Despite whatever the headlines would lead you to believe, stars don’t win teams MLS Cups. The season is too long, the playoffs are too fickle and the league’s parity is too widespread for a collection of two or three name brand Designated Players to do all the heavy lifting themselves.
In MLS, depth is what wins titles. A surfeit of it was how the LA Galaxy plugged holes around David Beckham and Landon Donovan to win four of the last six MLS Cups. And a dearth of it is why despite its profligate spending sprees, Toronto FC is about to sneak in the side door of the postseason for the first time in its nine-year history. Teams that shrewdly build depth through the draft and transfer window are inevitably left standing in November and December.
So while Sounders FC went without all three of its DPs sharing a field for a solid three months over the summer, the raft of crippling injuries to the depth behind them was what perhaps hurt even more. You can’t plug a leak in the hull with cheesecloth.
After a bevy of summer signings, that depth, it seems, has arrived just in time. While Seattle’s 1-1 draw at Sporting KC over the weekend was undoubtedly a bit disappointing from a few angles, it did augur better things down the road, specifically for Seattle’s pivotal matchup against the LA Galaxy on Sunday (6:30 p.m. PT / FOX Sports 1, KIRO Radio 97.3 FM, El Rey 1360 AM). Here’s why.
During its darkest periods this year, Seattle struggled most with wide creation. Before the arrival of Andreas Ivanschitz and Nelson Valdez, Marco Pappa and Lamar Neagle served as the wider units in the 4-4-2 (mostly, although we did see some 4-2-3-1 as well). That was fine for intricate one-twos at the top of the box, but it made Seattle narrow and virtually cut out aerial balls to Obafemi Martins and company. Both Neagle and Pappa look to cut inside more often than not. The Sounders gradually began shrinking the workable area in the attacking third.
The signing of Ivanschitz and Valdez ushered in a new paradigm. Valdez has played in a number of roles over the life of his career, one of them being a creative shuttler high on the right flank. In Seattle, he began as a striker playing off Martins, but now that Clint Dempsey’s as close to full strength as he’s been since he left for the Gold Cup in June, Valdez splayed wide right against Sporting KC.
Here’s the combined pass map for Ivanschitz (23) and Valdez (16) from Sunday:
The first thing you’ll notice is that Ivanschitz basically cratered the high left flank (Seattle’s traveling south to north on this map). He completed just six passes in SKC’s half, and just two in the upper left quadrant of the attacking third. That’s not uncommon for players new to a system, and Ivanschitz, remember, hadn’t played a full competitive game in more than three months before he got his first start for Seattle. Players tend to migrate northward as they gain comfort in the system.
Plus, Ivanschitz provided a key pass off a corner kick in the 52nd minute, one of the primary reasons he was brought to Seattle in the first place.
As for Valdez, he was much more active, which makes sense considering his busy summer in the Copa America and his earlier introduction to the lineup in Seattle. But note this when you look at the disparity in flanks here. One thing any coach will tell you about the vitality of any attacking lineup is its level of diversity matters. The more looks you can give a defense inside one lineup, the more you’ll confuse their wiring and short-circuit their back end. Between Valdez running at defenders and Ivanschitz peeling back to provide well-placed balls over the top, this is about as diverse as it gets.
As for the back line, the duo of Brad Evans and Zach Scott could prove prescient. Chad Marshall was rested against Sporting KC last week, and a saddening injury in practice this week could well rule Marshall out for the critical matchup against the LA Galaxy this weekend.
Evans and Scott haven’t had a ton of games together as partners in the center of the defense, but they established a connection pretty early in Kansas City. Take a look at this map. The purple triangles are clearances.
The pair combined to miss just six passes in their own third, and the cone of silence around the box indicates a ready willingness to clear off danger in lieu of dancing on possession in a dangerous space. The only lapse was Scott’s slowness to recover on Dom Dwyer’s equalizer with 10 minutes left. But Dwyer is one of the top five most dangerous scorers in the league, and he was fresh as a late sub. That’s a notoriously difficult marker for anyone.
As for how Sporting KC pushed Seattle off kilter, that has more to do with how it pressed in the middle of the field in the second half.
The only way to break a successful possession team is to press it into oblivion and hope it doesn’t find space behind you. Nobody in MLS keeps more possession than Seattle right now, and no coach is more determined to press until the rudder falls off than SKC’s Peter Vermes. In the first half, Seattle’s approach won out. In the second, SKC’s did.
The main difference in the second half was Soni Mustivar, who entered for Paulo Nagamura after halftime and attempted more than twice as many passes in Seattle’s half as Nagamura did. But take a glimpse at this average position map with the two teams overlaid on top of one another (SKC, ringed in blue, is traveling downward in your picture).
In this tactical setup, Osvaldo Alonso (No. 6) is the lynchpin for Seattle’s build. He’s the sinew between that Evans/Scott buildup and the dropping forward between Dempsey and Martins. SKC totally overloaded him, often stacking three players on top of him in Mikey Lopez, Bernardo Anor and dropping forward Jacob Peterson. The harried Seattle midfield made more mistakes than usual on Sunday because of that dizzying press, which merely loaded onto Erik Friberg’s shoulders later in the game.
Finally, that lone white square basically shaking hands with Stefan Frei is Dwyer. Exactly where you want a late sub to be when you’re behind. No surprise he scored. He more or less popped up a tent in Seattle’s box.
The good news for whoever starts on Sunday is that the Galaxy’s midfield is unlikely to press that hard. With Steven Gerrard and Juninho in the mix, Seattle should have a bit more room to breathe in the central midfield, and that’s good news for Sounders FC.
