Photo: Marjorie Elzey

In a season of Major League Soccer where it feels like every team will qualify for the post-season, it’s no surprise to see some teams finding it difficult to hit their stride early in the year.

You couldn’t blame them, and they probably don’t even need to be at full power or full flow as a team, as they can afford to ease their way into the campaign by using early games as a means to finding the best tactics and lineups for more meaningful matches down the line.

This isn’t to say teams aren’t motivated and that players don’t go out looking to win every game, but there is naturally an extra edge to games where there is something to win or something to lose.

Unlike most MLS teams, the Philadelphia Union does have something to play for at the start of this season — the Concacaf Champions League.

The team has secured results in each game that matters so far, most recently against Atlas with a 1-0 win. Even though the Union had an extra man for much of the game, this didn’t necessarily make it easier, as Atlas focused on limiting the damage.

Atlas is a much tougher test than Alianza F.C. was in the last 16, but no team in the CCL can be underestimated — just ask Austin FC. The Union saw off Alianza F.C. with relative ease in the second leg at home and now have the upper hand in the quarterfinal against Atlas, traveling to ​​Guadalajara next week with a 1-0 lead.

The team is one good result away from playing in a second continental semifinal in three years. Something to play for indeed.

St. Louis Union

Back in MLS, it’s perhaps no surprise that the form team so far this season has been the only one (arguably) with something to play for at this stage — expansion side St. Louis City SC. Bradley Carnell’s side has something to prove. Doubters to quell. A soccer history to live up to.

St. Louis is not dissimilar to Philadelphia Union in the way it approaches the game. The club has a head coach in Carnell who has been schooled in the Red Bull system, but the most successful up-and-coming teams in the league have adopted more of a Union, Curtin-like approach.

Though the focus and the identity are based around pressing, counter-pressing, quick attacking and counter-attacking, St. Louis — much like the Union — attempts to do more from within these initial ideas. The newest MLS team is becoming known for pressing but is not necessarily defined by it.

“We’ve been working on a lot of new other concepts this offseason, trying to get better, not just being an all-out press all the time,” Carnell told Left Back Football in 2020, during his time as an assistant coach at New York Red Bulls. “At times, we might accept a little bit of pressure, absorb a little bit of pressure.”

When asked about the development of pressing, particularly by one of its best and most high-profile proponents, Jürgen Klopp, Carnell added, “Even Klopp has developed and found a new approach to his all-out pressing scheme. They do operate differently at Liverpool.”

“It is about manipulating the space the opposition is moving the ball into, and it is about pressing collectively as, if one player does not do his job, his system will fail,” Carnell added. “Hence the concept of the system will be the playmaker because the system forces the turnover, forces the transition and now puts our players in a better position to excel with their decision-making.”

As shown by the tweet below, Carnell wants his team to do other things as well and will take pride in them doing so. He now has more flexibility as a head coach at a new team than he might have had in a support role at the Red Bulls. An enthusiasm for filling this blank canvas that is shared by St. Louis City’s sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel.

As much as I pride myself on our Pressing and high intensity style of play,I thought I would share one of my favorite training clips during my time as Interim Manager. The belief, commitment and growth from these guys everyday, was really fun to watch. 2021➡️let’s go!#RBNY pic.twitter.com/Hfq6hH5nOb

— Bradley Carnell (@Bradzc) February 12, 2021

A team can play a high-pressing system that attacks quickly and vertically, but if you put certain types of players in such a system — based more on their technical profile in possession — you can end up with a group of technically gifted players performing in a high-intensity direct style. When it works this approach can prove unstoppable for many defences.

When analysing the teams at the end of last season, the Union were slightly quicker at progressing the ball upfield than the Red Bulls but also made more passes on average during that progression.

Image from The Analyst

It’s early to make judgments from trends in the data in 2023, but St. Louis has appeared in the same chart roughly where the Union were at the end of last season — a direct, quick style of play, but doing so using more passes in a sequence than the Red Bulls.

Image from The Analyst – red circles added to highlight (l-r) the New York Red Bulls, St. Louis City, and Philadelphia Union.

If a team is looking to make an impact in this league from a position of a relative underdog, the Union model under Curtin is one of the best to follow.

Like the Union, St. Louis will also look to its local area to bring young players through to complement other players. Pfannenstiel has spoken about the desire to mold a certain type of player that will fit the St. Louisan ethos of hard work and bring them not only into the roster but into the first team.

The Union have shown that though there is a preferred style of play, it doesn’t mean youth products are limited to a certain style of player.

Jack McGlynn, for example, is not the quickest, and many teams and coaches would view him as a languid playmaker, but within such a frantic style of play as the Union’s, someone with McGlynn’s vision, composure, technique, and passing ability is vital. St. Louis has seen something similar to this with Eduard Löwen.

You wouldn’t look at Löwen or McGlynn and pick them out as players who would be ideal for a high-energy, quick-footed pressing style, but they are vital for that transition from defense to attack once the ball is won.

Counter-pressing as Carnell refers to it, reflecting the words of Klopp, isn’t just about the tireless pressing, but about its playmaking too.

As the season progresses and the intensity increases, the Union will no doubt work their way back to the top left corner of those charts where the Red Bulls and St. Louis City currently sit. For now, their focus should be on the one tournament they need to put everything into and have a genuine chance of winning. If points are dropped in the occasional MLS game around CCL games, for better or for worse, it doesn’t matter too much at this stage as far as the regular season is concerned.