Diving Deep: Monterey Bay Union 1-2 Birmingham Legion

The Legion is notoriously tight-lipped about injuries, so it came as a surprise when the gameday roster was announced that it included just 15 players, one of whom was 17-year-old Finn Calloway, who has just 19 professional minutes in two games and none since May. No Phaniuel Kavita, no Tyler Pasher, no Ramiz Hamouda, no newly-acquired Rida Zouhir (who apparently is still not in the Magic City) along with all the other longer-term walking wounded.

At least the team has two healthy goalkeepers right now.

Anyway, this obviously resulted in Tommy Soehn having to get creative. He did have one thing going for him: the weather in Seaside, CA. It was barely 60° at kickoff. None of the ridiculous August temperatures and/or humidity experienced across most of the US and certainly here at home. That meant his men could probably go rather longer than they might normally be expected to do. Indeed, the Legion made only two subs, Miguel Perez in the 67th minute and Preston Tabort Etaka in the 86th. 45 minutes of work between them (there were 9 minutes of added time in the second half).

Tommy went with a lineup we have almost never seen the Legion use. The TV crew announced it as a 4-3-3 with Stefano Pinho as a false 9. They can be forgiven for thinking that; the actual formation (as reported on the league website) was a 4-5-1. That is a highly flexible setup that can change dramatically depending on the flow of the game. It can change with relative ease to a 4-1-4-1, a 4-2-3-1, a 4-3-3 (as the announcers thought) or a 4-3-2-1 (the so-called pyramid, which is a variation of the 4-3-3 anyway).

The key to doing that is the central midfielders. In this case, they were Jake Rufe, Kobe Hernandez-Foster and the ever-flexible Enzo Martinez. All three are capable of attacking and defensive roles as needed. In Kobe’s case, Tommy has been saying he wants him more involved in the attack. Well, he got what he wanted.

Coming into the game, Kobe had 3 assists to his account and 13 shots. That’s just 0.59 shots a game. He got 2 shots off on Saturday, nearly quadrupling his output and getting his first goal of the season as a result. A very nice goal at that.

2 shots was a pretty decent share of the total, since the Legion only 7 shots in the entire game. That’s less than half the team average of 14.7, a fact we have talked about previously. Only 2 were from outside the penalty area though, and of course one of those was Kobe’s goal. 4 shots were on target. Overall, that is far more efficient than what we have typically seen from the Three Sparks this season. Even so, quantity has a quality all of its own. It’s also rare that the Legion gets outshot in a game. Monterey had 13 shots total with 3 on target. Of the rest, 7 were blocked. Which is where that flexible formation becomes key to the game.

Of those 7 blocked shots, 4 were after Alex Crognale was sent off. Further, that accounted for all of Monterey’s shots from that point. All the blocks were made inside the 18. Normally, in that position you would expect the blockers to be your centerbacks. Well, one centerback was off the pitch. AJ Paterson did get one of the blocks. Enzo got 2 of them and Jake the last one. Central midfielders moving back into coverage. It’s also worth noting that the only shot on target after the red card was a header by Dawson McCartney which he knew he should have made more of.

All that being said, the 4-5-1 was actually maintained in a fairly disciplined manner. Here are the Legion’s average positions for the starting XI:

The overall formation is very easy to pick out here. Note also that the 2 centerbacks are playing very wide, but that the 3 central midfielders are more or less an impenetrable wall in the gap. And it would not take much for one or more of them to move into a truly defensive position from where they are. Ironically then, adjusting the formation’s shape is dependent on maintaining the formation’s shape.

Evidently, after the Legion went down a man, the original tactics more or less went out the window. Even though the Legion had well under half the possession prior to the ejection, it got worse afterwards. But playing a man short when you are leading is different than when you are level or trailing. That is, you can afford to give up possession so long as you are able to defend. But in this case the Three Sparks were lacking both their regular starting centerbacks in Phanny and Alex. A third centerback was on the pitch in AJ, and Jake can also serve in that role admirably. Good. Time to bunker. Here is the Legion heatmap after the red card:

Crowding the box, basically. Of the 11 Legion players who were active in that period only Kobe and late sub Preston Tabort Etaka did not touch the ball inside the Legion 18. Even Stefano got a touch, blocking a poorly-delivered corner. Conversely, the Union managed just 11 touches inside the Legion penalty area after getting the man advantage. The Legion had 30. That’s roughly 1 a minute for the Legion and not much better than 1 every 3 minutes for Monterey Bay.

It also helped that the Union is not exactly a prolific scoring team. The Three Sparks aren’t great but the home team has just 22 goals in 23 games (19th in the league). Their best shooter is Tristan Trager, who got their one goal in the game, but other than him they are rather lacking in that department. Being able to key in just one player makes things a little easier. In fact, only Trager and substitute Xavi Gnaulati made contact with the ball inside the Legion 18 during that crazy defensive stretch.

Necessity is the mother of invention, they say. Well, the two Legion goals were certainly inventively achieved by virtue of individual brilliance. As for the rest of the game, Tommy Soehn came up with the perfect plan. Whether that was by luck or by design, well, who cares?