Yes, I saw that a LOT in my coaching days and I rarely coached for pretty soccer. We learned how to pass and trap and dribble and play defense and when we went to attack we only passed back to open up space for a long switch. (or a two passes switch when the strength for a long switch was not there) I believe we won more games than we should have because of the willingness to attack attack attack. All out attacking is also not the way to win at higher levels but a high variety of different attacks is a good way to win more that a team should. It is the old definition of insanity, "Doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different result." Right now the US attack is insane because it keeps doing the same thing over and over and believing it will result in more goals except for when there is an accident of judgement and there is actually a quick or fast attack. Yes attacking fast gives up possession but the possession it gives up is mostly just meaningless passing around the back that serves to keep the score down and also gives the other team a chance to win or tie when they are really outclassed. Also remember it is not about speed but rather it is about speed of play and thought. In my belief first touch is the most important offensive skill in soccer and anticipation is the most important defensive one. The US team does not have any (well maybe one or two) players with a good first touch and on defense we react rather than anticipate so we are easily controlled when we attack because any pass that is a little off is lost and we get beaten much too easy when we try and play defense. But all that is not really important in CONCACAF because, except at times for Mexico, there is not any team that has players that are better than what we can field. It is our own poor play and poor decisions that beat us in CONCACAF not the other team.
Yeah, wouldn't want skilled wingers who can actually attack, would we? Why not just put fullbacks there if the goal is for them to defend?
To be accurate, it was from a clearance outside of the box by Horvath. Or, if being generous, a long first time pass. But, not a goal kick. Defense would have been more set on a goal kick.
Good point. Horvath hits a nice clearance for a player who is consistently criticized for that part of his game.
This confuses two concepts, that someone is capable of covering ground when needed, and that one does that in their game. You can tell Jermaine Jones, so to speak, to sit back but hit everything that moves from sideline to sideline. Even if in general he has the skill set to play upfield. Ditto Bradley several years ago. I think he can literally play a specialist 6 and sit back and cover ground. That would actually fix the Trapp/Bradley issue of players who sit back and hit long balls but can't cover ground or clean up enough mess. And I think Adams has their level of passing skill anyway. Unlike many I don't think he needs to run around and mediocrely play both ways to sell some sort of value. Those are the people -- that and the psuedo 6s who are claimed specialists like Trapp but don't clean up enough -- that are a waste of 6dom. The team needs to move in the direction of specialists good at their jobs and is instead in some odd "Zardes can play striker" "Bradley can play 6" etc. sort of cutesy phase.
"against the run of play": there is a fair question if that was by design or a happy accident. half the point of that game was the failure to build the ball upfield in a sustained fashion, from the back, in the way I think GB wants it done. from my point of view, i am a fulham fan. fulham earned its way right back down by trying to pass the ball from endline to endline against, shall we generously say, more competitive personnel than before. and then there is the question of how to break down an Ecuador style bunkered defense, which requires either target play or an incisive 10. you can skip lines and get down the field quick but then you want speedy wings. Elis and Houston. you hit that early 6 or back ball wide, get that wide play running, and that's how you get other end quick. they then have to decide am i going to get in an open game or am i going to bunker. but we have deliberately gone with slow technical wings, who will literally have to possess and build. (and they aren't actually that technical.) if you watched Pulisic blaze downfield on Bremen, or have seen Weah run, you actually have your finger on something. i think this team could easily work in the mold of 2002 Beasley and Donovan or 2010 Dempsey and Donovan. fast strike, technical finishers, pow. i realize that putting defense first seems to almost offend some spain/dutch fans, but i thought those teams were fairly pretty and effective. but is that actually what GB is trying to do? i think he literally wants to short pass the ball upfield, figure out a way through a defense that's back, by passing side to side. Weah is off the roster and that goal you mention was a one-off. but that goal is probably playing more to strengths than pretending we already are some tiki taka powerhouse when what we really have is hustling 8s. Leicester City ball. we are not yet constituted to win on possession. what we do have is some fairly technical but fast as heck attacking players, and some people who can defend. get the team defending back and compact, win it, quick ball wide, ball further forward if on, get out and run.
Yes, here is an example: https://www.whoscored.com/Matches/1...018-2019-RasenBallsport-Leipzig-Hertha-Berlin
You are telling me that you want Adams to sit back, cover ground (I suppose to snuff out danger?) and hit passes? Sort of a stronger, faster Beckerman? IMO, that should be only against the strongest opponents.
It's a long way to go but after watching some U17 highlights, young Reyna looks like the type of one-on-one player who could be very useful as an attacking winger in Berhalter's system.
Have you seen what NYRB has become since Adams left? With no Adams behind them, Kaku and the other attackers have to fall back much further. When NYRB do turn the ball over, they are starting much farther back. The team basically ends up playing long balls and losing possession. Long's frequent weak clearances are not cleaned up by Adams either and he has looked worse. Davis looked great next to Adams and is a complete dud without him. That is the effect Adams has when allowed to sit deep and influence the game. Yes, RBL has not been scored on with Adams playing. But they were pretty good defensively before Adams. But they have also been scoring at a much higher and more consistent rate with Adams in there.
So you are advocating a continuous high-press game like the RB teams? I don't think that's wise in international competition.
Our CBs are not good enough to snuff out the errors an international side would inevitably make. GBs tactics could work. His player selections have been questionable.
Looking at the Champions League, it seems to be a winning style. I'm advocating for playing Adams like his clubs play him as he is quickly becoming one of the best in the world at it. How the USMNT, having not even qualified for the WC last cycle, can have the arrogance to move our best player out of his best position is unbelievable. Add Pulisic to that too, even if he wants to play there. And our two best players are playing out of position in the only game they started together.
While I agree that building around our best players makes sense, emulating elite UCL teams doesn’t fit who the USMNT is.
The upcoming Gold Cup will tell us much more. I will quickly lose faith in Coach B if he continues to put all his efforts into building "his system" instead of the opposite, which I strongly advocate for, build the best system possible based on your current and upcoming talent. Will the Gold Cup be used to continue the MB/WT rotation at the #6? Probably. But I am once again preparing myself for a boring and disappointing effort and performance from those 2 players. If, and when, Tab Ramos' U20's perform very well, as I suspect, at the upcoming WC and 3G bores us to death with another cycle of watching MB then I cannot wait, and will join on on the wave of criticism coming of another Sr. team based on proven non-performers and average at best players....especially comparing the U20's passion, energy, and competitiveness to the so-called Sr. MNT.
Adams largely did not “sit back”, he pushed up on the counterpress to win duels and loose balls. This is his strength right now, defending on the front foot. This is the RB way and the player they built for it. If a team is not set up to do that then having your deepest CM roam will leave a dangerous gap in front of the backline. While Tyler learns the balance required of another system/role (as he has been each year) I want him to still be roaming but use 3 CB’s so that one can step into that midfield space.
I don't think GB wants to sit back either. Didn't we see a whole segment where GB instructed Twellman, on ESPN, that he wants the 6 and RB (in that set up) to push high for the counter-press? 3 CBs and Adams in front of them worked well against Italy in a game with no real game plan.
Here’s an interesting article on how advance analytics are starting to be used. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/magazine/soccer-data-liverpool.html An interesting point: Keita’s shifting roles made a muddle of the conventional statistics used to quantify a player’s contribution to his club. For example, the position you play in soccer, unlike basketball, has a significant effect on your chances of putting the ball into the goal, or how frequently you leave your feet to nudge it from an opponent. But Graham disdains those statistics anyway. He has only slightly less contempt for some of the more evolved metrics, like the percentage of attempted passes that are completed... Keita’s pass completion rate tends to be lower than that of some other elite midfielders. Graham’s figures, however, showed that Keita often tried passes that, if completed, would get the ball to a teammate in a position where he had a better than average chance of scoring. What scouts saw when they watched Keita was a versatile midfielder. What Graham saw on his laptop was a phenomenon. Here was someone continually working to move the ball into more advantageous positions, something even an attentive spectator probably wouldn’t notice unless told to look for it.
From another thread... responding to someone suggesting Bradley would be phased out and the plan is to build around Trapp. I have never really trusted how the federation does thing, but have become much more fearful over the last 2+ years. I think there is a plan, but a bad one that will hurt our national team for years. The whole year with Berhalter has reminded me of MLS. I think they think they have finally cracked the code on increasing the popularity and are going with that approach. This just feels like a big marketing campaign. Their target audience of naive MLS fans are eating it up. Berhalter is being sold as a great tactician who has this master plan when he is an inexperienced coach who is learning on the job. The idea he was going to teach tactically naive MLS players to play a complicated system was silly and why he has already said he will simplify the system and approach. These fans are claiming that this shows he is flexible while I would say he just had a poor experiment that we learned nothing from that we shouldnt have already known. If you go look at the MLS website, you will see that they have revamped so you cant find anything and that is all about marketing. They are celebrating past "Legends" (of course LD is the oldest in that group), how great Behalter is going to be and how sophisticated everything is in the program, using Jim Rome to show how far the game has come, fancy new apps they've built, etc. There is no humility in this or sense that we are at low point that we need to work our way out of quickly. Instead it the same insular approach to prop up the inner circle and claim how great we are. It seems like there is a plan, but it doesnt have anything to do with putting the best team on the field. https://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2019/05/jim-rome
He could've just checked Whoscored. Naby Keita Characteristics + Strengths Through balls-----------------------Very Strong Passing-------------------------------Strong Dribbling------------------------------Strong Defensive contribution------------Strong Tackling-------------------------------Strong
Sounds like XGChain and XGBuildup. That's been the thing in the stats community this year. Per usual, the top pro clubs are a few years ahead of the community. https://statsbomb.com/2018/08/introducing-xgchain-and-xgbuildup/
Sorry but the soccer dynamics play out different for 3-pointer group play, single game knockouts, and two-legs on goals rather than wins. I thought we already did the high risk thing last cycle with its symbol being Bradley left back trying to cover on an island, and radically different home and away results totaling to non-qualification. As a Dynamo fan I find it amusing to hear argued that a 433 is best defended with a press. Our experience is that while it can help set us up we get countered like mad when we press. That's how we gave up 58 goals last season. If you pinch the mids in and the press is beat, then there are (a) a huge gap from the wing forwards to the wing backs and (b) sometimes route 1 is also open. And like the Dynamo we are struggling for wing backs on the NT. What has worked here is a more conservative approach where the 10 pushes up with the single central striker on defense, the wing forwards fall back, and we basically become a 442. That is structurally sound and covers the gaps, and other than telling the 10 to ironically push higher on defense than on offense, doesn't require distorting the formation a ton. I also think that this is an abstracted discussion and the concrete response is, who precisely is going to do this pressing? Too much of the talk on the NT right now seems to be either abstract discussion independent of who fills the roles, or people trying to talk me out of the obvious and statistically justified by grasping for some subjective notion or minor statistic. If 6A has 7 assists and 6B has 2 assists that is a pretty blunt distinction of who contributes more actual goals and some sort of part-for-whole argument where 6B should get the job because in theory he can longball doesn't seem to show up in the big picture number, does it? Since what you are basically arguing is you want a home run hitter -- as often as this is going to pay off -- I think the best number is HR and not some sub statistic where we try and theorize who can hit a particular type of homer. Subset stuff might matter if a guy strikes out a ton and you don't want that, or hits a bunch of LF homers going to a short porch left field. But otherwise getting production from the 6 is basically a swing for the fences rare contribution so I want the one who does it more often. Period. Whether it's a longball, a cross, or something shorter. I could get parsing the numbers if we had 2 candidates for a 10 job with 15 MLS assists a piece. But this is 3 guys who played in the same league and the other two have 2/3 and then 1/3 of his production. And he is younger and better on defense. This is the easy one. Move on to 3rd keeper or wing back or CB or the like.
My complimentary theory on this would be "what does this bit of novelty open up?" I remember how we had Dempsey and Donovan, over time, as either forwards or wings, depending on what the rest of the roster looked like.I can get, say, pushing Pulisic central to open room for a bevy of wings. Or sending Adams wide so we can start him AND some great DM. But in practice if this results in starting Arriola and Baird wide, and Trapp or Bradley in the middle? It's not like we're using this to get Sargent or Weah on the field, or to try out DM options. He's gonna get GC to show me something but so far it's odd selections overall and then key players out of position, at which point I start getting skeptical and questioning. I think the snob reflex is trouble within USSF because the license to get cute should be given for tangible results. People like pointing out, for example, how JK pushed certain players around. They don't seem to care at which destinations those players actually did well, or what the NT did during the period JK was on the prowl like this. IE, didn't qualify.