Photo by Earl Gardner

Union fans have had little to truly hold on to in the past few years that is consistently good, reliable, and inspiring. Those on the outside have had to look hard for value in their commitment to an organization that has seemed almost constantly in turmoil, one that fired its CEO and completely restructured only eighteen months ago, has seen its best player sidelined with injury for two full years with no clear pathway back to the field, has the talent to win four consecutive games and has the lack of focus to quickly lose two winnable games immediately thereafter, and is only just now finishing the first round of investments in infrastructure that will bring the team up or toward the median of league expectations in that realm.

Amidst all of these dark clouds has emerged a constant and clear north star for many fans: Goalkeeper Andre Blake. Given the Union’s history at his position, this is no small feat and no small irony. Blake was drafted first overall by the team in 2014, underwent several surgeries to repair injured knees in 2015, and emerged as the starter for not only the Union but the MLS All Stars as well in 2016. When last season ended, Blake won MLS’s 2016 Goalkeeper of the Year Award too, the first time in franchise history any player won an award of such magnitude. Blake is a starter for the Jamaican national team as well, and the league’s all-time Goalkeeper of the Year award winners list is one full of national team starters like him and positional legends in American professional soccer lore. He is a regular on MLS Save of the Week highlight reels and can be directly credited with saving points for the Union in seemingly countless matches since his insertion as a regular in the XI.

Cracks in the pavement

“A goalie is a goalie because he can’t play soccer.” – Ruud Gullit

Gullit’s sentiments were those that men and women of a certain age grew up with in America, too, probably playing a diamond back four in a 4-4-2 and using the keeper as a player most adept at catching with his hands and lumping the ball forward with his feet, with little or no regard for where that ball ended up. This was not a position of subtlety: stand there and block the goal; everything else is unimportant.

Modern soccer has changed the requirements for competency for quite a few positions on the field, perhaps none more than the goalkeeper. Keepers today in almost all leagues and formations must do substantially more than save shots with their hands, a requirement that is simply a baseline for qualification now rather than an impressive skill. Modern keepers are expected to often play as the team’s libero, Italian for “free” and similar to the Sweeper of that diamond-in-the-back past, a fluid and versatile center back with gloves that is responsible for shot-stopping of course, but also for being the first pivot point around which the offense takes its shape.

In the same way that Jim Curtin names his striker as his first defender in the team’s pressing defense, the goalkeeper must also be this team’s first attacker, with every pass having a purpose and a direct impact on the team’s ability to score a goal.

Andre Blake is an ASTONISHINGLY TALENTED SHOT-STOPPER. In almost every match, the Union man stops a shot that puts him in qualification for the league’s Save of the Week. However, that particular award is one he won only once in 2016, and Blake has only earned a place on the MLS’s Team of the Week once in 2016 and once in 2017. Given his aforementioned accolades, this should be surprising, but the fact of the matter is this: Major League Soccer is full of astonishingly good saves made by talented keepers. Blake is among that group because he has the baseline shot-stopping skills that all teams begin with when building their roster from the back. However, so does Nick Rimando, Joe Bendik, Luis Robles, Tim Howard, Brad Guzan, and a dozen other league keepers, some of whom even used to wear Union blue.

For all of his shot-stopping skill, Andre Blake has a weakness in his game that is becoming clear to Union opponents and fans alike: Andre Blake is a liability with the ball at his feet.

Valuing “our” players

“People tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them.” This is called mere-exposure effect, or the familiarity principle, and “the more often a person is seen by someone, the more pleasing and likable that person appears to be.” It’s worth considering that, even though Blake was so highly lauded in 2016, Union fans overvalue his contributions to the team and his overall status with respect to the rest of the league in part because of this principle.

Union fans aren’t the only ones who watch soccer and have opinions about Union players, though. It’s worth looking at other sources to help determine how much affect this bias has, if any.

• Audi Player Index: This comprehensive database of game actions has Blake ranked as the league’s 6th overall keeper this season, but ranked as one of the worst keepers within the Top 20 in terms of his offensive contribution.
• MLSSoccer.com: In these more basic and traditional statistics, Blake ranks 8th in shots faced and saves made, but 12th in goals allowed and right near the league average for save percentage at 67% (goals against and saves numbers are notoriously difficult to quantify, of course).
• FIFA 17: Andre Blake’s avatar in FIFA 17 is ranked as the 9th best keeper in MLS, and his overall score is dragged down by scores of 13/100 in short passing and a 12/100 in long passing
• Fantasy Footy: In this imaginary game that highly weights saves, Blake unsurprisingly makes the MLS’s Top Ten list for keepers, all but a given thanks to his 2016 accolades.
• Expert Commentary: For NBCSports’s annual list of best players by position, the reigning ‘Keeper of the Year comes in 3rd.

Who is this caped crusader?

To call Andre Blake anything less than the best shot-stopper in the franchise history is a disservice to the magic he has contributed to his team. As mentioned above, though, that should be qualified as a baseline skill upon which others must be considered. Take the Union’s most recent match, a 2-1 loss at New York City FC, about which Whoscored.com described plenty of positives for the Boys in Blue but listed as a negative of their day that the Union “this one, and a cursory scan of his saves underscores that.

However, goalkeepers are also expected to be a net positive to the team’s possession in this day and age, and this is how we can assess Blake’s contributions more clearly. The Union were out-possessed on Saturday 63.1% to 36.9%, a margin that allowed City to attempt nearly 77% more passes. What that means in building from the back is important, and the binary between Blake and his counterpart, Sean Johnson, is absolutely stark: Johnson had 60 touches on the day (13% of all of City’s passes) and completed a team-leading 88.4% of them, while Andre Blake had 42 touches (30% fewer, but accounting for nearly 17% of all of the Union’s passes) and completed a second-worst on the team, 39.3%, only beating the rusty and disconnected Josh Yaro in that category.

When the Union employed their favored high press and forced City into giving Sean Johnson a touch, the Union barely won more than 10% of the ball immediately after that. When City did the same to the Union and Blake, in what accounted for nearly one out of every five of the team’s touches, the Pigeons won the ball back 60% of the time.

Summary

Andre Blake’s first job as a goalkeeper is to stop shots on goal, and he does that extremely well. He is superman between the pipes for Union fans, who value Andre Blake so highly as a shot-stopper that they fail to see how much of a negative influence he has on team possession and what that does to the team’s ability to assert themselves in matches and dictate play. Passing is this Superman’s kryptonite.

Libero keepers, Sweeper-keepers, or whatever the buzzword term is, aren’t just a fashionable element to the modern game. They’re an essential tool to control matches and one that the Union currently lack. Until that gets better, expect more highlight reel saves and more wasted opportunities for possession out of the back.