OBETZ, Ohio—It seems Emanuel Pogatetz’s days in Columbus may be numbered.
The Austrian international began the 2015 season as the starter next to Michael Parkhurst in the middle of the Crew SC defense, a role he held for 16 of the team’s first 19 matches, showing flashes of the physically dominant presence he was expected to bring to the backline.
Yet a string of subpar performances led to Pogatetz being benched in favor of MLS veteran Tyson Wahl.
The addition of Gaston Sauro last month moved the 32-year-old Pogatetz further down the depth chart. When Sauro was injured in the third minute of Sunday's loss to FC Dallas, it was Wahl – not Pogatetz – who replaced him. At Crew SC training this week, head coach Gregg Berhalter admitted that Pogatetz is simply the fourth option.
“What we should keep in mind is … the natural order that’s occurred over the last several games,” said Berhalter, noting that the club has gone 5-2-2 since Wahl’s introduction on July 15. “We’re successful with Tyson on the field and he’s gotten to the point where he’s earned the starting position. Of course it’s tough. Of course if you’re Pogatetz, you want to be in the lineup and you want to be pushing. These are tough decisions.”
In those nine matches, Crew SC has allowed 2.00 goals per game, worse than Crew SC’s season average of 1.67. But Berhalter blamed a pair of matches for the negative statistics: a blowout 5-2 loss to Orlando – the Lions’ lone victory in a brutal 11-game stretch that has the expansion club spiraling out of contention – and a devastating 3-3 draw with Toronto FC in which Columbus blew a three-goal lead in just 40 minutes.
“[Goals against and results] are related, and those are something we look at,” Berhalter said. “But I think the outlier in that was the Orlando game, and that was five goals. So that contributed heavily. We had Orlando and Toronto there one after another. So that obviously contributed to the goals per game there.”
Pogatetz has been silent on the issue of his playing time. Since he wrote a post on his Facebook page in June criticizing Berhalter’s lineup choices in a 3-0 loss to the Philadelphia Union, wondering aloud why he was not selected for the next match (a 2-1 loss to the Montreal Impact), Pogatetz has remained out of the limelight, twice rescheduling interviews with MLSsoccer.com before declining to be interviewed. A member of the Crew SC public relations staff has indicated that Pogatetz will no longer be speaking to reporters until he returns to match action.
But Berhalter has no complaints about his dealings with Pogatetz.
“He’s been great,” Berhalter said. “I can’t ask for anything more. I can imagine he would be frustrated; it would be frustrating to not be playing.
"But there are a lot of other guys who aren’t playing either. That’s part of being on a team and having a role.”
Back on the field, Berhalter says consistency is a key to success, and hinted that he would be staying with Wahl for the time being.
“In the end, we want to be a successful team and we want to win games,” he said. “We want to put the right personnel on the field to be able to win games. In this case, throughout the year we’ve been patient with our back line.
“When we’ve made a change, we said, ‘OK, we’re going to make a change and we’re going to give it time.’ In the course of that time, we happened to win a lot of those games. I’m a firm believer in stability, and that was the decision for stability.”
Where does that leave Pogatetz’s future, given his high salary and age? Berhalter says he’s not quite sure.
“I think that’s obvious that you don’t want to pay that much for a fourth-stringer, but I don’t think we’re at that point,” he said. “We’re at the point where we’re focusing on this year. There’s a lot of soccer left to be played, and that’s the focus. Of course we’ve evaluated, we’ve thought about the future. But right now, it’s about the next game.”
