Racing 1 Current 1Post Match Analysis
Courtesy Connor Cunningham
The weather in Louisville held off long enough to ensure a dry and safe match at Lynn Family Stadium on Friday Evening, even if the few hours that followed were a bit more nervous with strong winds coming through the area. “Nervous” was a good word to describe Racing’s performance in the match, as the first 8-10 minutes looked like a team with a new system and a new coach. After that, Racing settled in and were able to get the 1st half possession number up to 48% and went into halftime leading by a goal. KC ended up converting one of their two really good chances, and a draw was a deserved result.
Since this match was the debut for both Jae Howell and Kirsten Davis, let’s start there. I fully expect Howell to be a great player for Racing, but last night’s match was probably her first non-international match in a very long time where she wasn’t the best player on the pitch. To be honest (and I know I am in the minority here), I think Jae would have been better served with an extra 2 weeks in Racing’s camp over the USWNT call up that took her away. Fox was called up too but is more experienced and her time away probably didn’t hurt her at all in her preparation for the season. In the first half, Howell looked a little tentative at times, and surprisingly to me at least…off the pace. More than once, an attacking player went by her fairly easily. Her passing was a bit off as well with a 66% pass completion rate. That looks especially poor when compared to an expected pass completion of 77% based on American Soccer Analysis xPass model. However, she turned things around in the second half and looked much more settled. I would classify her performance as a learning experience. I am 100% positive that the next match will better showcase her skills.
As for Kirsten Davis, she had an almost completely anonymous first half and an absolutely rollicking second half. I should insert a disclaimer here: I sit right next to the bench, and I am much more likely to notice things that happen on that side of the pitch. A really dedicated soccer analyst would go back and watch the match, but I’m not that dedicated. In this case I don’t think I missed anything in her first half performance, but who knows. In the second half she was much more involved and ended up leading the team in shots with 3 and had one on target. Her most common connection was with CeCe Kizer, even with CeCe going off in the 74th minute.
Courtesy Arielle Dror
The surprise stat of the night for me was that Nealy Martin led the team in completed passes with 60. She had effective connections with Kizer, Davis, and McDonald. Of course, in my pre-match analysis I predicted a heavy Fox-Ekic connection and true to my predictive capabilities, their connection was almost nonexistent. Fox connected with Howell and Olofsson effectively, but not Ekic. It seemed as if KC might have been specifically trying to prevent Fox from getting forward early on. Fox did have a good charging run in the second half. On the defensive side she rather easily handled Lynn Williams’ runs when Williams bizarrely chose the left side to attack. She shut down Edmonds effectively on the left side too when she moved into attack.
On the tactical side, I think that KC dictated much of the match, even if they trailed for over half of it. Take note of the Pass Network below and notice that both the left back, Mace and right back, Edmonds basically hung out in midfield.
Courtesy Arielle Dror
For comparison purposes, Fox and Martin spent most of the match firmly in defense. The other item to note is that Desiree Scott’s performance is a good model for what Racing would like to see from Howell. She had 54 completed passes for a percentage of 91%. Her average position of pretty much dead center of the pitch with 7 effective pass networks is something to aspire towards.
One final thought on the match and the league in general about how much the NWSL game is a transition game. Richard Laverty wrote a very good piece on Gemma Bonner for Our Game Magazine here. Here is one particularly omniscient quote from Bonner: “But here, I’m put into positions where I can’t afford to switch off because the game is so transitional, you don’t have too many periods of sustained possession. You have to stay switched on because in a split second you can have Mal Pugh running at you or Lynn Williams or Trinity Rodman, who can hurt you on the fly. The tactical and technical level in England for me is so much higher but the concentration level you need here is so high, that’s the excitement of different leagues.” On Friday this is exactly what happened on KC’s goal. Bonner switched off for just the tiniest of moments and Williams made her pay by winning possession and thus starting the attack that lead to the goal. I don’t want to dwell on Bonner’s mistake, as she made up for it greatly with a goal line clearance late. I bring this up more so talk about 2 things that I have been thinking about for a while.
The first is the ever expanding improvement in soccer stats, and the need to not rest on those improvements. I have debated xG both with fans of the metric and internally with myself for quite a while. I won’t rehash that, but I will say that I believe the next step in analysis is what I would call “Transition xG” My hypothesis is that opportunities created off of a loss of possession are more likely to result in goals that the same opportunities created in possession. I have a tendency to believe that many of Racing’s goals are created within less than 10 seconds of the opponent losing possession. It would be interesting to examine I believe. This leads into the second thing that I have been pondering which is: can a coach that focuses intensely on the technical side of the game like Björkegren be successful in the NWSL? I think the answer is a resounding “Yes”, but we may have to think about how technical and tactical discipline reduce your opponent’s scoring opportunities vs. how they increase your own. I thought Racing’s shape in the match was really good. You could tell that KC were getting frustrated early by their significant amount of possession and lack of any really good opportunities. I think part of this was due to Racing’s technical and tactical discipline at the back. Now Racing needs to work on moving that tactical and technical discipline up the pitch into midfield and attack.
