There are those coaches who thrive, and even seek out, a level of tactical mutability. Tactics that morph with the times, formations that ebb and flow like tides, some that even change mid-match.
Sporting Kansas City is not one of those teams, and Peter Vermes is not one of those coaches.
It’d be a mite hyperbolic so say that you can set your watch by Vermes’ tactical game plan, but there’s a kernel of truth in the thought. After running out something that looked more like a 4-2-3-1 in the opener against the New York Red Bulls, Vermes returned to his comfortable run-and-gun 4-3-3 roots a game later and hasn’t relented since. Headed into its first meeting with Seattle this season on Saturday, Sporting KC is unbeaten in its last four.
In terms of results, Sporting KC’s been unpredictable this season, but the goals have followed in bunches. SKC has scored now in five consecutive matches, and it ran up four goals in two of those, including in a 4-2 win over the New England Revolution last weekend. And while Sporting KC’s defense hasn’t quite followed along at the same clip, the team’s overall familiarity with the tactical nuance Vermes is peddling is clearly operating at peak levels.
At its best, Vermes’ 4-3-3 is a swirling mass of constant motion and intense pressure. Last year, the problem arose when possession-minded defensive midfielder Oriol Rosell was sold to Portuguese side Sporting CP over the summer. Without a solid base to free the flanks to press and the main striker, in this case Dom Dwyer, to live off the central defenders’ back shoulders, the whole system was off kilter. As a result, SKC limped into the postseason on a terrible run of form and lost its first matchup.
But the return of Roger Espinoza in the offseason helped restore a modicum of that purposeful motion in the defensive midfield. While prized creative midfielder Benny Feilhaber gets more headlines thanks to his propensity to feather in killer final balls, it’s largely been Espinoza’s work behind the curtain that’s allowed the team to run and gun like Vermes prefers. And when Espinoza hasn’t been available, talented French midfielder Soni Mustivar’s filled in more than capably.
The contrast here between the attack plans drawn up by Vermes and Sounders FC coach Sigi Schmid are notable and stark. Already this season, Seattle’s cobbled together three goal sequences buttressed by 17 or more consecutive passes, and the possession formula hasn’t been curtailed by playing surface or away grounds, either. In Seattle’s most recent 2-0 win over the Vancouver Whitecaps, midfielders Osvaldo Alonso and Gonzalo Pineda combined for a staggering 200 passes, the highest total for any two players in any MLS match this season. Pineda’s 110 passes alone marked the top single-game performance from any one player. Alonso’s 90 ranked fifth.
To dig a bit deeper, this is what Alonso’s passing matrix looked like against Vancouver. He completed an unbelievable 96-percent of his 90 passes - that’s four incomplete passes, by the way - and nearly all them were more horizontal than vertical. If you watch the match you can see why this was so important, even if the majority of his passes weren’t of the highest difficulty. Alonso’s role has gradually evolved over the years from deep-lying ball winner to a possession prod. In essence, this is how to neuter dangerous attacks - by simultaneously playing keep-away and building your own.
Sporting KC, meanwhile, lives on the other side of the spectrum. Despite no midfielder or forward even attempting more than 60 passes against New England last weekend, Vermes’ smash-and-grab 4-3-3 managed to produce 15 shots and four goals. Switch off for even a moment and this team is behind you.
This here is the beating heart of Sporting KC’s attack. This is the combined completed pass map from Mustivar and Feilhaber against the Revolution. While Dwyer and Krisztian Nemeth rack up most of the goals, the table is set deeper. Mustivar (No. 93) completed 88-percent of his passes, which cleared Feilhaber (No. 10) to get forward into that center-right channel and doll out assists. He picked up his league-leading seventh in this match. Nobody else has more than five.
As a team, Sporting KC midfielders rarely sweep the field horizontally. There is no Alonso counterpart here. After a single touch, most whip their gaze up and look downfield for openings. Only two teams have attempted fewer short passes in MLS this season, and Sporting KC is in the league’s top five in both successful and failed long balls. And with a not insignificant amount of dead ball and wide specialists - don’t forget about Graham Zusi - it’s perhaps no surprise that only one team completes, on average, more crosses per game than Sporting KC’s 6.2.
Sounders FC is now second in MLS in passes per game, and that number’s been steadily rising over the past few weeks despite a lengthy spell on the road. Sporting KC is 15th, but the trouble game-planning for Vermes’ formation is that Sporting KC doesn’t even want the ball for long periods of time. Dwyer’s natural movement paired with Feilhaber’s ability to read defenses means all they need is a small sliver of space and the game’s suddenly wide open. From Seattle’s perspective, they’ll want to keep that from happening, which means going back to what was so successful against Vancouver - the beauty of demoralizing possession.
There is a kind of irony in what Vermes does. No coach’s tactical approach is easier to understand and yet more difficult to plan for. Sporting KC’s prolonged success since moving into Sporting Park seems to echo that truth. Even if you generally know where Feilhaber plans to be, or what Dwyer wants to do, it’s another thing entirely to shut it down. So while Vermes almost certainly doesn’t have any tricks up his rolled-up sleeves for this match, that’ll hardly make this weekend’s task any easier.
