When head coaches at the uppermost levels of the sport step in front of microphones and cameras, caution tends to be the default setting. Tightly-knit team environments and meticulous tactical preparation cultivate levels of secrecy bordering on paranoia.
It’s a little different with Henrik Rydström.
The Columbus Crew’s new boss steps into the MLS spotlight as his team host Orlando City for this weekend’s Sunday Night Soccer presented by Continental Tire duel at ScottsMiracle-Gro Field (7 pm ET | Apple TV).
But he’s already been making headlines for years in his native Sweden, often just with flashes of his personality and intellect.
“We try to create chaos” was one catchphrase by which he described his work at Malmö, who drew attention across Europe for their vibrant rendition of ‘relationism,’ an emerging game model inspired by Brazilian manager Fernando Diniz’s entertaining Fluminense sides. Rydström has memorably compared his preferred style of play to the rhythms of a prominent Swedish author: “pompous, but also unique.”
Different style
An avowed progressive in political terms, he once expressed a desire to be “Sweden's first Buddhist coach” because of the religion’s influence on his mental approach to the game. Over the winter, he declared, “I want a team that's like a f--king rock band” as he prepared to cross the Atlantic to take the reins in central Ohio.
That quote makes more sense when you learn that for many years he wrote music reviews for Barometern, a newspaper in Kalmar, the Swedish city where he spent most of his playing days and a good chunk of his coaching career as well.
Therein, he once self-deprecatingly lamented, “Unfortunately, my taste in music is typical of a white, heterosexual Western male. I would like to be more Caribbean and queer.” If that sounds like a dyed-in-the-wool academic, well, yes – Rydström actually did earn a master's degree in literature during his career as a stout defensive midfielder at Kalmar FF.
“I always talk too much,” the charismatic Rydström deadpanned to MLSsoccer.com in a wide-ranging one-on-one conversation last month from the OhioHealth Performance Center.
Creating connections
A thoughtful worldview has served him well in Columbus, a college town turned booming metropolis where he encountered a deceptively difficult task upon arrival at the Crew: How to adequately succeed his predecessor Wilfried Nancy, a revered figure not just for the MLS Cup and Leagues Cup trophies he helped secure across three seasons in charge, but also the bravery and flair with which the Yellow Football Team did so.
“I think Crew, as a club, is a little bit in this in-between right now,” he said, “You always get judged by the results. So far, I know there will always be doubts before you start winning a lot of games. But my perspective is also, I've been in a big club in Sweden and a big organization, and I noticed that Malmö, they looked back too much. So instead of, how can we be ahead of things all the time, then you need to challenge yourself.
“You can be proud over your past, but how can we actually challenge ourselves in it? And that is something I hope that I can help us do.”
Yes, Rydström inherited many – though not all – of the key players who achieved the lofty heights of ‘23 and ‘24. He also encountered a squad in a complex psychological moment, with one cycle clearly ending and uncertainty about what could or should follow.
“You maybe ask, ‘OK, why didn't you do it from the beginning?’” he said. “If you do it from the beginning, it's easy to lose the connection with the players, if I'm coming in like, ‘Guys, I'm a winner from Sweden. Now you're gonna f--king listen to me.’
“I needed to create connections. Even if I was well prepared, it's first when you are here and you get the feeling for the city, for the people in the building, for the players. And then you need to play competitive games. So learned a lot about my players from every game … It’s exciting, but also a bit frustrating.”
Growing pains
That’s the deeper context for his winless start to the season, with Columbus finally bagging their first victory of 2026 in last weekend’s visit to Atlanta United.
“It's this balance between chasing something short-term and building something long-term,” he explained. “With that said, you always try to win the game, and for us is to be a little bit calm. … If we look at underlying numbers, we could have had like, four or five more points, and we probably should have won two games. We missed a penalty in the 87th minute against Kansas [City], for example, for the victory.
“It's almost a distraction when you focus on that. Because what happens then is you maybe don't take the decisions you need to take if you're going to be good in three months or four months – really good, like in a longer perspective.”
He adds that he learned of the club’s longstanding catchphrase of ‘The Hardest Working Team in America,’ complete with hardhat-wearing workers on their original crest, and had to reconcile that with the intricate, flowing playing style that was “a little bit opposite” to that.
At their peak, Nancy’s Crew were a marvel of positional play, a concept often associated with Manchester City’s legendary manager Pep Guardiola and the FC Barcelona-flavored ideology of expansive possession he epitomizes. The relationism movement that so inspired Rydström in the past is often depicted as its inverse, with players moving in pairs and packs, partnering and improvising in less-orchestrated ways.
Yet he’d consider that dichotomy an oversimplification.
“You always think about your downside as a coach, but I think one of the strengths I have is that I'm quite flexible,” said Rydström, explaining that before Malmö, he used many positional concepts at IK Sirius, a smaller Swedish club. “It's about knowing, feeling what the group needs now.
“So it's more, I need to find the right tools, what the situation requires. And so I'm neither relationist or positionalist.”
No regrets mentality
As he hunted for the breakthrough of a first win, Rydström shifted the Crew’s formation, its tactics, and the roles of even the most celebrated stars like Diego Rossi and Max Arfsten, prompting no small amount of confusion and concern among supporters and other observers.
Rest assured, he felt the urgency to produce results – it’s just that he also feared becoming a slave to them, and how that might compromise the long run.
“If I'm honest, maybe I underestimated a little bit, how do I put it, like, how well-drilled the team were when it comes to the possession,” Rydström noted. “I thought maybe that the possession part, I don't need to do anything right now with that. They know how to have the ball. So I wanted more to [say], ‘OK, can we counterattack a little bit better? How can we organize our rest defense?’ Because that was a big [issue] last year, and still is.
“But after the couple of weeks now here, I also noticed that now I need to organize the attacking game, also, how we have the ball, because that has not been good enough.”
Other factors outside the public view have also complicated Rydström’s adaptation. His father passed away not long after he signed his contract in January. A long wait for his immigration paperwork to clear delayed his arrival for preseason. And his partner and their two young children (as well as an older daughter from a previous relationship, aged 22) only just arrived last weekend.
With those powerful first three points in the books and “the whole squad” of his family reunited, in his words this week, the clouds of Rydström’s opening months appear to be clearing, as spring blooms in Columbus.
“They arrived quite late Sunday night. So they were more tired, and I was more sped up. They just wanted to go to bed,” he said of his family’s arrival with a laugh. “But it was good timing, with a victory and then [to] meet them for the first time in a month. So it was good.”
His ongoing task might just be the most nuanced of any coach in MLS: Secure and elevate the best elements of Nancy’s legacy, while refreshing and revitalizing the project with his own personal touch. It should be no surprise that his current catchphrase for his players is blunt, memorable and just a bit salty.
“I have this saying, a ‘f--k it mentality,’ in that way,” he said. “It is what it is. F--k it. So no regrets. You have this life, you have this career. Don't go out there and hold back anything. That’s what I saw last year on the Crew: they were holding back, and I think it's still a little bit like that. So that would be the most important thing, to break that and then start enjoying ourselves. And then we will win. If it's the next game or the game after that, we will win.
"And then nobody can stop us after that.”
