IT WAS apt that the team known as Columbus SC failed to win a single point in Major League Soccer, never mind a single game. A pointless outcome from what felt like a pointless venture.

Changing the name of the defending MLS Cup champions would be a baffling decision in itself, but within the context of the Columbus Crew, and everything the Crew name stands for, it was even more bemusing.

The Columbus Crew community and wider supporter base are familiar with such threats to their club, having faced even bigger challenges in the past. 

It wasn’t that long ago that the very existence of their team was under threat from a previous owner, Anthony Precourt, who wanted to move the “franchise” to Austin, Texas.

Towards the end of 2018, it became apparent that the Save The Crew movement set up to push back against this decision had achieved the aim stated in its name. 

It was a supporter-led campaign that literally rescued the club from extinction. It meant that a Crew team were able to continue to take to the field in Columbus, Ohio, under new ownership, and were able to win the MLS Cup in 2020 for good measure.

Earlier this month, that new ownership decided to rebrand the club and, more problematically, change its name from Columbus Crew SC to simply Columbus SC.

There was an understandable uproar, as covered in the May 15 edition of the Morning Star, but the current owners of the club listened, and reversed their decision. 

They openly asked Crew supporters’ group the Nordecke: “What changes do we need to make, to make it better?”

Nordecke communications director Jeff Barger told the Star how the club’s owners responded following the recent backlash against the rebrand and name change.

“Anybody can make that mistake, but what defines the relationship between the supporters and the club, the supporters and the ownership moving forward, is what happens next,” said Barger.

“In this case, I think they did exactly what they should have. They owned the mistake. They said: ‘We messed up, this wasn’t obviously our goal, and we need to fix it.’ 

“And then at the same time, they listened to what we had to say and made changes based on that.”

The club’s owners could have avoided the trouble, the temporary damage to their reputation and the expense, caused by going down this route in the first place.

If they’d consulted fans and supporter groups throughout the rebranding process, they could have avoided such a damaging decision. 

The club have now worked together with fans to put something in place to avoid a repeat of this unnecessary episode.

So not only were the supporters able to convince the owners to reverse their decision, but they were also able to use this consultation with the club to come out of it with a net positive in terms of their influence going forward.

“That was actually the part of the meeting we had with the owners that filled me with the most excitement about the future,” Barger says. 

“Obviously getting the name back was a huge win, and we were really excited about that. But after that, the ownership — Dee Haslam, Dr Pete Edwards, JW Johnson — talked to us about how they wanted this relationship to work differently and asked for input on that, and we went back and forth.

“Two things came out of that. The first is that they’re going to hire a full-time position that’s a desk dedicated supporter liaison. So there’s going to be someone in the front office whose job it is to work with us day in and day out. 

“The other thing was that the Nordecke agreed to create a Supporters Council. A fan council representative of not just our members, but the entire Crew community.

“In doing so, not only will the supporter liaison meet with that council on a regular basis, but ownership has also agreed to meet with that council on a regular basis.

“Going forward, I’m really optimistic that we’re going to be able to prevent things like this happening again, because not only will we have a dedicated and direct tie to the front office in terms of the supporter liaison, but with that Supporters Council we’re going to have a direct pipeline to ownership, which is just not something you get very often in sports.”

The Save The Crew movement, which began during those uncertain days in 2017, has provided an underlying structure for potential supporter action which remains to this day.

This had remained relatively dormant until this past month, beyond the ongoing support for the team and the community. But when the rebrand was announced this year, the other side of this fan community was able to mobilise and take action.

“When Save The Crew ended, the mechanisms, the volunteers, all of that, didn’t just disappear, it didn’t just fade into the ether,” says Barger.

“The Nordecke picked those things up and started working with those same people in order to support the club and to help the club be successful and be better. 

“People have commented on how quickly we were able to respond, and it’s because those lessons, those mechanisms and those volunteers were still there, they were still present and ready to go. 

“For a lot of people, this was kind of the legacy of Save The Crew. We kept the team from being relocated. We saved our team, and this time we got to save our heritage.”

As well as reinstating the official name of the club as the Columbus Crew, the ownership and supporters also came to an agreement on some adjustments to a new logo.

Though the previous circular logo was popular, it was still a legacy from the former ownership that attempted to disband the Crew and up sticks to Texas. 

In this sense, the idea of creating a new brand may not have been entirely unappealing to supporters who will have been interested in creating something fresh post-Save The Crew. 

Something that recognises that important period of the club’s history but also erases bad memories of the previous ownership. This is something they have now been able to achieve following the recent dialogue.

This constructive co-operation between the owners and supporters is something clubs in Europe are now trying to create post-Super League. 

The structure and dynamics of such relationships between these clubs and their fans are still in the early stages in many cases, but English clubs could take a lot of guidance from the Crew and the Nordecke.

“The Nordecke has a board of directors elected from the Crew community and from its membership every year to be the leadership team,” Barger explains.

“One of the key commitments of that team has been ensuring we do everything we can to support the club. 

“And then at the same time that those lessons and mechanisms we learned during Save The Crew never fade away, they’re always going to be the guardians of our heritage, or the guardians of the club if needed. 

“I’m hopeful that every supporter community, for every club, finds a way to continue to make their voice heard.

“Coming out of this situation in Columbus I know we’re going to do that, but I also really hope that coming out of the Super League debacle, and things like that around the world, we start to see supporters organise and take a stand and say: as much as these are businesses, as much as these are companies owned for a profit and investments are made, they’re also our communities.

“They’re also the things that our families gather around, and that our cities rally behind. These are community assets. 

“You can own it, you can manage it, it’s your business and you can do what you want with it, but we’re also going to get organised over here and protect that community.”

Despite initial anger and a very public backlash against the rebrand, the supporters and owners have emerged from this period with a more positive relationship than that with which they went into it. 

There is now a sense of understanding and shared stewardship of the club that didn’t exist before.

As supporters around the world try to simultaneously mobilise and organise in an attempt to save their own clubs, the Crew fans have provided an example of what can be achieved when such a movement is co-ordinated, fair, inclusive, open to dialogue and has clear and realistic aims.

Even in the cases where it’s not possible for fans to own a club outright, or where replicating Germany’s 50+1 model might be unrealistic or undesirable, this has shown that ownership can, and indeed should, work on behalf of the fans and communities which define a club.