Angel City 0-1 Kansas City Current
This is a hard game to judge. For instance, Angel City won the xG battle 0.9 to 0.3. That seems good, but of Kansas City’s top 8 goal contributors for the season, only 2 of them started the match: fullback Izzy Rodriguez and midfielder Lo’eau Labonta (all of whose goal contributions came from penalty kicks). And when Vlatko Andanovski brought Cooper and Bia in as subs, Kansas City immediately scored. From the time of that substitution, the xG was .34 for Angel City to .33 for Kansas City. Also, despite winning the battle, Angel City’s .9 xG was still below the league median of 1.357 xG per game. Kansas City are the best defensive team in the league, but .9 xG is not putting your team in a position to win, no matter what.
The Current also still had the best chance of the night, which was Cooper’s goal, although neither team generated a single chance worth more than .11 xG. The difference was that Kansas City had the ability to capitalize on one of those chances, while Angel City did not. These need to be viewed as two distinct factors. Angel City doesn’t have great finishing, and they’re not creating good chances. A great finisher can consistently convert chances that aren’t great, but when you don’t have either, it’s not a surprise to see the offense fail to score. I’ll get more into this at the end of the season, but currently Angel City is second-to-last on Shot on Target Percentage and last in npxG per Shot. We’re slightly better at 8th in Goals per Shot and Goals per Shot on Target. The Current on the other hand, are best in both those categories, and second in npxG per Shot, so I don’t consider it a fluke that KC capitalized, but Angel City did not. This result is in keeping with trends on both teams.
In many ways, this is similar to the Louisville game. There is a lot that went right; it just never translated into a goal. On the defensive side, Kansas City was limited to only the one Shot on Target. Better defending there, and we earn a shutout. It’s just about continuing that good work for a full 90 minutes. One moment doesn’t define a game, or a team, even if it can define the scoreline. There are things to build on, and that is the most important thing for Angel City right now.
Formation
Angel City deviated from the 4-2-3-1 that we’ve been seeing, and came out with a 3-4-3 in this game. This was particularly interesting, because Straus has tried this only one other time: when Angel City played the Current in Kansas City. However, that does not make it an apples-to-apples comparison between the two matches. Kansas City only started 4 of the same players as that day in June, while ACFC also only started 4 of the same players. For Angel City, part of that is players leaving (Alyssa, Dufour, and Vignola), and part of that is players arriving (Shores, Martin, Jónsdóttir, Doorsoun, and Sugita, more on her later). Both games finished 1-0 to Kansas City, but in the first game both shots and xG went to KC (13-2 and 2.0-0.8), while this game went to Angel City (15-5 and 0.9-0.3).
The thing I think is really funny, is that in the first matchup, I think Straus was trying a smash-and-grab. Hold solid and absorb the attack, and then try to convert one of the few chances you get, and it almost worked. This time around, it was Andanovski that had this same approach, and it did work. I would bet that Andanovski just wanted to keep the game close, preferably 0-0, until the 60th minute. At that point, he’d put in his star attackers and try to win a 30 minute game. They only got 1 shot on target, but it was enough. And for a long road trip on Monday night, when you already have the Shield secured, I can understand this tactic.
Digging a little more into Angel City, a player of particular interest to me in this formation was Evelyn Shores. I think that she’s at her best as a central midfielder, but here she was playing as the left-sided centerback. She lead the team in pass attempts (118) and long pass attempts (20). In many ways, this didn’t work. Shores only connected on 7 of those 20 long passes (35%) and only had a total completion of 82.2%. However, I think that this does give insight into how Straus wants to play. There definitely seems to be a preference to build out of the back, but he wants that option of playing a long ball over the top. That is going to keep opposing attackers honest, as they can’t go for an all out press. Shores is not a natural centerback, and I think that she was in this role almost entirely to try to play those long balls. Maybe the irony here is that Kansas City wasn’t pressing too much, because they were resting so many players and playing with a much more conservative plan. Would this have worked better if it was the same Kansas City we saw in June? I think that there is a good chance we see Angel City sign another centerback who is very comfortable on the ball, and can play these long passes. We may already have that player with Savy King. She has the best completion percentage on Long Passes with 64.1%, but she’s also 7th amongst ACFC outfield players in Long Pass Attempts per 90 (8.1). I also haven’t heard any recent news on her health, or what the expectation is for next season. But with that uncertainty, and to have more depth and options, I would still expect a ball-playing centerback to be signed in the offseason.
Hina Sugita
Sugita made her debut, starting in the middle of the park, and for joining a brand new team, and especially switching to the aforementioned 3-4-3 that her teammates were not particularly familiar with either, I thought that Sugita played very well. She led all ACFC midfielders in Touches and Pass Attempts and also led the team in Shots (3, 1 On Target). She finished with 0.2 xg and 0.1 xAG off 1 Key Pass, plus 2 Tackles and an Interception. This was the kind of all-around, box-to-box performance that Angel City wanted when we traded for her. The stat that stands out the most, though is Progressive Passes. Sugita had 11, which absolutely blows away the next best per 90 mark on Angel City this season, which belongs to Zelem with 6.31. Neither Zelem or Hammond (who is the midfielder with the next best mark) have done better than 7 Progressive Passes in a match (Hammond on 8/21 v Orlando). It’s one match, but there is reason to believe that Sugita is the midfielder than can knit together the defense and the attack that Angel City has never had.
Not surpringly, the players that Sugita combined the best with were Jun Endo and Miyabi Moriya. The three of them already know each other from multiple national team camps with Japan, and I thought that familiarity was evident. The three of them tied for the team lead in Shot Creating Actions with 5. In fact, the 15 SCAs they generated together was better than the rest of Angel City combined (13). Next, the team needs to find similar chemistry betwen Thompson and a right wing, or if the Japanese trio can attract enough attention to pull teams toward them on the left, then that will allow for more 1v1 opportunities for Thompson on the right. I’m looking forward to seeing how this chemistry grows, and especially how things look when we go back to a 4-2-3-1 and Sugita has a No 10 ahead of her (I’m also looking forward to seeing us sign a proper No 10).
Prisca Chilufya
News yesterday that Angel City traded $50,000 in intra-league funds to Orlando for Prisca Chilufya and an International Spot. First of all, this good. Angel City desperately needs options at Wing and Chilufya brings NWSL experience. She’s played in 16 matches with 4 starts for 512 minutes for Orlando and has scored 2 Goals. Amazingly, those 2 Goals came from only 4 Shots, and 1.3 xG. She also has scored twice for the Zambian National Team, and played in all three of their games at the last Olympics, starting once.
Looking at her rankings, Chilufya shines in a few key areas: she is 96th percentile in Progressive Carries and 99th Percentile in Progressive Passes Received. She’s also decent in playmaking: 1.1 xAG and 10 Key Passes, which on a per 90 basis rank 82nd and 89th percentile. 512 minutes isn’t a very large sample size. But overall, this corresponds to my impressions when I’ve seen her play. She has pace, and she can stretch defenses. She often looks dangerous, but so far, hasn’t turned that into much in the way of Goal Contributions. Shot Creating Actions are low, only 14th percentile, but they come entirely from Live Ball Passes. Best case scenario is that Straus is able to unlock that ability and she starts consistently delivering Goal Contributions. But I think it’s more likely that this is a depth signing, which isn’t bad. It’s great to have a depth player with Olympic experience, and bringing her speed off the bench against tired defenders can turn into opportunities. But I don’t expect this signing to make a huge impact in the final few games, and I think that Angel City still needs to sign both a left and right wing that can deliver around 10 Goal Contributions for the year. Chilufya will help, but I don’t view her as the answer.
The other really interesting aspect of this is that Angel City traded away Julie Dufour and an International Spot to Portland for $40,000. So in essence, this deal is almost exactly the same. At this point, the International Spot is basically worthless to Orlando, so they might as well include it. The big difference, of course, is the timing. Dufour was maybe deemed surplus, but after she was traded, Alyssa Thompson also left, and suddenly, Angel City was very thin on wingers. The question is, did Angel City help themselves by basically swapping Dufour for Chilufya? We won’t even be able to compare them in the next year, as Dufour has subsequently torn an ACL with Portland. My feeling is that Dufour was a better all-around player, but that she didn’t have anything skills that I would consider elite. Chilufya does have elite speed, and the ability to dribble at speed. So for that reason, I’d consider this move a slight upgrade, and definitely hoping that Straus can unlock some of that potential.
The one other note that strikes me as odd is what does Orlando get out of this? $50,000 is not a difference making amount of money. And without Banda, it seems like Orlando would want to keep all the attacking depth that they can. Maybe with Simone Charley getting healthy that moved Chilufya further down the depth chart, but I cannot think of any reason why Orlando wouldn’t be better off moving Chilufya in the offseason, if they wanted to move her. This is good news for Angel City, but when I can’t see the logic in something, it always stands out to me.
All stats in this article are from FBRef.
Angel City’s next game is on Sunday October 12th at 2p Pacific. It’s at home at BMO against the Houston Dash and will be on ESPN if you can’t be there.