It really isn't. His natural position is CF. He might be flashy, but he's not a natural playmaker. He's actually horrible at retaining possession. His pass completion this season is 68%, which is pretty poor. The things that make him dynamic and unpredictable as a striker, are things that make him an increasing liability the further he gets from goal. (and this is all based on his pre-injury level - it's conceivable that rather than/in addition to being lazy, the injury has diminished his ability)
The season is going just like the Galaxy pass the ball - poorly. I have seen Girl's U-16 club teams that executed the fundamentals better. As coach, Sigi is clearly responsible for this mess, yet it isn't something that showed in his Seattle or Columbus teams and I don't think he changed his approach to the game. What is unclear, is who really in charge of player-personnel decisions. I thought that going into this year that Sigi was in charge of player-personnel and that Pete had been demoted from GM back to soccer operations (specifically contract negotiations and the academy). However, according to the team website, Sigi is just the coach. All of the soccer operations still seems to report through Pete. This includes the Technical Director (Jovan) and Kurt Schmidt as director of player personnel and scouting. Pete's old pre-gm job appears to be held by Gordon Kljestan.
I think that pass completion rate needs to be put into context. A significant portion of Zlatan's passes take place in or around the box where its normal for forwards to have lower completion rates. Many of these passes are high risk, high reward passes in a crowded environment under intense time pressure. In the midfield I actually think Zlatan is a very good passer when he isn't trying to do too much. To me his biggest faults are trying to dribble through crowds and getting dispossessed too often and slapping people.
Yesterday an outlet pass was made to Zlatan that he was in position for, but he waited for it, and a defender jumped in front and intercepted. Alan Gordon would have done better. Maybe an exception, but he needs to fight for every ball that comes his way as a target forward, and distribute or carry from there. It's really crucial to our possession.
There are double digit moments like that per game that he plays in a Galaxy uniform, some more noticeable than others. I'm amazed more people on this forum aren't railing on him for it.
If you watch his Man United spell though, he uses that high-risk, high-reward approach even when he drops back into midfield. I agree that he's capable of being a very good passer when not trying to do too much, but in the same way Leonardo was technically a very solid defender as long as he didn't stop concentrating on what he was doing, that's not the reality of how he approaches the game.
He's looked sloppy to me and in in need of some time on the bench to me since day 1. His touch has improved, but he still needs someone yelling at him when he drops back in the midfield to cough it up - I don't care who but probably a coach or veteran midfielder. I'd still get him on the field, but he's not a 90 min automatic starter with carte blanche to wander wherever he wants.
I'm not really arguing with your overall assessment of his style of play and agree with others who would like to see more effort. But I just want to point out that a forward who alternates mistakes and brilliance can be very successful (a la Keane). Not so much for defenders. Anyway here's Zlatan's action map for his play against Montreal until his boneheaded foul. He had 4 nice advancing passes but other than his one key pass he was no help in or around the box:
I remember that play and you are right - Alan fought very hard for every ball everywhere. Especially when he was a late sub.
I agree entirely. As a forward, he's enormously gifted and his approach makes him so dynamic and unpredictable, that he can be almost unplayable at times (certainly this was true at his peak). Once again though, this points to either bad planning or the FO operating somewhat separately from the GM/coach when it comes to these players. If Zlatan was on the cards then we shouldn't really have signed Kamara, because they are both at their best in the #9 position. I wonder if Kamara was signed because they were very nervous about the Zlatan deal coming off. That's about the only way this seems like a halfway reasonable idea, though even then, they should have been focused on a forward that can operate competently as both a #9 or a support striker. Credit to Ola, he's doing well from his WF position, but at the same time, with him on one flank and Alessandrini on the other with Zlatan up front, you're largely playing three finishers with limited service.
Bad planning is pretty much all that we've seen from this organization over the past 3 or 4 seasons. I think even our fearless leader Bruce was making significant personnel mistakes toward the end of his tenure. And of course it just got worse after he left...
Kirovski has been working on Zlatan for years apparently, and we were very close at one point last year (I've heard it said that contracts were drawn up and ready to sign). I think after a lot of on-and-off again negotiations everything suddenly fell into place toward the end of the off season, after Man U got knocked out of UCL. Zlatan coming was always a lingering possibility, but not something FO and Sigi could've planned for, hence bringing in Kamara (could you imagine if they hadn't brought in a striker and Zlatan didn't come?). The conventional wisdom appeared to be that if Zlatan becomes available, you HAVE to sign him, especially for the price. I guess we'll see how that pans out. It'd be ideal if we could get him to accept a super-sub role.
Was away on vacation, but now back. I think we're being a little harsh on the team, but that might be my Disneyland buzz. Overall: I thought the defense did much better than I expected. Jorgen had some crucial cut-ins (after being burned by Piatti early on), Ciani had some crucial blocks. No I'm not ready to crown them good, but Montreal was "shoot on sight" - good lord were they not disciplined - and we managed to come away with three points. Credit where credit is due. One exception on the D: Klimenta was a traffic cone that Edwards embarrassed multiple times. He improved into a slightly mobile traffic cone, but not a great debut. That said, he's young, and welcome to MLS. Bingham's best game for us, period. MOTM for me, keeping us in the game. Agree with others that hope it's a morale booster for Friday. I still don't know what to do with Perry Kitchen who has half the amount of distribution of Lletget and JDS, with a handful of defense actions. Blegh. We're being too hard on Jonathan Dos Santos. Go look at his passing map. HE IS EVERYWHERE. I thought it was another professional game from him, and I for one think he's playing pretty darn well (especially since he's got an albatross behind him). Lletget also had a quietly diligent game. It surprised me looking at his map and JDS'. Romain was terrible. I was also wondering why he was subbed, until I looked at his passing and defensive map. Yikes. I was hoping last week was a corner turned, but nope. I love how passionate he is, but his tantrums upon being subbed are starting to wear on me. I think it's because of the Zlatan effect. I don't take well to having a team of multiple whiners. Beyond dumb by Zlatan. BEYOND DUMB. How Montreal gets beat on a header by Ema I don't know. You go Ema! Kamara with excellent individual effort, and just sheer joy upon scoring to go celebrate with his teammates. He made up for the Romain/Zlatan temper tantrums. The Quakes are pretty darn bad. Let's see what we can do on Friday.
I always look forward to your analysis, @Berks - thanks for doing it! Ditto on Romain's petulance. Team first, please.
Very good analysis and agree with everything you said. While the shutout and heightened attention to defense were encouraging there unfortunately were also plenty signs that we aren't there yet. As you mentioned we still don't have a right back and Kitchen still allows players to get behind him and open for shots from just outside the box. And tonight Romney will be pulled out of his natural position to be replaced by Cole and his lack of positional discipline. I think the big picture is that we showed we can shut out a crappy offensive team if we really put our minds to it and are a little lucky. Nothing more, nothing less. We are still 2 to 4 new players away from having a defense that will be able to compete with the good teams.
Agreed. If anything, a loss here would have been damning and that goes for the game against San Jose too.
Highlight Time Folks I missed this game as it aired while I was at work. But I will say this. I am glad we won. Oh and in defense of Zlatlan, he was actually trying to kill a bug that landed on the guy's head so his slap was him doing the dude a favor. He should have gotten a thank you for his efforts, but nope the refs were against him,......That's my story and I'm sticking to it.