Like fellow Circle of Honor finalist Mike Clark, Brian Maisonneuve was one of the early pillars upon which the Columbus Crew’s success was built, both on and off the field. Maisonneuve was a versatile midfielder, but not in the “jack of all trades, master of none” sense. If the Crew needed him to play defensive midfield, he would relentlessly win tackles and serve as a steady link between the defense and the offense. If the Crew needed him to be more of an attacking presence, he could score goals. Whatever the coaches asked, he’d do it, and do it gladly.
“I know a lot of players say this, but I wanted to do whatever I could to help the team win,” Maisonneuve said. “If I didn’t even touch the ball, and all I did was chase somebody or run around and fill gaps and make tackles, I would do that for the team. I just wanted the team to be successful.”
“He was one of those guys who played possession,” Clark said. “The ball was glued to his foot. He had a great touch. As he progressed in his college and professional career, he became a great finisher. I don’t think he always was, but he worked to develop that and he kept adding to his game. He was as good as they came in midfield, I thought.”
“He did it with grace and dignity,” added longtime Crew broadcaster Dwight Burgess. “Combine his match intelligence with his technical precision, and that made him one of the best passers of the ball in MLS.”
In 208 Crew appearances spanning all competitions, Maisonneuve tallied 25 goals and 41 assists. He was a three-time MLS All-Star. He was a part of two trophy-winning Crew teams. He represented the United States in the 1996 Olympics and the 1998 FIFA World Cup. And as any Columbus Crew teammate, coach, employee, reporter or fan will tell you, he did it all while being one of the nicest people in Crew history.
“He’s an awesome person and his soccer talent speaks for itself,” Clark said. “Anything he’s ever gotten, whether it was the [FIFA] World Cup team in 1998 or the Olympic team in 1996…any accolades he’s gotten, you always think, ‘Man, he deserves it more than anybody.’ I’ve always had that feeling about him.”
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Had this been a profile not for the Crew’s Circle of Honor, but the Crew’s Circle of Humble, Maisonneuve would be neck and neck with Eddie Gaven in the race to be the first inductee. I can imagine making those phone calls and listening to each of them campaign that the other is far more worthy of induction.
Over the years I learned that Maisonneuve never ever scored a goal that wasn’t harder to miss than to make, or wasn’t because his teammates did the hard part and left him to do the easy part, or wasn’t the result of plain old dumb luck. Sometimes he had his eyes closed. Other times he was just trying to get it on frame and fortunately it went in somehow.
After a game in 2001, I threatened to punch him in the face if he told me a spectacular header he scored that night was “easier to make than to miss.” Under threat of force, he conceded it was a very difficult goal, but then went on to insist that it was a great cross from John Wilmar Perez that hit him in the back of the head and bounced in.
This prompted Jeff Cunningham to pull me aside later that night and announce that he was going to send Maisonneuve to arrogance school. “That was a great finish!” Cunningham declared. “We need to teach Mais some arrogance! He needs to say, ‘I made a great run and then I buried the (bleepin’) header!’ No more of this ‘lucky’ stuff for him!”
As far as I can tell, the truancy officer at Arrogance School has never, to this day, been able to track down the perpetually absent Maisonneuve.
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If you bring up Maisonneuve’s name to anyone from his era, one of the first things that leaps to everyone’s mind is his extraordinary slide-tackling ability. He had the ability to win the tackle, immediately pop-up with the ball at his feet, then make a play heading toward the offensive end of the field. It was an uncannily consistent defensive method of his.
“He rarely lost the ball,” said Clark. “If some guy somehow got the best of him, he would somehow get his leg wrapped around and slide and then, all in one motion, he would be back on his feet with the ball and going with it. “
“He could attack the man with the ball from any angle and come away with possession without the hint of a foul,” marveled Burgess.
Maisonneuve claims that his trademark skill accidentally developed as a way to overcome a failure of will.
“I think it was because when I was younger, I was too lazy to keep chasing the person, so I thought I’d see if I could slide to win the ball,” he said. “I have short, squatty legs and a big trunk that enabled me to be able to do that. I don’t know if you’d say I was blessed or unfortunate. I think it mostly had to do with me being lazy as a kid. I either had to slide or I had to keep chasing them. It developed out of that. It wasn’t anything that I practiced, but I just did it way too much when I was younger, so what happened happened and I just got good at it.”
(Note to Brian’s guidance counselor at Arrogance School: All that work he did on the defensive side of the ball was “because he was lazy.”)
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Maisonneuve will forever be listed in the Crew’s record book as the first player in club history to record a hat-trick. On September 7, 1996, in Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium, Maisonneuve torched the then-Wiz for a trio of goals in a 5-1 Crew romp. He attributes the feat to two things, neither of which are his own skill.
“Garth Lagerway was in goal for Kansas City that night,” Maisonneuve recalled. “I have to thank him because when I saw some of those goals, he probably should have done better with them. They still count as goals, so I was pretty fortunate there.”
The second vital component was coffee. Feeling ill with a fever, yet wanting to play, Maisonneuve decided that gulping gallons of java would jolt him into action.
“I wasn’t a coffee drinker back then—I am now, but not back then—and I was sick that day,” he said.
“I had a Frankie Hejduk amount of coffee to get me through the game. That game was a lot of fun and I was fortunate because it was one of those games where everything I shot went in, even if it wasn’t supposed to. I was pretty lucky.”
(Note to Brian’s guidance counselor at Arrogance School: His hat-trick was “lucky.” Always “lucky.”)
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For a man who claimed he was lucky every time something went his way, it’s telling that Maisonneuve applies the same term to the career-altering ankle injuries that robbed him of one full season and who knows how much playing potential.
In a U.S. Men’s National Team tune-up game in Portland prior to the 1998 World Cup, Maisonneuve hurt his ankle. He had a difficult decision to make.
“It was one of those things where you rest it and maybe not make the World Cup, or you play through it and go to the World Cup,” he said. “I hoped for the best and I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to challenge for a spot in the World Cup. Big picture, I don’t know if I made the right decision considering all that happened, but I couldn’t pass up a chance at the World Cup.”
Maisonneuve not only made the World Cup roster, but he appeared in all three of the USA’s matches, including two starts.
“The World Cup, even though we didn’t fare well, was an unbelievable experience,” he said. “It’s something you’ll never forget. And to represent the Crew and bring that to the international level after all that Columbus had done for me, it was neat to represent them on that stage.”
He had his first ankle surgery upon returning to Columbus. He played through pain for the remainder of 1998 and all of 1999. In January of 2000, he reached a breaking point and met with Dr. Pete Edwards, the Crew’s team physician.
“I said, ‘Doc you have to go back in there and look because I can’t play like this anymore.’ That’s when we found that all of my tendons were torn.”
What followed was a series of reconstruction surgeries and infections that left a best-case scenario of learning to walk without too severe of a limp. His shredded tendons had been replaced with those from a cadaver.
With his soccer career presumed over, Maisonneuve refused to quit. What seemed remarkable at the time was his attitude. He put in the work and always appeared so upbeat about the whole torturous process.
“It was tough,” he said. “You weren’t around me all the time, so believe me when I say I had my ups and downs. Looking back at that whole time, to go from that point where they told me I would be lucky to walk normally again, it was a life-changer for me. Everything to that point had been soccer, soccer, soccer. When I had to miss those 16 months, it really made me look at life and refocus on what was important. Soccer was very important to me and it was almost taken away. To be able to have that time to think about what was important in life and how to attack life, it turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me in my career. It sounds crazy, I know. I was just happy to have the right doctors and the right people around me to help me get back to playing and running and competing again.”
After 16 months of surgeries and rehab, Maisonneuve fought his way back into the Crew’s lineup in 2001. Not only that, he returned with a vengeance, scoring a career-high eight goals. In 2002, he earned his third MLS All-Star appearance, returned to the U.S. Men’s National Team to earn three more caps, and won the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup with the Crew. He also won a Supporters’ Shield with the Crew in 2004 before retiring at the age of only 31.
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Maisonneuve’s injuries will always make him a classic “what if?” type of player. Before the ankle problems, he appeared destined to be a star for the Crew and the USA. He still put together a memorable and successful career with the Crew while battling those injuries, but one can’t help but wonder if we were all somehow robbed of something even greater.
I expressed this sentiment to Dante Washington once, and he said, “People probably think about that more than Mais does.”
Dante’s probably right. To hear Maisonneuve talk about his career is to hear a man excited about all that he got to experience.
“From the first game against D.C. at the Shoe, to the opening of Crew Stadium, to winning the Open Cup, and then there were so many other events and games…” he said.
And as someone who grew up in suburban Detroit, watching one-team sports stars like Steve Yzerman of the Red Wings, Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker of the Tigers, Isaiah Thomas of the Pistons, and Barry Sanders of the Lions, it meant a lot to Maisonneuve to spend his entire MLS career with the Crew.
“I remember when I started playing, I immediately loved Columbus and thought that if I could play there for my whole career, that would be pretty special,” he said. “To be able to pull it off was pretty neat. The city of Columbus and the Crew organization is what I remember the most. The relationships that came through the locker room and the front office… I got to know so many people. Building relationships is what it’s all about. I keep a lot of those relationships going. That’s probably the main thing that I will always remember and take away from my career. I owe it to the Crew for keeping me around that long.”
(Note to Brian’s guidance counselor at Arrogance School: His nine-year Crew career was a matter of the club “keeping him around that long.”)
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Maisonneuve’s relationship with the Columbus and the Crew was, and is, strong enough that the fans voted him a Circle of Honor finalist a decade after he last kicked a ball in Black & Gold.
“I was shocked,” he said. “Grateful, but shocked. To think of all the players that have come through Columbus and have done an unbelievable job on the field, to be in the group of five is special. As I get older, I reflect on a lot of things. I’ll be watching MLS games and I’ll think about this or that. At the time, you’re so young that you don’t grasp it all. Now I look back and I think, ‘I remember playing there with Columbus.’ Or ‘I remember doing that with my teammates.’ When you’re younger, you just do it and it’s part of life. As you get older, you look back and it’s all so special and you can really sit back and appreciate it all. Every time I see MLS, I think, ‘Wow. We were part of the building process.’ It resonates and you think about how lucky you were to be a part of it.”
When it comes to Brian Maisonneuve’s MLS career, the first round of Circle of Honor voting attests to the fact that, all this time, it was actually we who were the lucky the ones.
Questions? Comments? Have a favorite memory of Mais? Feel free to write at sirk65@yahoo.com or via twitter @stevesirk
