Photo by Marjorie Elzey

Brave and desperate

The brave and the desperate.

To borrow the phrases of commentator Danny Higginbottom, the Philadelphia Union and New York City FC were those things on Sunday night. Given their league-leading, Shield-winning pace, one might have thought it was the hosts who were the former. Given their short-handed lineup and that they were on the road, one might have thought it was the guests who were the latter.

And yet, the narrative was turned on its head in Chester from kickoff and for the full 90 minutes.

Bravery in the details

Data courtesy of Major League Soccer

What does bravery look like in a box score?

Maybe it looks like 16 clearances, on a night when neither team played great soccer but one outshot the other more than three to one.

NYCFC’s high line against a Union set piece

How about bravery on a set piece?

Maybe it looks like holding an absurdly high offside line, pushing the Union’s poachers a few yards further from goal. Union strikers are at their best making one-touch finishes on balls across the box. No one is making one of those this far from goal – but the bravery required to believe that’s true as a defender is significant.

Bravery certainly looks like Matt Freese – Union Academy alum, marooned on the bench behind Andre Blake before being shipped out of town, now between the posts for City and more than in the mix for starting goalkeeper on the US Men’s National Team – standing on his head with a Man of the Match performance (the highest rated player on WhoScored’s statistical summary).

City outworked the Union with more duels, interceptions, blocks, clearances, and saves. That old saying about how “defense wins championships…”

That’s brave.

NYCFC man marking

What does bravery look like in a defensive shape?

Maybe it looks like two strikers pushing their marks wide while outside midfielders pin the safety valve fullbacks in place. Out of the ordinary in modern soccer? Certainly not. Brave in its tactical application, given the team’s lack of depth? Absolutely.

Count the bodies on screen – five for the Union and four for City. That means that offscreen, up the field, are seven for the Cityzens and six for the Boys in Blue. Yes, the numbers are roughly equal in both places, but the outcome City is hoping for is this: that the Union either make a mistake near their own end or, more likely, that they settle for a long ball into the part of the field where things are crowded enough that the guests like their chances either with the initial pass itself, often in the air, or whatever happens after that, the second ball.

And City won more of these first and second balls than the Union all night.

In fact, this exact philosophical opportunity manifested into the game’s only goal.

It started when the Union first forced a turnover in the midfield, their attacking bread and butter. Then, rather than keep possession or find space on the far side of the field, the hosts simply chipped a ball forward: again, their bread and butter, hoping for a numeral advantage that might lead to the ability to win the second ball (this initial pass came from midfielder Jovan Lukic who, after Tai Baribo, was the worst starting player on the field all night). The Union found neither as City won that first and then second ball, the latter one off the foot of Bruno Damiani (who was almost absent from the Union’s attacking thrust all night, contributing one low probability shot, some defensive actions, and a lot of silly fouls).

In an attempt to atone for his turnover, the aforementioned Lukic charged hard into the vacant space behind his striker in order to win the ball back. New York quickly passed around him, with a gap forming behind where he ought to have been. This forced Kai Wagner to step into said gap, but his hard-charging run was easily stepped past, the angle just wasn’t very good. That move though left yet another space behind him – and space behind the attacking fullbacks is frankly the Union’s Achille’s Heel.

The Union want to play narrowly. Any attack that forces narrow players wide without central cover is a dangerous one – and this sequence had both!

Olwethu Makhanya chased the ball wide, as he was wont to do all over the field on the night – equal parts eager and insane, depending on the moment – leaving yet another gap behind him. Having his own mark to track, Jakob Glesnes was caught in two minds, hoping Danley Jean-Jaques would be there to cover for him. He was not.

Thus, when Makhanya was beaten, even though most of the Union line had recovered a moment later, it was too late to track the ageless Maxi Morales’s run into the box.

One domino fell and a dozen others fell behind it.

Desperate, but first a little too passive

The Union’s press against NYCFC

Go back up and look at how City man-marked the Union while they were building out.

Now look at how the Union lined up defensively in a similar situation.

City’s press eliminated players from the buildup so as to force a bad pass. The Union’s attempts to lay traps near the goal in order to force what seems like a safe pass into some dangerous pressure, which then becomes a bad pass. The quirks of this tactical difference notwithstanding, because City are comfortable passing the ball on the ground near their goal and the Union are but don’t really want to, it almost looks as though the Union are down a man on defense or missing a player in the center of their shape.

This isn’t passivity per se – this is how the Union won their Shield after all – but the calculus for getting the ball to midfield from what the Union had in front of them and what City did is certainly different. That’s partly why City had so many more passes in their own half than did the Union (186 to 121)!

This comfort is how City scored their goal: keep the ball, force Union defenders to respond to movement and therefor lose their shape, move the ball into the spaces that these defenders have vacated, repeat until the ball is in the back of the net!

(See summary above!)

Data courtesy of Fotmob

And yet, the Union, as poorly as they played, weren’t so bad as to not feel like they deserved more from the tie.

To that end, the line between “desperation” and domination is a thin one.

The Union tripled their guests in shots, more than doubled them in xG, took 50% more touches in City’s half of field, and nearly three times as many touches in their opponent’s box. More often than not, that’s going to mean the Union win this game – and perhaps do so going away.

Data courtesy of WhoScored.com

But when the going got tough, the Union got desperate.

When the data focuses down on a broader definition of clearances, suddenly things clarify. The Union attempted cross after cross (12 on the night to City’s two, plus another 8 corner kicks), their attack consisting mostly of set pieces and whipped-in balls. They were all for naught as, especially in the second half when the Union’s possession advantage was at its most unbalanced, the guest’s goal became City’s Helm’s Deep, their Alamo, their “Whatever Jose Mourinho would say to his Chelsea teams that used defense and only defense to destroy the Premier League.”

Hunker (verb, of Dutch and German origin) – to take shelter in a defensive position; to apply oneself seriously to a task.

The season’s end

The Union met their match on Sunday night.

That they crashed out of the playoffs again in front of their home crowd is its own bit of bitter nostalgia. That they did it against New York City FC is salt in that deep and old wound. That they did it in a week where the culture they’ve built for the last decade was under siege, if not already eroded entirely, hurts just that much more. That they did it while playing fairly poorly and yet substantially outplaying their guests might be a silver lining, or simply the turning of another “That’s so Union” blunt blade.

They did it though, they lost, narrative notwithstanding, and will go at least one more calendar year without hoisting MLS Cup.