitive games,” Rydström said. “We had time to try a little bit different formations, but especially we could have different starting levels. But I don’t know really how they react until it’s a noisy stadium with a lot of pressure. Maybe you have a bad start and how do we react then? Do we then start to do other things than we have agreed on?… They will not be, okay, they play in a totally different way. But hopefully we can see a team that adjusts from the things we talk about.”