A few days ago I asked Steve Abreu, a fellow Columbus Crew fan, to help me write a column. We traded emails and he answered better than I could have ever dreamed; sharing full, complete thoughts and humor and an incomparable sense of history. He doesn't just know the Crew's past, he's a student of it and how it's affecting the future. Steve, in a voice that only a guy who's seen it all can, shares some thoughts on the Crew – past, present and future.

My first Crew memory is the first game I attended in person in 1997 in Ohio Stadium. I went with high school friends, one of whom was a DC United fan – probably because he was a huge front runner and not worth being friends with. I don’t remember much about the game, but I loved it. We were given free programs, the grass was green, and the popcorn was salty. I had a good time but I guess I didn’t really get it in 1997.

I watched the Crew on TV a lot because I went to school at the University of Illinois from 98 to 01. When I was home for summer break I would go to Columbus, especially after Crew Stadium opened. I eventually made friends – someway or another – in Section 137. The infamous V-Army. I brought a drum and played. I acted like I was one of them, even though I was mostly by myself. Then somehow, someday I was one of them. I was V-Army.

In 2000 we were horrible, dead last in the “central conference” – long may it be dead. In 2001 and 2002, we were a good team. Not great, but not awful. We made the Open Cup run in 2002 that was basically magical. 2004 was the year of The Penalty Kicks Game and it took three years for the club to scrub off the stench of those two missed penalty kicks.

Warzycha as a Crew player? Doesn’t really stand out in my memory. Sometimes he hit a good dead ball, sometimes he made a crunching tackle when asked to, and he came in late in the Open Cup final in 2003 and cleared the ball off the line. Yay.

In twenty years I will tell my kids that I saw Guillermo Barros Schelotto, who was a winner above all else, play for my favorite club and lead us to its first championship and past all of its demons: The Conference Final, the Chicago Fire, et al.

Warzycha was clearly not the right choice to coach the Crew in 2009. Are you kidding? The right choice to coach the Crew in 2009 was Sigi Schmid, but we couldn’t hold on to our coach because the front office couldn’t show him “forget about the West Coast” kind of money.

The history of the Crew is to hire from within, fail, give the failure a year longer than they deserve, and then hire their assistants. Robert Warzycha is a company man from whom you can draw a line straight back to Greg Andrulis. The one time in history our club hired a proven outsider we won the championship three years later. Every other hire has been a failure. You know who I want to coach the team? Someone who doesn’t think it’s a good idea to bench Guillermo Barros Schelotto in a playoff game.

Black Monday was a botch job. From a PR perspective it was a total and utter botch job and I got the sense it happened because of ego. There’s a lot of really weird ego that has always emanated from the front office. I have the sense that Warzycha is a my-way-or-highway kind of coach and that he benched Schelotto in Salt Lake to prove a point, but ended up proving what a horrible strategic coach he is. Maybe tactically that wasn't a bad move, but strategically it’s perhaps the most idiotic decision I’ve ever seen by a Crew coach, including when Andrulis sat Edson Buddle for The Penalty Kicks Game and started an old Dante Washington up top as the lone striker. Guillermo Barros Schelotto – who lives to play in big games – just lead your team to an MLS Championship and a second straight Shield but starts on the bench in Salt Lake. Why? Honestly, why did that happen?

That Monday was about Schelotto. It wasn't about Hejduk, or Padula, or Oughton, who – legends as they were – had lost a step (some of them two) and needed to be thanked for their service. It's like the Crew front office said “He’s the only player we’ve ever had win League MVP, he is two years off a championship season, and he lead the team in goals and assists, but you know what, we’ll be better without him. In 2011, he’s not fit to play. But we’ll be fine because we’re scouring the second division for world champions like Tommy Heinemann.” Sure.

Why we got rid of Carroll no one can tell you. I guess it was so we could protect Lenhart in the expansion draft to trade away later for Mendoza’s contract cash and the rights to pick Justin Meram. Awesome. I like Meram but our modern history drafting strikers in the first round isn’t spectacular (cough Jason Garey).

If we win the East, Warzycha should definitely be coach of the year, because any time you unnecessarily tear down your own team, and then luck your way into first place in a substandard division you should be given a trophy with Greg Andrulis’s name on it. If I tear down my awesome palatial house but then build another cheaper, crappier house in six days, should I get an award because no one expected me to build a cheap, crappy house in six days?

This team is learning to win close games, which in MLS is very important because MLS is nothing but close games. Also, something really nice is happening with Anor, Ekpo, and to a lesser extent Duka. They are exciting and they take opponents on, which is very un-Columbusian.

We’re a median team now. We're seventh out of nineteen. Right in the middle. Not showing off, not falling behind, but in the meaty part of the curve. And yet people on BigSoccer celebrate beating Vancouver in the 90th minute like it's some achievement.

You know what we didn’t do in 2008 or 2009 or 2010? Lose to Chicago at home. Lose to ugly stinking cheating lousy Chicago. In 2011 we did. I love that we beat Colorado 4-1, and I know that in MLS anything can happen after the whistle blows. That’s why it’s the best soccer league in the world. But I’d like to see some consistency from us.

I would replace Dejan Rusmir with Mark Williams, because they’re basically the same player and Williams’ has a much more attractive WAG. Why are we paying Dejan Rusmir so much money? It frustrates me.

My biggest concern for this season ought to be all Crew fans’ concern: That we’ll be dumped out of the playoffs in the first round.

I just have this sense that if Schelotto was coaching the Crew he’d find a way to win championships, because that’s all he knows how to do.

I see a playoff exit this year: Lose 0-1 in Philly, then draw at home. See you later 2011.

I fear most for the Crew what is happening now in New England. Total desultory neglect.

I wish people would just be greater students of history. The Crew are one of the best regular season teams in Major League Soccer history, I think only DC and LA have won more games. But it hasn’t translated to playoff success for us, we’ve only been to one MLS Cup final. The people who brought us there were shown the door or left for a better offer. Why is there this faith that we’ll get back? I have hope. I have hope we’ll go back to LA for the Cup this year. I want to go. But I don’t have faith that we will. I saw us miss two Penalty Kicks on October 31, 2004, the year we won the Supporters’ Shield. I saw us lose to Chicago and Seattle in Open Cup finals.

It just seems to me that no one really gets it. Perhaps the player who won more championships than any other club player in the history of Argentina and played for our silly Midwestern MLS club gets it. What are the odds of that? It just doesn’t happen. We were blessed by it. But instead of trying to hold onto that blessing, to mine it for knowledge and goodwill, we made it a $40,000 offer and ran it out of town. Why? I don’t know. Maybe people felt that if they shipped Guillermo away he couldn’t take their jobs. I have no idea why it happened.

I wouldn’t say we’ve lost the plot. I think we are doing the best we can right now with the situation that we’re in, and that goes for the fans too. Black Monday was a blunt force trauma and we’re coping. We are telling each other it’s going to be okay. A lot of people are basically saying “no, lets not talk about it anymore, it’s over. Let’s focus on the present.” Well, no. Wait a minute. Our team fell apart. We’re building another one, sure, but why did the last one – that championship one – fall apart? WHY? At one point McCullers said, well if you want to keep Schelotto you’d have to get rid of two of X, Y, Z. And everyone on the internet shouted, “duh, get rid of Mendoza and Rogers.” Like, this isn’t hard. But the front office, in its wisdom, chose to go its own way. We got younger and we got exciting to the extent that when you really have no idea who is going to start or what is going to happen it’s kind of exciting. But it’s not A Massive Season exciting. It’s not steamrolling to the Shield and winning the Big Silver Cup.

We’ll be fine because we’ve always been fine. I just feel like we could have been great. I mean, I love the Columbus Crew, and I love what it represents. It represents Ohio and the Midwest and not being New York, and sure as hell not being Chicago. It represents always having a chance but seemingly always falling short. Except for that one time in 2008.

As for Warzycha, I don’t know. Like I said: I have hope, but not faith.