If Anthony Precourt, Gregg Berhalter and the Columbus Crew SC...

Are serious about turning our beloved Crew into something which transcends anything that has come before on the Columbus sports landscape, then...

Alan Pulido

and 

Carlos Vela

(pictured above: left and right)

are the kind of attacking players they should be breaking the bank

to offer Black and Gold jerseys

Spending the kind of money needed to grab hold of young attacking quality, such as the two above, must carry with it the real possibility of seeing a return on investment. As I mentioned in my previous post  Berhalter Spotted in the Heart of Gold Spaceship Mexico is a logical and prudent direction to look for the kind of players who can both greatly improve the quality and marketability of the club.

There are thousands of Mexican ex-pats living in Columbus. Anyone who has gone to a Crew game in the last few years knows that the number of those ex-pats showing up to games on Hudson Street is a small sliver of the overall Mexican and Mexican-American population in our town. 

If Anthony Precourt and Greg Berhalter want to extend the reach of the newly rebranded Crew, they have to begin including ALL the soccer fans in Columbus. The only meaningful way to achieve this is player personnel. These players would cost millions. You're looking at $1.5 million/year for each of these players. But they are the kind of players who have a damn good chance of selling enough tickets and jerseys to more than cover the financial risk.

The ball is in our owner's end of the field. The television money is beginning to skyrocket. There will be a new Collective Bargaining Agreement before the 2015 season kicks off. NOW is the time to make this sort of move. Engaging  Columbus' futbol loving Mexican-American residents (and just for the heck-of-it, let's make some front office moves that open doors for the soccer fanatic Somali residents who call Columbus home) would be a game changer of epic proportions. The resulting cosmopolitan feel to a night in Crew Stadium would be sublime.

PS: I realize Vela's transfer fee would be silly big.