It's all about Petke, The fire lite under Cassar's ass was Petke, and hopefully much sooner than later he will be given the keys.
Did anybody actually watch Petke's New York teams? The tactics were basically "Thierry Henry and Hope." He's a fiery guy, and a fan favorite, but Marsch took a weaker roster and added better tactics and folks forgot about Petke rather soon.
Try paying for three tickets to watch in person. A few comments: Chicago's stadium is in the middle of nowhere. It's no surprise that they are challenged getting a crowd, especially after a couple years of being bottom feeders. Sandy is much more in the middle of things by comparison. Crowd was weak - maybe 30% filled. Chicago's stadium is the closest I've seen to the RioT in architecture, but still lacks some pizazz. The pitch is closer to the field on the sides though. Views from the lower rows were quite good. It's pretty sad when the rookie on the team is the best player of the game. Schmidt was in the right place to clean up a lot of crappy defense. The 'boot ball' game is ridiculous. What does it say about the team if the defenders insist on kicking over the midfielders? Free kicks this game were pathetic. Reminded me of last season with Javi. Most didn't clear the first line. Why doesn't the team ever put someone on the back post? They all bunch up together on the near post and the middle of the box. There's no one ever there to clean up when the kicks go to far or bounce beyond the main area. Yura needs just one touch - to kick it away from the goal. At the pace of injuries, RSL won't be able to field a full 18 in about two weeks. LA-RSL next weekend is likely to be a suck-fest.
Thoughts: Eating crow - Justin Schmidt played a pretty damn good game.... defensively. The dude is absolute shit with the ball at his feet. BUT I will own up to being wrong on him on the defensive side of the ball. He's got some deceptive speed and a nose for positioning. Well done, kid. ******** our outside backs. Tony Beltran and Chris Wingert need to be traded yesterday. Minnesota is desperate for some solid MLS level defenders, send them there. This teams inability to get in quality crosses starts with the wingbacks. Cassar wants them to push forward - and they do. And then nothing ********ing happens. Beckerman and Sunny looked like hot garbage this game. Absolutely atrocious. I think Beckerman took 5 minutes to complete a pass. And how many hopeful 30+ yard balls did he play to the wingers that had 2 or 3 defenders on them? What the ********, captain? Luis Silva looks exactly the same. He will do something that will be like "oh, that was nice, maybe more of that" and then disappear. Did y'all remember he was on the pitch? Me neither. What a ********ing joke of a recycle that move was. Cassar's system ask, no begs for a number 9 target forward for it to work. He wants to hit direct balls forward off of the target and then run off of him. The problem? Yura ain't no target forward. So the ball gets hoofed up the pitch and then the other team has it and we're just like "well that was fun". Further, movement off the ball is just flat out not happening in the ways it should. It's funny to watch the ball be on Wingert or Tony's foot wide - getting set for a terrible cross - and then have 2 or 3 RSL players literally standing on the top of the box. If you can, go watch the goal Ronaldo scored for Madrid yesterday. He isn't standing still in the box on the cross, nor is the forward. Two runs open up the space. They aren't crazy elaborate runs, either. Each of them maybe changes 5 yards in direction, but it creates space and drags defenders out of the positions. Rusnak does things on the ball that make me really happy. He diced multiple players in this game. Guess what happens after he does this? He has nobody to pass to that isn't marked. A moment in the first half he beat 2 chicago players and literally the best option was for him to hit a hopeful 30 yard direct ball to the right winger making a straight run towards goal. Such disorganized play. Albert was the only player in white during this game that actually looked like he wanted to beat a defender. There was a moment where we literally had the ball on the outside of the 18, turned it back 20 yards to kyle, he had a defender by him, so he tucked his tail and passed it to Wingert. Who did the same thing and the ball ended up at Rimando. We went from the attacking third to our own 18 in 3 passes. Down 2 goals. Holy ********. I found it funny that Dunny, when pressed on why RSL had such injury concerns, was like "oh the preseason setup wasn't good for them". However, the teams that played in the Portland tournament don't have the same rate of injury. Which he then said "well the LA weather and field..." Whatever. ******** off, Dunny. Yura isn't worth the DP money. At least not in the system Cassar wants to play. Maybe with two forwards he'll be more comfortable in his play. But as is, that's a bust. I get that the defenders thought the first goal was off. I did too on first glance. But Stott literally says "NO! Onside!" as the ball is played. Why did every single player stop? The chicago forward hesitated enough that a defender could have at least challenged or rushed his shot. Instead they all just hoped Nicky would save their asses. Multiple players are to blame on the second goal. First, Silva got burned. Then KB goes flying into a tackle thinking ARTURO ********ING ALVAREZ is going to hit the ball with his right foot. Good lord. Then nobody steps up. Horst does this weird turn and try to block thing instead of closing the space. He rightly gets punished for it and the ball deflects in. Such bad defending. RSL was down 2 goals for like what, 70 minutes? And registered a single shot on goal. One. Jesus Christ. I did like that Cassar subbed early even after the injury. Kudos for that. I wish he would have changed things to be more offensive (go 3 in the back) but baby steps. Subbing at half, assuming Sunny wasn't hurt, was really awesome. I have no confidence in this team scoring. We look more inept going forward than literally any other team I've watched in the league. No creativity. No dynamic movement either on or off the ball. We'll never win if we don't score. And we don't look to be hoping to draw a pk, either. That requires players in the box and movement once the ball is in there.
Great analysis. Not much to add, but I wanted to acknowledge it more than just a rep. The team is just terrible. We seem to have the wrong pieces for the current strategy, but I'm not sure what would work better, given the roster. I hope this was just an off game for KB and Sunny, because that should be the brightest part of our 4231. The frequent lack of effort is especially damning this early in the year. I don't know what can be more concerning for a coach than starting a season with so much of the team resigned to defeat. But we've got Rimando, and Minny is atrocious, so we won't get the Wooden Spoon.
Don't count us out of the Wooden Spoon race just yet. We always find a way to lose to the team that is in last place.
I had the *ahem* pleasure of attending this one. Since I don't get to see much live RSL action, I enjoyed the game, despite my freezing toes and the dismal play. Here are a few things that stood out to me. Much of this echoes what has been said before, but here goes anyway: On the first goal, I don't think anyone in the stadium knew what was going on. The linesman was standing on the sideline waving his flag, all the players were looking at him, while Stott was frantically waving play on. It was one of the weirdest goals I've ever seen. I think even Rimando didn't really try for the ball because everyone assumed there was some misunderstanding between the center ref and the linesman. I had no idea until I got home that it was actually a legitimate call. Thus, I put the blame on that goal fully on the midfield, especially Sunny for that crazy backpass to no one. From there on, no one was really playing any more, and there was no way the defenders were going to catch the Chicago forward anyway. The second goal was just awful defending. So bad. Most everyone on here gets angry when Luke gets minutes. Luke's energy and tenacity in the second half was about the only good thing going on in the midfield. In this game, Luke >>> Sunny. (But, I would still like to see Cassar play the kids instead of Luke...) About the only two positives from this match for me were Schmidt and Rusnak. I think Rusnak has the ability to be a pretty dominant player in MLS, but he HAS to have the right pieces around him. As in, players who get in the right positions so he can pass to them. Rusnak isn't flashy like Burrito, but I'd take him over Burrito. I actually think that Yura, Jordan, and Joao can be players who move to the right positions for Rusnak. But our current system (or lack thereof) isn't putting them there. Everyone is too static, and Yura is way too disconnected from the rest of the field. This mostly is a coaching problem, not a personnel problem. Oh, and Jordan and Joao are now injured... Yura should have scored multiple times. This miss live was even worse than it looks in the highlights. My kid and his friend started calling Rusnak "Fruit Snack", and cheered wildly every time he got the ball. Judging by the annoyed looks I got, I'm sure the dozen Fire fans in attendance were highly amused at this creative nickname.
I've complained about this for years. We either stick everyone on the near or far post with nobody on the opposite end. You'd think after years of watching a ball being under or over hit and having nobody there for it, we would've adjusted tactics, but that would be too easy I guess. I'm betting KB is a combination of playing injured and not having a real preseason. I personally think it's stupid to rush him into play. We could've eased him into the last couple of games and just played him for a half or something. I'm honestly waiting for him to miss games due to making it worse by pushing himself. This is another thing we haven't done in years. It's mind boggling how a player will make a run, get to the end point, and just stand there. Defender smartly places himself so the passing lane is gone, and our player continues to just stand there. It doesn't take anything special to shut us down, because the outside backs will go backwards without pressure, and the offense just stands in place as if it's going to do something. WRT Alvarez, why do people defend to his right? I could probably count the times he's gone right on one hand. It's insane how often we just let him cut inside. You completely shut him down by forcing him to move right. It's what teams did to him when he was with us. Fantastic left foot, but it's all for naught when you stop him from moving that way.
You are insinuating that there was actually some idea of tactics. I would argue that there has been no real tactics since #Cassuckitude took over.
Agree--we completely lack a strategic identity...but I don't throw all the blame at Cassar's feet. It starts from the top. DLH needs to GTFO of the way and hire someone that can give the organization a strategic identity the way we had with Jason, Garth and the Diamond. (And before anyone gets uppity about bringing back the diamond--I am not saying that, I am saying let's have a cohesive strategy as to how we will play, what types of players we need, etc.) Time for radical reconstruction--go with youth movement but we need someone who can give us an organizational identity.
We have a strategy, the 4-3-3 which is sometimes a 4-2-3-1. We have chosen players for this strategy, starting with Plata. The problem is we don't adequately coach the players to play in the chosen strategy. We have a few "cookie cutter" plays that we run, but when the game isnt giving us these setups we appear to be clueless. Example: RSL loves the "dummy pass" or whatever you would want to call it. Person passes towards one person who lets it go, and the second person hopefully is in some space. We probably get 1 or 2 of these a game.
There have been good discussions of this over on soapbox articles Ultimately, Cassar wants to play a style that doesn't fit his best players. He either (a) needs to rotate to the players that better fit it or (b) change his style to match those of his better players.
This post brings up an interesting question. Background: in the days that followed JK's departure DLH publicly stated that nothing is going to change; RSL will stick with the diamond. After a few games with the diamond Cassar gradually eased away from it. He is now set on the current formation, which is a bit of an ambiguous one. We do not have the players to run it, and it's a puzzle why we do not bring in players who fit the scheme. Now the question: are DLH, Waibel and Cassar on the same page? Other questions: Who should make the final call as to what formation and identity will we run/have? Should Waibel bring in players to fit Cassar's scheme or should Cassar change his formation to fit the players Waibel manages to sign?
ideally those discussions of "how will we play" are had far in advance of signing players. Like before you even scout. The difficult part for Cassar was always going to be changing the style of play for a team so rooted in the previous one. This is why, despite the clamoring to not do it, a full housecleaning probably would have been best. Asking Kyle Beckerman, the dude who has played the 6 in a diamond for so long, to suddenly play the 6 in a 4-2-3-1 is hard. Sure, the players should be able to adjust somewhat, but it's (a) going to take time and (b) might not be the best option for that player. To that point, I have a lot of faith in Garth Lagerway finding pieces that fit the puzzle. He and Kreis had that figured out for the most part. They did occasionally bring in a winger and try to make them play narrow, but they mostly got the right guys for the system. On the flip side of that, Lagerway wasn't looking for players to play in a 4-2-3-1. The width that the system asks for, alone, is so different from the diamond that it's likely not going to be the same type of player. The more I watch this team (dating back to the midpoint of last year, if not further) the more I wish they would part ways with pieces. Not all of them, no, but each passing day makes you question how big the list of players should be. OR, a change in the style of play from Cassar has to be made. It seems pretty damn late in the game for this to happen, IMO. I feel he's tied his RSL career to this 4231 and should be canned because of it unless things miraculously change.
In a dream world, these are the next steps: Cassar struggles through the rest of March and early April, is fired New coach is introduced that looks at the players s/he has first and then decides the best tactical gameplan New coach, at the same time, works with Waibel, Monarchs, and the Academy to build a plan of how this club is going to play New style is identified for long term and gradually implemented into the first team at the end of 2017 season 2017/18 offseason involves lots of changes to match this identity all the way from the academy (what players we bring in) to the Monarchs (what players are promoted and what ones are drafted) to the first team (what players are let go and what players are kept to match) 2018 is a rough go, but an identity (whatever that may be) is stated and ALL the RSL teams play to this style Long term, we are known for play "x style" of soccer Win shit 2017, in my scenario, is the year the club changes from a wandering lost club in the soccer world to one that found who it is and made the right changes to make it happen Yes, I'm aware of how much this sounds like a fantasy. However, this is my dream for true club soccer.
My two cents: 2A. New coach decides that, in order to keep things simple, win games and not change too much too soon for the 2017 season, a 4-4-2 is the way to go for RSL. 2B. Yura and Barrett become the most-feared strike-duo of the MLS and both break the +15 goal barrier for the season as RSL goes on to win the MLS Cup. High-fives all around.
2a should happen 2b isn't going to - Chad Barrett is not our savior. And he's not starting unless Plata is hurt and Lennon is being ignored
Of course 2B won't happen, but.......since Sandoval isn't with the team any more, I'm going with Barrett.