Tag: jill ellis

women's soccer

Any defense for USA’s World Cup roster?

Posted on by Beau Dure

At the Total Soccer Show, Daryl Grove and Taylor Rockwell seem worried.

At The Guardian, Caitlin Murray seems slightly skeptical.

At The Equalizer (paid content), Chelsey Bush laments the absence of Casey Short.

At Soccer America, Paul Kennedy sees a couple of surprises.

At Twitter … no, I’m not going there.

I’m probably less worried than the Total Soccer Show guys, but they raised some interesting questions that I figured I’d tackle one by one.

Only one left back (Crystal Dunn), and she’s best in the attack? When is left back not a concern for almost any team? You don’t have to be left-footed to play left back, but it helps, and lefties are maybe 20 percent of soccer players. An NIH article finds only 8.2 percent of people in general are left-footed, though another 30.2 percent are “mixed-footed.” The study did not, however, ask participants to demonstrate this by putting a 30-yard cross into Alex Morgan’s path.

But Tierna Davidson can fill in. Once Kelley O’Hara is healthy, she would be an option, especially given the surplus of right backs.

All of which, though, leads to another question …

Only seven defenders? Some stories report the roster announcement as Ali Krieger over Casey Short. I don’t think it’s that simple. Krieger and Short are both deserving. So why not take both?

You can have eight defenders by answering the next question …

Why seven forwards? To be picky, “forward” isn’t necessarily a position as much as it’s an attitude. The difference between a 4-5-1 and a 4-3-3 is really how much ground you want the wingers to cover.

Also, Carli Lloyd isn’t exactly a stranger to midfield, so if she needed to play a No. 10 role, she certainly could.

But with such an attack-oriented team, it’s worth looking around the front line and midfield to see if anyone could way to bring aboard Casey Short as an eighth defender. And as great a story as she has, I think Jessica McDonald is the odd person out.

Where’s the backup defensive midfielder? Julie Ertz is unique. You don’t see a lot of center backs moved up one line on the field.

But who jumped in as the defensive midfielder in 2015 to replace the miscast Lauren Holiday? That would be Morgan Brian, the surprise pick for this roster only because she hasn’t been fit recently. Another option is Allie Long. In a pinch, Lindsey Horan.

It’s a pity not to see McCall Zerboni simply because she has fleshed out her game so nicely at an age in which most players consider themselves finished products. I always saw her a “physical” presence in midfield, and she’s still typically at or near the NWSL lead in fouls committed. (Horan and Long aren’t far behind.) But she has become a deft possession-oriented midfield as well, attempting and completing far more passes per 90 minutes now than she did in 2016.

For sake of argument, let’s compare Zerboni and Long’s numbers.

Make of that what you will.

So your tl;dr recap: I’d have taken Short instead of McDonald just to have another defender, but other than that, I don’t see any glaring holes. And that attack is about as strong as you’ll ever see.

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soccer

U.S. women in the World Cup semifinals: Decisions, decisions

Posted on by Beau Dure

Jill Ellis made three lineup changes for Friday’s quarterfinal win against China, two out of necessity. The result: Still just a 1-0 win against a team that had little attacking punch, but the team looked better and felt better.

And it was the kind of performance U.S. fans had wanted to see. Amy Rodriguez was buzzing around making things difficult for China, Alex Morgan was a looming threat, and Carli Lloyd was unleashed. Not that the trio was perfect — A-Rod shanked a great chance like a beginning golfer, Morgan didn’t quite have the scoring touch, and Lloyd had a few giveaways. But this was not the lumbering attack we had seen in the past. Abby Wambach gave some inspiration from the bench and was ready to go if needed.

Then two players stepped up in surprising roles. The versatile Kelley O’Hara was a menace on the flanks, and young Morgan Brian looked like a composed veteran in a holding midfield role.

So now what? What happens when the USA takes a giant leap up in competition from a young, easily rattled Chinese team to a ruthlessly efficient German team that absorbed a couple of hours of French pressure and fought back to win?

Player-by-player:

Rodriguez: Did the German defense look a step slow against France? If so, they could be tailor-made for the speedy A-Rod. Then again, Sydney Leroux has some wheels, too.

Morgan: You just sense that it’s coming, don’t you? She made pivotal plays against Colombia and has the potential to create something magical.

Wambach: She may have another clutch goal left on her head or in her feet. She’d be perfect to bring in against a tired German defense in the second half.

Megan Rapinoe: Has to play. She’s the most creative winger the USA has.

Lloyd: Has to play in the same role she played last night. Don’t forget who scored the winning goals in the last two Olympics, and she scored again last night.

Brian: Clearly the best option at holding mid now. Lori Chalupny can play there at club level, but she hasn’t been tested there at international level in a long, long time.

Lauren Holiday: Unfortunate. She was miscast as a holding mid for months, and now it might be too late to get her back on the field in another role such as attacking mid or second forward. But we would’ve said the same about O’Hara before last night, right?

Tobin Heath: Just isn’t turning those nifty moves into anything concrete right now.

O’Hara: Maybe the best option on the right flank? Her pressure, passing and willingness to test China with an occasional medium-range bomb were outstanding last night.

Christen Press: Can she bring the same tempo-changing ability as A-Rod?

The defense isn’t in question — Meghan Klingenberg, Julie Johnston, Becky Sauerbrunn and Ali Krieger have been so outstanding that we often forget Hope Solo is even playing.

So those five are sure starters, and I’d add Rapinoe, Lloyd and Brian to that list. Everything else is up for grabs.

Here’s one reasonable lineup that builds on last night’s success:

football formations

And here’s one that’s a little wilder:

football formations

But I’m not sure Ellis needs to do anything that drastic. She has already shown the flexibility for which I was pleading at SoccerWire. They did not play “Whack it to Wambach” for 90 minutes last night.

And as a result, I’ve gone from thinking Germany is a sure bet to thinking we may see an epic on Tuesday.

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soccer

Jill Ellis stubbornly goes forth into the World Cup

Posted on by Beau Dure

U.S. women’s soccer coach Jill Ellis talked with Grant Wahl, at last giving someone a chance to ask questions that have been kicking around in the Twittersphere for a while.

wnt-tacticsOn Twitter, they were often phrased something like “What the &*%$! is that midfield supposed to be?!” Here, it’s “Why don’t you consider using a pure defensive midfielder?”

A few takeaways:

1. Ellis still talks about a core of 13-14 players. That would be an unusual approach. In 1999, Tony DiCicco rested several players in the final group game against North Korea — Michelle Akers and Kate Markgraf sat the whole way, and Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy played one half. Supersub Shannon MacMillan started and scored the team’s first goal; reserve Tisha Venturini started and scored the next two. Sara Whalen played half the group stage, sat out the quarterfinals and semifinals, then was entrusted with a spot on the field throughout the final’s dramatic extra time. This year, we’re talking about more games, aging players in key roles, and artificial turf.

Write it down — at some point in this World Cup, the 15th or 16th player on a given squad will have a major impact.

2. That said, Ellis hints at a center mid rotation. Oh, the whole Carli Lloyd-as-nominal winger thing? That was just because Megan Rapinoe was hurt, Ellis tells Wahl. Lloyd will be playing a good bit of center mid, where she excels, in the World Cup.

But so will the duo occupying those spots the last couple of months, awkwardly converted playmakers Lauren Holiday and Morgan Brian. All at the same time? Probably not. Lloyd and Holiday, with Brian as backup? Some sense in that, sure.

And yet it leads to the question everyone has been dying to ask …

3. Ellis cares not for your defensive midfielder wishes. Here’s the money quote:

A center mid has to be able to playmake and also be able to defend … Lloyd and Holiday spray a ball around better than any midfield I’ve seen. So I value that. If I went for a potentially a pure defender, now am I getting that from them? Probably not.

In a way, it’s reassuring that U.S. soccer has evolved from the days of defensive midfielders being one-dimensional. But let’s emphasize something: “be able to defend.”

DiCicco’s 1999 squad was able to move a powerhouse scorer like Michelle Akers deep into the midfield because if she needed to win the ball, she was going to win the damn ball. That’s not true of Holiday or Brian.

4. Abby Wambach’s role is clear as the Beijing sky. Everyone’s OK with that, right?

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soccer

U.S. women’s national team: What are they doing?

Posted on by Beau Dure

I figured it out. The USA is playing a 4-3-3 formation with fluid interchanges in midfield.

No, wait — it’s a 4-5-1, with one target forward and two traditional wingers.

Or maybe it’s a 4-2-4, with Carli Lloyd and Lauren Holiday as the only actual midfielders.

No, no. I’ve got it. It was Col. Mustard with the lead pipe in the conservatory.

In some senses, the Jill Ellis Way isn’t all that complicated. At least, it wasn’t in Monday night’s rather routine 6-0 rout over Haiti that clinched first place in their World Cup qualifying group and moved the team into the semifinals, the first of several chances the team could have to make it to Canada 2015 but also the only chance they should need.

On Monday in lively RFK Stadium, the USA lined up with …

– a traditional back four (Whitney Engen took a turn at center back in place of Becky Sauerbrunn, while Kelley O’Hara joined the right back mix, but neither Engen nor O’Hara made a compelling case for the starting XI).

– Lauren Holiday in her new spot as a deep-lying midfielder who can switch the point of attack and play long through balls.

– Carli Lloyd in her central not-quite-defensive but also not the playmaking midfield role.

– Tobin Heath (left) and Christen Press (right) on the wings.

– Abby Wambach as a target forward, putting to rest (for now) the talk of making her a sort-of playmaking midfielder.

– Megan Rapinoe all over the damn field.

“We asked Abby to sort of stay high and leave the space open for Pinoe and Carli to get into,” Ellis said. “Megan has a pretty free role and roams a lot, and sometimes that’s a good thing.”

U.S. Soccer calls it a 4-3-3. That’s about as close as we’ll get.

Ellis has been fond of using numbers rather than names to refer to positions. The left wing is an 11. The right wing is a 7. Center mids who are not the attacking midfielder are 8 and 4, though the 8 may attack more than the 4.

The numbering system is an odd fit for this team. It dates back to a particularly rigid era of English tactics, when Hungary could turn up at Wembley and completely flummox the hosts by dropping the center forward back into midfield.

So then what would you call Rapinoe, who turned up on both flanks and, early in the game, alongside Wambach at center forward? Do you take the average of 11, 7, 10 and 9? (At least 9.75 would’ve been a decent score in the old gymnastics scoring system.)

“I think when I start in the 10, more central, then I have the freedom to roam. I can shift out wide, which is a 7 or 11,” Rapinoe said. “But if I start out wide, then I’m supposed to stay wide more.”

This team is more fluid than that. Particularly in Rapinoe’s case and to some extent in Lloyd’s. The wingers are sometimes midfielders, sometimes forwards.

Ellis said the team’s “mantra” is to get that early goal and set the tone. So it was little wonder that the formation looked like a 4-4-2, with Heath, Wambach, Rapinoe and Press all surging ahead like a direct counterpart of Haiti’s back four.

But it didn’t really work. The USA got an early lead off a Haitian lapse, with the visitors’ defense clearing the ball and pulling up but making the crucial error of leaving Wambach unmarked, then failing to account for Lloyd firing home after the keeper punched clear of Wambach. A few minutes later, the fault lines in the attack appeared — a cross went into space that Wambach and Rapinoe occupied. The moment of “I got it, no, you got it” hesitation surely cost the USA a second goal.

Asked if she and Wambach realized they shouldn’t be in the same place, Rapinoe laughed in agreement.

“It’s definitely different for me to be in the box like that to get on the end of headers like that. But I do my best. …

“It’s a bit of an adjustment, of course. I’ve been playing out wide, predominantly, for three, four, five years now. I come inside when I play out wide, anyway, to occupy that space a little bit. I’m not just going to run past you on the wing. So it’s pretty similar to my (wing) role, it’s more my starting position.”

It didn’t matter on this night, of course. Haiti had nothing to offer. By my count, they got into the U.S. box with the ball twice, tumbling each time as if in search of some call from the referee to give them a chance at the penalty spot. Their best chance was in the 33rd minute, when the USA faltered in the center at let Marie Jean Pierre race toward the goal, but Whitney Engen recovered and put her foot directly in front of Jean Pierre’s 25-yard shot. The other Haitian chance, if we’re stretching the definition of the word “chance,” was from roughly 35 yards out and near the right sideline, struck hard but nowhere near Ashlyn Harris’ goal.

Shek Borkowski, the affable Polish-American coach who has made Haiti his major project, gave a mixed report in the press conference. It was something along the lines of “Yes, we’re making some progress, but these players need to avoid getting caught up in the excitement of staying in nice hotels, a lot of these players are on the way out, I’m off to coach the U20s and get them ready to replace the senior players, good night.” He made no effort to hide his team’s strategy for this game — bunker and counter — but they simply weren’t effective. Trinidad and Tobago showed that it’s possible to pull a near-upset with an organized defense and an intelligent counterattack, but Haiti had neither.

And so we didn’t learn that much from this game. Meghan Klingenberg looked great going forward from left back, combining with Tobin Heath for some creative flank play that provided some relief from the endless parade of crosses, and she scored her first international goal on a blistering drive from 25 yards out. But can you anoint her the new left back starter after a game in which she was hardly asked to play any defense?

Chris Hummer, the SoccerWire entrepreneur and former Washington Spirit GM, was not impressed with what he saw from the USA. To channel the spirit of Pia Sundhage, my glass is half-full. I saw some creativity on display — some dummies, the occasional backheel, a pretty combination between Holiday and Leroux, etc. Holiday’s quality is a nice fit for that deep-lying (No. 4) role.

But it’s true that the U.S. tactics were less than subtle, sometimes bringing up bad memories of the team fruitlessly whacking the ball to Abby Wambach in the 2003 World Cup semifinal against Germany.

“Obviously, we were looking for diagonal balls and balls in the box, and I thought they defended very hard,” Ellis said. “Gradually, we sort of wore them down.”

And again, we’ll have to see if all of these things work against better opponents. How will Holiday fare defending a European playmaker? What happens when the opposing defense does not neglect the towering presence of 173-goal scorer Abby Wambach?

Friday night’s semifinal will be a step up in class — Costa Rica, Mexico and Jamaica all look considerably better than Haiti and Guatemala. The stakes are high, so the USA may have to resort to the tried-and-true whack-it-to-Abby ball just to make things comfortable. Then we’ll see what happens when the team tackles more powerful opposition later on.

So, Megan Rapinoe, should we in the pressbox and stands give up trying to figure out Ellis’ numbers?

“Yeah, I think so.”

She did say Holiday was a 6 and Lloyd was an 8. But some experts on English Football Positional Numbers (EFPN) would say 6 is a center back. Um, no.

Look — the English persist in calling center backs “center halves” because, a century ago, the people who wore those numbers were in the midfield of a 2-3-5 formation. When Ellis lines up the team in a 2-3-5, we’ll worry about the numbers again.

Just know this — Rapinoe is an effective playmaker with room to roam, Holiday is good the deep-lying role, Lloyd is always going to figure out a way to get into the attack, Heath is creative on the left flank, and Wambach is still a pretty good target forward.

And I’m now convinced that the players, at least, know their roles. We’ll see how they execute them against better opposition.

Notes:

– Ashlyn Harris had little to do on a rare start in goal.

“You have to be switched on, you have to be ready, you have to expect it. You have to play high off your line in case the ball goes over and takes a bad flick off a defender’s head, you have to be there to clean it up. But you also can’t flirt with danger. If they’re breaking our pressure and they can hit it over my head, I have to make sure I’m back in a good position. … I have to be a leader out there, be a voice, make my presence known, and when the ball comes, make sure I’m ready and I’m not sleepy.”

But she did get to soak up the love from her home fans in Washington, where the Spirit faithful chanted her name before kickoff.

“I’m in my home, you know. These are my people, these are my supporters. These are the people who’ve been there for a long time, rooting for me. It’s humbling, it’s honoring. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before at a national team event, and that’s pretty special, and I’m going to keep that with me for a long time.”

– Hope Solo was one of the first players to walk past the mixed zone. I didn’t see anyone ask to speak with her, but it’s possible someone down the line asked. The bulk of the media attention was on the goal scorers.

– Attendance was listed at 6,421. It felt like more, in part because the area underneath the pressbox and mezzanine was roped off, moving fans either to the corners or to the far sideline, where the crowd was strong and loud.

– University of Virginia midfielder Morgan Brian scored a goal to the delight of the plethora of Cavaliers fans in the crowd. She often plays a little farther back on the field, but not this time.

– The big game tomorrow sees Mexico and Jamaica play for a spot in the semis.

Hmmm … maybe I should take up gambling. I’d be happy to put down some money on Jamaica at those odds.

Highlights:

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