ACFC 0-2 Portland Thorns
This match will be remembered as the last time that Ali Riley and Christen Press stepped onto the field at BMO. Both have had extraordinary careers, though I’m not going to spend the time to discuss that here. There are many other writers that have covered them, and probably better than I could. I’d recommend Meg Linehan’s article on Press for The Athletic and Jeff Kassouf’s article on Riley for ESPN if you’re looking for something on them.
As to the game itself, I had a feeling that Portland was going to come to play; we weren’t going to get another 5-1 win this time. The game was maybe closer than at first glance, but maybe not at second glance. Portland wins the xG handily, 1.3 to 0.6, but 0.73 of that comes from the penalty, so that’s actually pretty even otherwise. Shots are 11 to 10 in Angel City’s favor, but I think that this is misleading. After Moultrie’s penalty, Portland never took another shot, and at that moment, they were leading shots 10-6. Almost half of Angel City’s shots came in that final half hour when I think that Portland was happy to sit back and ride out the road win. Of those final five Angel City shots, none had an xG better than .07 from Niehues, so nothing very threatening. In fact Portland had the 4 best xG chances on the evening, which includes the penalty. That actually doesn’t include Moultrie’s first goal, which only had an xG of .04, but a Post Shot xG of .3 (which honestly feels a little low, that shot was right in the postage stamp).
Control of the Midfield
An aspect of the game that I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around was the midfield. Angel City setup again in a 3-4-2-1 and I was worried that Portland’s 4-3-3 would give them an advantage with an extra player in the midfield. But that didn’t actually play out the way that maybe I expected. Martin had 58 Touches, while Sugita had 51. For Portland, Moultrie had 57 Touches, while Coffey had 35 and Fleming had 33.
Overall Possession was 56%-44% in Angel City’s favor, and continuing from what I discussed last week, I don’t think that this actually suited us. Portland never allowed the kind of opportunities that led to the goals against Houston. For the season, Portland averages 47.4% Possession, so that was slightly down, but Total Touches (463 vs 541.9 season average) and Total Pass Attempts (345 vs 420 season average) were also dramatically down.
The other stat that jumped out to me in this regard were defensive statistics. Tackles + Interceptions were 28 for ACFC and 35 for Portland. So Portland’s winning the ball back more, but not really a lot more, and that makes sense given Angel City’s higher possession. But breaking that down, we see that Angel City has 25 Tackles and 3 Interceptions, while Portland has 20 Tackles and 15 Interceptions. That second part of the Interceptions is the key to me. Portland was yielding Possession, but they were occupying key areas, especially in midfield. Which explains those low number of Touches for Fleming and Coffey for me. Portland controlled the midfield, not by pouncing on any ball that was played in, but by forcing Angel City to only use the wide channels and forgo any play through the middle of the pitch altogether.
You can see in the Pass Maps above that Sugita only once passes into the center of the pitch in the middle third, while Martin has more, but they’re almost all back passes. The Pass g+ is something from American Soccer Analysis that calculates the how much each pass increases or decreases the chance of a goal, and as you can see, it’s not great from either of them, but not actually terrible either. But I think this fits into my feeling that Portland was going to allow some things to happen, just not anything that they didn’t want. So again, at first glance, Sugita and Martin having over 100 Touches between them doesn’t suggest that our midfield was dominated. But upon closer reflection, I think that yes, in fact Portland did control the midfield, and consequently controlled the match.
Blueprint
The games against Portland are always particularly interesting to me, because I think that there are many similarities between the clubs. Both clubs have some of the most passionate fan bases in the NWSL and are currently the top 2 clubs in attendance. But that fan base does demand a certain style of play. A packed Providence Park or a sold-out BMO both want to see their team on the front foot, taking the game to their opponent, and scoring lots of goals. It is not a coincidence that Mark Parsons, the former Thorns head coach, was hired as Angel City’s sporting director. Portland has also had the levels of success that Angel City aspires to. They want to get back there, and we want to reach it for the first time.
But watching this game, a very specific comparison jumped out to me, and that was between Olivia Moultrie and Kennedy Fuller. It’s hard to believe that Moultrie is only 20, because she’s been in the league for so long (and if you’re interested in the legal and historical underpinnings of Moultrie’s lawsuit against the NWSL, I have an analysis here). Fuller also joined at a young age, though not quite as young, and both are attacking midfielders. Moultrie has a little bit more size than Fuller, but I think they’re similar in that neither is going to beat a defender with pace, but also neither is particularly slow. And they’re both strong enough to absorb challenges from defenders in the more congested parts of the field.
The charts above show the Progressive Actions (both Passes and Carries) for both Fuller and Moultrie. Both are getting credit some credit for Corner Kicks (Moultrie more so), but I want to focus on the actions that start around midfield. Moultrie has a lot more of both actions here, 15 to 6 from inside her own half. Her Passes are often longer and more diagonal, switching the point of attack. Her carries are also often diagonal, receiving the ball in wider positions and driving into the center.
I really like this strategy of getting Moultrie on the ball in deeper positions for a couple reasons. First of all, I think that in modern football, the classic No 10 no longer exists, and players have to find a way to create No 10 levels of production from a No 8. Modern strategies require too much responsibility from each player to give someone the freedom that a No 10 requires, although, there are exceptions to this. Secondly, we often see Moultrie make a pass out wide, and then follow the play in. In fact, this is exactly what Fuller did on her goal last week. The advantage to this is that the player can spot where the holes are, and move into them, usually while the defenders are looking in the opposite direction. I also think that a player running towards goal is always more dangerous than a player standing still. Finally, I think that this strategy lets a player get more involved. Moultire averages 10.2 more Touches per 90 than Fuller.
There’s a lot you could say about the Passing Networks shown above, but I want to keep the focus on Moultrie and Fuller. Fuller is actually the furthest ACFC player forward, in her average position, and I think this has been a trend with Angel City for a while that the No 10 plays as something close to a second striker at times. Moultrie is deeper, of course, but their midfield also looks like kind of a mess. I think this an aspect of the visualiztion, however. Moultrie has a lot of freedom on this Portland team. I remember one sequence where she picked up the ball in the right center channel, passed out wide right, before receiving the return pass and dribbling all the way into the center left channel before passing to the left wing. For her to have that freedom, it means that someone else has to cover for her. In Portland’s case, that’s often Fleming, who I don’t think gets enough credit, because this takes remarkable positional understanding. But when Moultrie moves one direction, Fleming has to do the opposite to cover the space she left behind, so I think it makes sense that their average positions are about the same. For Fuller to take on a similar role, though, would require Angel City to switch to a 4-3-3. The current formation would never allow this.
But to bring it back to Angel City, I have been of the opinion all season that ACFC is going to be a great team in about 2 years. Tiernan, Shores, Niehues, King, Thompson, Fuller, and Phair are all between 18 and 22 years old. They have all represented their national teams at the youth level, if not the senior level, and I think that they could compose an outstanding core. Fuller is already doing better than Moultrie was at the same age, at least in terms of goal contributions. Finding the right roles for these players, and fostering their growth should be the priority of the team. At this match we said goodbye to two long-time veterans, but I think that it was already past time to pass the torch. When Angel City have a championship caliber squad, it will be because of this generation, and not the older one.
The Goals
Portland, Moultrie (23’) - After winning the ball back, Shores plays a long pass out to Sugita wide left. It’s at a bit of an awkward height, and Sugita controls it with difficulty. She has to take an extra touch and this leads to a miscommunication with Endo. I think that Sugita always intended to pass it back to Endo, but with the extra time needed for the extra touch, Endo starts to make the overlapping run instead. Consequently, Sugita sends the ball back to empty space. Alexa Spaanstra picks it up on Portland’s right, and takes it up the sideline a short distance. When this happens, Nealy Martin drops back towards the Angel City goal, but Moultrie, who was right with her, does not. She waits in that pocket of space between the lines, and receives the easy pass from Spaanstra in the right center channel. I think this is much too complacent from Martin. She gives Moultrie space, and follows her when Moultrie starts to drive into the center, but then gets completely turned when Moultrie cuts back to her right. Martin should know that Moultrie is a right footed player, and will want to bring it back to her stronger foot in this type of situation. Moultrie’s average shot distance is 21 yards, almost 4 yards further out than the average for attacking midfielders, so it’s not a surprise either to see her take a shot from outside the box. It’s an absolute rocket into the far corner, and I don’t think that Anderson had a chance. She had to respect that there could be through pass instead. I think that Martin is solely the player most at fault, but in general, I’m not sure that Angel City reacted fast enough after the turnover. They had the players back, as they’d just been defending, and across the board, there seemed to be just a little complacency to me, like they felt like there wasn’t any danger, because they had the numbers. But clearly that’s not always the case.
Portland, Moultrie (60’ Pen) - Portland begins with the ball in their defensive third, evades the pressure from Angel City’s press, and gets the ball to Fleming in Portland’s right center channel. She plays a great vertical long ball up to Reilyn Turner. Turner bodies Shores away from the ball and cuts into the penalty box with it. Doorsoun comes in just as hard, but the penalty is given. Watching the replay of this, I think that Turner definitely uses her arm to push Shores out of the way, and I also think that Doorsoun gets a bit of the ball before Turner goes over. I don’t see how you can say it wasn’t a foul on Shores, but it was a foul on Turner. They both seem pretty equal to me. For VAR, I think that there isn’t enough to overturn the onfield call. Had the ref not signaled a penalty, I don’t think that one would have be given either. There was contact, but to me, this shouldn’t have been called. Regardless, Moultrie takes the pen, sends Anderson the wrong way, and rolls it right into the corner. Moultrie has only taken one other penalty this year, which she missed, so not a lot for Anderson to have studied, and I think that this was well taken. Even had Anderson gone the correct direction, I’m not sure she would have been able to make the save.
All stats in this article are from FBRef and visualizations are from American Soccer Analysis.
Angel City’s final game is away to Chicago on Sunday 11/2, at 2p. Because we have a Decision Day again, all games are simultaneous, which means that our game is on NWSL+ as there are no playoff implications.