OK kids! Let's talk strategy and tactics! I lifted these from the Conference Championship post game thread. 1. I agree, we need to widen the field at Buck Shaw. It's one of the reasons that we play well on the road, our guys like the wider pitches. (Go ahead GS, sing it!) 2. While we didn't come from behind this season, I don't think that we can't. Still, I would like for our team to play more possession ball, and practice playing a 3-4-3 for those times late in a game where we're behind and need a goal. We should be prepared to pull a defender for a forward and go with three in the back. But Frank always, always, always plays a 4-4-2, no matter what. It's up to the guys on the pitch to break that mold, and it's got to be tough when you know coach will be pissed about it later. 3. Corrales would have helped in that one game, but this is just an indication that we need better outside defenders. We can't count Rams forever. He's getting on in his career, and his injury rate goes up, and his recovery time increases. 4. AA needs to go. We need to upgrade from Arturo. Sorry. 5. We have to get away from the long ball, you're right. Notice that Colorado make long passes, but usually to their guys' feet, not heads. If Frank wants to play a direct attacking style, that's fine. But we have to keep the ball on the carpet more, and we need better forwards. 6 & 7. The Brasilians! Yeah, these guys didn't cut it. Geo had flashes of brilliance, but he doesn't have 90 minutes in the tank, and he shot a lot of off target strikes on goal. You can't be TheMan and not put the ball on frame. Eduardo, he's just too slow. We need to find younger guys if we want dominant players. So we'll need to look in less expensive leagues, but we should aim to spend our DP dollars on someone in the 26 to 28 year old range. Easter Europe maybe? South America? Central America? 9. Yes, we need at least one or two more reliable goal scorers besides Wondo. This is why I'm in favor of dumping most of our forwards. If we bring in three or four new forwards and a new right wing, we might find a goal scorer or two in the bunch. But I don't want to do a massive overhaul of our team. 10. Agreed, we did better this year than I expected, and actually played pretty good ball towards the end. (More on that in a later post.) True. This is both an issue of poor long ball technique, and poor coaching. Here, here! Less long ball. It's fine if we play long balls on the ground, it's OK if we can learn to make incisive passes from the defenders to open midfielders, and then one touch to a forward's feet. But the long ball over the top strategy blows. Also, we won more games when we played a controlled, more on the carpet passing game. Colorado plays this way, and they've done pretty well this season. Of course, they have Connor Casey and Omar Cummings up front. GO QUAKES!! - Mark
I, too, am very pleased that we played more possession later in the year. I generally am no fan of the long ball, and we certainly don't play it to our advantage and I'll offer one more reason why. Not enough speed at the forward position. Long ball can work if you have the speedy forward who can outrun the defender to the ball. That's not us.
I don't see a team playing possession ball until they can keep hold on play started out off the keeper's hands or feet. 'Quakes don't do that, not even in the first 10 min of a match. Who's fault is that?
Actually they do this when Geovanni, Eduardo, and/or ALM are on the field. When these guys are on the field they put the ball on the ground and play to feet much more.
You're right about this, and it's Yallop's fault. When Busch first started playing keeper for us, he used to roll the ball out, throw the ball out, or occasionally make short pass with his foot. He rarely punted the ball deep. Now, he boots the ball nearly every time. This "keeper boots the ball long every time" tactic used to drive most of us nuts when it was TheJoe doing it. Now that we have seen TheJon change from short controlled distribution to wild out of control boot-ball-give-away, we can be certain that it is Yallop's fault. We have to get away from this. And it's not a question of who is in the net, it's a question of getting Yallop to change his mind. GO QUAKES!! - Mark
Yeah that is Yallop's fault, if you watch most of Busch's games in the past with the Fire & The Crew, he prefers to start the posession by playing it short to his defenders or mids and working it up the field rather than punting it all the time.
Also, for a team that liked to play long ball so much this season, I'm surprised we did not take advantage of the opportunities to switch the ball back to the weak side of the field as much as we could have. There were plenty of times that Wondo creeped up the right side line into an attacking position but the ball stayed to the left, or was switched back to the other side by two or three passes back through the defenders. I'd like to see the occasional ball over the top across the field, not up the field.
Thanks Chewie! Another Yallopism, is to attack up the wings, almost exclusively. Some of you have praised Scott Sealy's play these last three or four matches. But he's not playing a traditional a-mid role. Sealy is less about attacking than trying to win or at least disrupt the enemy, and then pass the ball out to the wings or up to the forwards quickly. He is very unlike Dario Brose, sadly. So, do we need a serious a-mid? Someone in the mold of Dwayne DeRosario? or Dario Brose? Or would an on-form Khari Stephenson be enough? Is Scott Sealy good enough? Yeah, I thought not. I want the Dario/DeRo type player, but acknowledge that I might have to settle for Khari Stephenson. Still, if Khari can play the way he did when he first joined us, combined with Convey on the right, Gjoey, or a better right winger, and Wondo paired with a guy who can score up front, that might be enough. We have a good defense and a great keeper. If we can find another goal scorer, he doesn't have to be great, just a threat to put the ball in the back of the net, someone who bags seven to eight goals a season, that's going to take pressure of off Wondo, Convey, Khari (or whoever), and so on. Coupled with a stingy defense, that might be enough for us to make a run deep into the playoffs, and perhaps hoist the cup. ¿What say you? GO QUAKES!! - Mark
Other than the Quakes, my three favorite teams are Barca, AC Milan, and Arsenal. You can probably guess the style of ball that I would like to see... While it's rare to see the style played, I have seen teams control the ball and move the ball around the field. RSL. Rapids at times. Dallas. NY. Houston used to with DeRo and Holden. However, a lot of teams still prefer to sit back and play Arena/Yallop ball. High pressure and quick attackes down the wings. Don't attack in numbers. Yawn... I give credit to Frank for getting into the playoffs, developing depth on the team, and finding away to win, but a lot of the play this year was ugly. So, what do we do? We need to slowly add players who are confident on the ball and can play out of the back. We need more mobility in the midfield and support for our forwards. In the later part of the year, there were signs that we were moving in that direction. I think players like Leitch, McD and Jason need to be replaced over time. We need stronger central midfield. We have solid players in Ring and Cronin, but we need someone who can make an impact. A Morrales at RSL or Ferreira at Dallas. We need to have some threat in the center.
Khari was very good until he got hit with that calf injury this year. Other than that, with a full pre season I think he will be fine. He could be the Brose we need.
Ekelund in his first season with us, was more of a holding midfielder. He really didn't get into the attack much. Of course, he had Cerritos, Narcissus, Manny, and Ian in front of him, so he really didn't need to get too involved. In '03, Ronnie got forward a lot more because he had too. So I'd love to have the '03 Ronnie (minus the injuries). Dario was a great player, his biggest problem was that most of the rest of the team was weak, and he labored under Quinn and Loathsome Lothar (with a brief respite of Espinosa inbetween). If we could have the '99 version of Dario, our offense would be in high gear, no doubt about it. Dario was an archetypal a-mid. He held the ball, moved around, directed traffic, made killer passes. He was exactly what this team needs right now. As it stands, we have Cronin, who I think is very good. In front of Sam, we have, um, maybe, er ... Who knows? Khari? Sealy? Geo? No wait, Frank hasn't and won't play Geo at a-mid. (Though I think he should. It might work.) Ring? We could play Ring in front of Cronin. That might be killer. But I want one of those Central American orchestrator types. A guy who can make perfectly weighted passes, put back spin on the ball, has vision, always wants to attack, and can find the best pass before he receives the ball. We don't have anyone like that. GO QUAKES!! - Mark
This! We have virtually no side to side game, all attacks go up on side or the other, very rarely do you see us switch the play from one side to the next. Working on this would keep other teams honest.
I agree, a Valderrama or Etcheverry in their prime type of player would be sweet. Imagine somebody that was actually able to get the ball to Wondo on a consistent basis.
Dario was a good player, not a great player. Even if he played on the Quakes MLS Cup teams, he couldn't have made the assist that Ekelund made to DeRo for the winning goal in 2001 or step up and crack a free kick goal in the final against Chicago. Also, I think that you are thinking of Dario in 2000 when he went to the All Star Game. He really only had one good year for the Quakes. When I think of players who stood out during the Clash years, I usually only think of a few - Espinoza, Cerritos and Lewis.
I was hoping Geo would be the second coming of Espinosa... Wondo, this year, was like Bravo. Maybe that is why some of us have this idea that Wondo could be traded away. Bravo for Kinnear still has to be the dumbest trade ever made in MLS.
Agreed. If I remember correctly, our midfield sucked so much that the hope was Kinnear get improve it. Still, you don't trade goal scorers who are local (even though Kinnear is local also).
Actually, we worked the ball side to side a lot against the Crapids in the last game. I'd settle for Vaderrama or Etcheverry lite, especially if we lost the attitude. No. Dario had a good season in '99 when we finished seventh. At the end of the season we went on a seven or eight game unbeaten streak. Granted, it was mostly against the dregs of the league, but we looked good. And Dario hit a bitchin' free kick against NYJ, scoring from outside the penalty box and off to the right side. In 2000 we sucked, and Loathsome Lothar wouldn't start Dario very often. He rarely played Dario and Azizi together, which was stupid, and we played mostly with only one forward, and sometimes five in the back. No, 2000 was frigging awful, 1999 was a decent year, especially after Quinn got sacked and Espinosa let the boys play. But what I was getting at was that we need a real a-mid, not a pair of holding mids. Think Valderamma, Etch, DeRo, Nowak. An a-mid with half that skill and daring would make our team miles better. That's where I was trying to go with this. GO QUAKES!! - Mark
In 1999, we came in 5th in the West. In 2000, we came in 4th in the West. Frankly, we sucked both years. Dario had his moments, but not enough... Other than Frank, I actually thought Quinn was the best of crappy group of coaches. In talking with Baicher, he said that Quinn started of well, but got kind of weird (went from being a player's coach to an ass). He thought the pressure got to him...
Eh, that's not exactly what I had in mind with that observation. Although I appreciated the side-to-side ball control we witnessed late in the year, and especially in the conference final, I had in mind more the quick strike from sideline to sideline. Remember a couple of years ago when Hucks launched a ball across the field to Ronnie in the game that we ripped NE 4-0? Wondo on more than one occasion was allowed lots of space on the weak side when the ball was way on the left but in the attacking half. One ball over the top would have put him in good position at the top corner of the box, forcing the defense to scramble back and, therefore, losing their shape.
This is so, but I thought it was a hopeful sign. At the very least, it showed both that Yallop was thinking, and that the guys could adjust to some new tricks in just one week. Really, we played a lot of ugly ball this season. The away to Philly game was just freaking awful. No way we deserved to win that one. But some of our last games the guys looked good. I just re-watched the away to KC game (or the beginning of it anyway) and we looked good for the first 30 minutes or so. We lost our composure because KC kept fouling the crap out of us and the ref let it all go. That was terrible. But the first half of our game against NYJ at Buck Shaw, we played well and had a number of good chances early. Again, NYJ got away with at least four yellow card infractions in the first half (I think Lindpere got carded for dissent, rather than the foul itself). Our game in NYJ and the conference championship were both good games by our guys, and they give me hope for next season. I still want more possession mind you, but I saw some style and discipline at the end of the season that gives me hope for next season. We need better target forwards mind you and a quality right-mid, but this could be a good team next year. GO QUAKES!! - Mark