You and I watch different sports. Bayern, Barca and Manchester City did not all play identically under Pep.
This may be the case, and I value your input. Thanks. But to my non-coaching eye there is a difference between "building out of the back" and "every possession has to be touched by a central defender before it can go toward goal." Porter's system was the latter - almost like an attacking player wasn't allowed to make a run toward goal until the ball had cycled through the defense.
You guys, I have a great idea. Let's keep all the absolute possession-based negative dreck we had under Porter-ball, but without winning a trophy. Who's on board?!
It's more just pacing and meaningful possession. Building out of the back for a Crew or MNT fan has become synonymous with slow, stagnant play and most possession and passing occurring at midfield and back. Most of us would rather see a team finish with 45% possession that yielded 5+ good scoring chances versus finishing with close to 70% possession but eking out only a couple low-danger shots on goal. You can't win trophies in this league with a base strategy of grinding out a bunch of 1-0 victories. Not to mention, that style of soccer sucks to watch and will never get new fans to become more invested in the team.
It was obvious Porter didn't want the Crew to play an up and down the field, open style of play. Some of our opponents wanted to do that vs the Crew. Diaz is probably the only Crew player who is noticeably faster than the league average for his position. Porter would frequently tell the team to slow down and circulate the ball. Not sure if that was simply to shorten the game, lack of confidence in our attackers, a worry about his team's conditioning, or what. But a bunch of passes between the CBs and DMs didn't add up to very many goals. If we had scored more goals, the late goals conceded wouldn't have hurt as much. Porter's system wasn't designed to maximize the Crew's goal totals.
Not one of these criticisms about playing style would stop our team from not being able to mark someone on a corner kick/free kick or to have 3-4 players run at the same player when defending. Those seem to be bigger issues than whether the four defenders touch the ball before going up field.
The issue is that with the fourth best defense in the entire league we can’t win games because we have the 19th best offense. Score more than one goal a game and all of a sudden giving one up late doesn’t mean as much.
And yet it only our defense didn't play like a U-8 team in the last 15 minutes of every games, scoring those magical goals on offense wouldn't have mattered.
Literally a league average offense with a top 5 salary would have gotten us over the hump. We’re not a million miles away. People wanting to tear everything down boggles my mind.
You really don’t think the defense folded over and over and over again to end games? If our vaulted defense doesn’t give up a league record of goals to end the game, the conversation is mute.
*moot having little or no practical relevance, typically because the subject is too uncertain to allow a decision. "the whole matter is becoming increasingly moot"
This reminds me, has any Porter apologist who believed injuries were the primary problem ever revised their opinion after another year of brutal performances under Porter? Or are they still holding onto that?
Of course it did, but you’re not listening. Despite the pitiful collapses, we still had a top four defense, fact. Specifically, late game goals were an issue, but generally speaking the defense (checks notes) allowed the fourth fewest goals. The offense was 19th out of 28 teams, that’s bottom third. 4th. 19th. Which one is the bigger issue? We drew games because the defense (despite bombing at the end) kept us in the game for the first 80 minutes because the offense was so shit WITH MIGUELOL MEGABUST FVCKING BERRY AS OUR STARTING STRIKER FOR FOUR UNBEARABLE MONTHS. That cost us the playoffs as much as any one or two collapses.
That seems like an irrefutable point. But it’s not. The simple fact of the matter is that the defense had many, many, MANY times this season where the offense game them enough goals to get a result, and they blew it. The fact that these choke jobs came with the score being 1-0 instead of 2-1 or 3-2 doesn’t impress me. At some point, a professional soccer team that has the lead has to be able to finish a match off. And countless times, the defense didn’t do that. They may have been good-to-great for the most part, but SITUATIONALLY they were terrible. Now that doesn’t remove blame from other areas of the team. In some of those chokes, we had opportunities to score more and didn’t convert. There’s also the coaching aspect, that didn’t figure out how to play the last five minutes the same way they played the first 85. But sooner or later, somebody in the back just has to make a play. The goalkeeper has to make a save. And there were too many times where they didn’t.
I mentioned this elsewhere, but to maybe extend on Kyle's point.....near nobody believes that we need an upgrade from Cucho at striker to compete in this league. He looks like the real deal. That said in our final 8 games Cucho had one goal. One goal. In the final 8 games when 1 or 2 more goals probably sees us in the playoffs. 2 or 3 more goals has maybe has us as a 5th or 6th seed with a bit of an easier draw. The offense was terrible. The offense cost us a chance at making the playoffs as well. The offense being so terrible that we couldn't make the playoffs despite having a top 4 defense comes down to Porter not being able to make the most out of Zelarayan, to starting Miguel Berry for four months, and to being unable to find a way to unlock Cucho's skill set over the final two months.
Also consider the defensive GA was so good partly because of the high rate of posession-the old "they can't score if we have the ball" trick. When actual defense was needed-oops!
Fun fact, we only had 52.5% possession this season, good for ninth. Not like we played the Pep Barcelona system where we had 70% possession, or even in previous seasons when we were close to 60%.
A coach values possession as much as Porter, he sees his team can only hold the ball 52.5% of the time, he sees the results just aren't there, and he has no capability to move towards a plan b to better utilize the players on his roster. It's difficult really to capture how poor of a job Caleb Porter has done these past two years. Just a total disasterclass. Thank god for those ties against Cincinnati though.