Arace: For Josh Williams, it's been a great Columbus Crew run, and it's not quite over yet
Josh Williams, a defender who has spent 12 seasons with the Crew over two stints, is interlaced with franchise history like no other player, general manager, or, for that matter, owner. In the eyes of longtime fans, Williams is always there, tall, bearded, burly, stationed at right center back like a steel beam.
Williams was there in 1996 when the league’s first chartered team took to the Ohio Stadium field in MLS’s inaugural season. He was 8 years old. He was in the stands with his father.
“I remember the excitement of getting a team and how it was all brand new,” he said. “All those guys were larger than life to me – Brian McBride, Thomas Dooley, Brian Maisonneuve … I didn’t follow European football, so they were like the Real Madrid of my world. I remember seeing all the U.S. games that came later. I remember getting one call from Cleveland State that changed my life. It’s still all surreal when I think back on it.”
Williams was a three-sport athlete at Copley High, just outside of Akron. He played soccer, basketball and baseball. He was a shortstop of regional repute and was recruited to play baseball by West Virginia and Kentucky, among other schools. He got one scholarship offer for soccer, from Cleveland State, and that was it.
“I feel like I was better at baseball,” he said. “Sometimes, I think back and think that maybe the payday would have been a little different if I went the baseball route. I just didn’t have the passion for it.”
Williams, after he helped turn around the soccer program at Cleveland State, signed with the Crew in 2010. He had to work for three years to earn his first appearance with the big club. He was an important contributor to some good-but-not-good-enough Crew teams before he was traded to NYCFC, an expansion team, in 2015. He was waived in the middle of the season and claimed by then-Toronto FC general manager Tim Bezbatchenko.
Bezbatchenko was assembling a powerhouse in Toronto and, by the end of 2016 had no room on his roster for Williams. Then-Crew coach and sporting director Gregg Berhalter, who had let Williams go once, happily reclaimed him in the reentry draft.
Williams was there in 2017 when then-Crew owner Anthony Precourt announced he was “exploring” a move to Austin. Williams was part of the remarkable playoff run that was part and parcel of the existential fight for the franchise. Fans were pitted against Precourt and his league accomplices. The players were caught in between, but that had a rooting interest. They made that clear on the field.
Williams was on the field at Mercedes-Benz Stadium when the old-MLS Crew shocked new-MLS Atlanta in the first round of the playoffs. Taylor Twellman called it “the most exciting 0-0 game I’ve ever called.” It came down to kicks. Crew goalkeeper Zack Steffen thwarted Atlanta’s first two penalties, taken by Julian Gressel and Leandro Gonzalez Pirez, and Crew substitute Adam Jahn drilled home the winner in a 3-1 shootout.
“My favorite game I’ve ever played in,” he said. “Seventy thousand people. It seemed like we were playing for more than a regular playoff game. The weight of the whole situation was on our back. I think that kind of just lifted us. You don’t realize what an emotional roller coaster that was until after it's over.”
Williams was there when that playoff run met its hard end in the Eastern Conference final, where Bezbatchenko’s mighty Toronto team eliminated the Crew in a two-game series by an aggregate score of 1-0.
Williams was there in 2018, at a Grandview brew pub, when the announcement came that Save the Crew had saved the Crew. He was there, among the fans. He bought rounds. Jahn was his wingman.
“I just wanted to feel a part of it,” he said. “I wanted to feel what was going on, because it was unprecedented. Who saves a team? Nobody had ever done anything like that before. I just wanted to show up and make sure it was real. Is this happening? I wanted to celebrate. I remember all of it.”
Williams was there when the Crew won their second MLS Cup in 2020, in the old Crew Stadium. He started for Vito Wormgoor, who had tested positive for COVID, and played the full 90-plus.
Williams was there for the opening of the new stadium in 2021, through the disappointing seasons that followed. Hamstring and ankle injuries took his playing career into its denouement. He was still hanging on when coach Caleb Porter was replaced by Wilfried Nancy in December. Then came another ankle injury.
The Crew play Game 2 of a first-round playoff series at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta Tuesday night. Williams will be there, but he will not dress. He has not made an appearance this season.
“I don’t play (Nancy’s system) to the level that these guys do because, if you’re not up to speed, you just can’t do it,” he said. “The confidence that it takes play his system must be unwavering. Unwavering. Because he wants to play it from the first minute to the last. He doesn’t want to kick the ball in the corner of the field when we’re up. No, he wants ‘Show me you can play this way for an entire game.’ And he’s an incredible teacher of that.”
Nancy’s three-back, possession-based, attack-oriented system requires that all 11 players, goalkeeper included, have the guile to draw pressure and the sangfroid to pass their way out of it. Williams, in his 14th MLS season, admits that, at this point, he is not “the beast” that center back Rudy Camacho is. Instead, he has become a mentor to younger players such as Sean Zawadzki, Malte Amundsen and Yevhen Cheberko.
“Something Wilfried said stuck with me as soon as he said it," Williams said. "He said, ‘Be who you say you are.’ I think I’ve always been someone who says, whether I’m playing or not, how can I add value to the team? I never wanted the guy behind me treating me differently just because our roles were switched.
“I’m still having fun every day. I feel blessed for being able to do this for this long, and to be able to play a sport I love. I don’t want anyone to feel bad about anything that has happened. I love that Wilfried allows me to do this and treats me the way he does. Everyone has shown me an incredible amount of respect. I’m embracing my role. I just want to continue to be valuable.”
Williams was there, at least on the practice field, when the incomparable Guillermos Barros Schelotto still roamed the attacking third. He was there when the great Federico Higuain blew out his knee in 2019. He was there when Lucas Zelarayan, the most talented player in the history of the franchise, spearheaded a romp over Seattle in the 2020 MLS Cup title game.
Williams has been there through three ownership groups, three general managers, five coaches (one interim) and hundreds of players. He is eighth on the Crew’s all-time list for games played (206, in all competitions). He may be, in terms of years, the longest-serving Crew employee, ever.
“To start, I just wanted to be a ripple in the Crew’s history,” he said. “It has been a wild ride. To me, it’s more where the league is, in general. It was kind of the Wild West when I first started out. At Obetz (the old training center), our meals would be subway that sat out all day. Now it’s catered meals, and we have chefs.”
Williams will be there when the Crew’s season ends, there with Cucho Hernandez and Diego Rossi, Darlington Nagbe and, yes, Gressel. Whenever it ends.
“I’m done,” he said. “I’m done playing. Yeah, I’m done.”
Williams doesn’t know what he will do next. He and his longtime girlfriend three months ago welcomed their first child, a girl they named Arlo. He has been talking to the president/general manager, Bezbatchenko (it all goes in circles, doesn’t it?) about the next stage of his life.
He may be here yet.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: "I'm done": What's next for the Columbus Crew's Josh Williams?
