It’s been a long week for Republic and that’s come with a mixed bag of results. After taking care of business at home against Sporting Jax, which was to be expected, Republic was handed a frustrating midweek loss at Tulsa in a match where they very much deserved a point. That led to this past weekend, where they then had to travel from Tulsa to Pittsburgh and play one of the toughest defensive teams in the league on 2 days’ rest and with a handful of injuries. Not the best of conditions to face last year’s USL-Championship winners! 

Republic’s defense held strong and, given the condition and the opposition, a draw on the road was a strong showing here. The XI that Collins rolled out had a few tweaks; back to the starting XI was Forster Ajago up top, and Pep Casas started in place of an injured Mark-Anthony Kaye, who was hurt in the aforementioned Tulsa match up. Meanwhile, in the defense, new signing Tim Leibold made his first start for Republic, slotting in at left back. That caused a few tweaks to Republic’s backline formation that we’ll get into later. 

But the most important information gained from the entire match was INJURY INFORMATION. Yes, that’s right, actual information on the injuries that our players have, straight from the broadcast! Shocking, I know. We rarely get information from the club on actual injuries - why the announcers on this match were able to disclose the information, I’m not sure, but we’ll take what we can get.

As disclosed from the broadcast: 
- Michel Benítez will be out for a bit longer
- Freddy Kleemann is ready to go, but the team is taking their time to be safe. Wouldn’t be surprised if he subs during the next match or so
- Spaulding is back and ready to go, but Collins is saving him for next week

The condition of MAK wasn’t announced—but given he was just injured 2 days prior, I’d imagine the long-term info on that isn’t ready yet. Either way, the club is getting healthy! It will be interesting to see what the status of Tim Leibold is after his 25-day contract is up on August 25th—is he a temporary stopgap while the Quails get healthy, or a long-term addition? 

But with some injury news finally distributed to the masses, let’s get into the tactics of this very intriguing, and dare I say, fun, 0-0 draw.

The biggest thing to talk about in this match, really the standout tactical component, was Pittsburgh’s high press and how Republic tried to deal with it. Pittsburgh is a very stout defensive team, sporting an xG against of just 1.04 per match: that number is lower than every single team in the Western Conference. They largely won the league last season on the back of their defense. Rather impressively, they scored just a single goal in the entirety of the playoffs, winning 3 of 4 playoff games on PK’s after 0-0 matches. Zero goals conceded, 1 goal scored, championship secured. On the other side of the ball, Republic’s 16 goals allowed this season is the lowest in the entire USL-Championship. 

So this was always going to be a defense first game, but both teams flexed their defensive muscles in very different ways. Pittsburgh pressed high, looking to suffocate Republic’s pivot of Casas and Crisostomo in the midfield. This was a match that could have really used MAK, who was unfortunately injured against Tulsa, as his ability to orchestrate the team through traffic would have really benefited a Republic team that struggled to deal with the press. Pittsburgh’s high press rarely threatened to actually score—but it was very effective at stifling Republic’s offensive build up, which caused Republic to play over the top. Look how high Pittsburgh presses here when Republic have the ball:

Vitiello gets the ball out to Gurr, but he’s being pressed, so he drops it to Timmer—but Timmer has nowhere to go with the ball, so he plays it long, where Ajago loses the aerial duel. Ajago more often than not came to get a lot of these balls—he participated in 15 aerial duels, but only won 6 of them.

To understand how abnormal the aerial battle was for Republic, their 64 aerial duel attempts in this match is their season high in all competitions with the next closest in 90 minutes being just 50 attempts. Republic averages just 33.17 aerial duels per match, meaning this was a 91% increase over their season average. Hell, Republic won more aerial duels (34) than they usually average! 

Most of this aerial play came from that back in one of two ways—either from a defender trying to get the ball up, like we saw above, or from a goal kick. Danny Vitiello is averaging an accurate passing rate of 66.7% this season. Against Pittsburgh? Just 37.5%, going 12 for 32. But look at his passing map:

Twenty-three of his 32 passes were into the opposing half, and he succeeded on just 5 of those, compared to going 7 for 9 on passes in Republic’s half. All 5 successful attempts were to the left side of the pitch, but even on just the left side he went 5 for 15. But this isn’t Vitiello’s fault—take a look at an example of a typical one of these plays:

Ajago loses the aerial duel, Pittsburgh wins possession and is already moving forward, and they then eventually get a shot on goal. It takes just 19 seconds from Vitiello’s goal kick to his save, and Republic touch the ball a single time in the entire sequence, a misplayed header.

The eventual shot on goal wasn't threatening—Pittsburgh really struggled to convert these turnovers into actual threats—but it kept the ball in Republic’s half and forced Republic’s midfielders to stay further back instead of getting involved in the offense, which further limited Republic’s goal scoring chances.

On Republic’s defensive side of the ball, Republic relied on a rotating back 3 to deal with Pittsburgh’s quick attempts towards goal after turnovers. Taking a middle ground between sliding a defender over or dropping a midfielder in to form the back 3, Republic relied on defensive flexibility to respond to multiple threats. If you want a more in depth look at those 2 versions of Republic’s back 3, we did a deep dive on that last week:

Tonight, more often then not, it was a back 3 with Leibold playing as the 3rd CB, but occasionally Pep Casas or Danny Crisostomo would drop into the backline in between the strikers. When Chibi came in for Leibold in the 67’, Republic went to a full back 3, left to right with Desmond, Timmer, and then Chibi. Both looks allowed Republic to “pivot” to wherever the main threat was. In this past, this sort of flexibility has given the backline trouble—someone missing their cue to drop strands the 2 center backs on an island. Largely, though, Republic avoided this. Most of Pittsburgh’s threats came from missed man marks on crossed balls into the box, not players missing their cue to drop into the backline. 

In both looks, this allowed Gurr to play so high up the field that I’m not even sure you’d call him a right back anymore—he’s more of an aggressive right midfielder:

This pushed Willey (#20 above) further inside, and gave Gurr complete command over the right sideline.

All of this being said, both teams had at least one good chance on goal. Pittsburgh had 2 decent free headers they could have scored; one was right at Vitiello and the other was a criminal miss by Albert Dikwa, the 2023 USL Player of the Year. Republic hit the woodwork twice, including a banger of a shot by Malango that would have been the goal of the season. A 1-1 outcome would have been just as fair of a result.

50
Danny Vitiello clean sheets for Sacramento Republic FC. The USL all time clean sheet leader adds a new feather to his cap, becoming the first USL keeper to have 50 clean sheets with one team. Congrats, Danny! 

0.07
The difference in xG between the sides, with Pittsburgh putting up a 0.91 to Republic’s 0.84. There was basically nothing separating how even the scoring chances were for both teams—this was about as close to a fair draw as you can have.

2
The number of games without a Republic goal—the first time this season that Republic have failed to score in back to back matches. Republic has only gone scoreless in 5 other matches—and they’ve never lost the following match.

57%
The percentage of duels Republic won, being broken up into 61% of the ground duels (33/54) and 53% of the aerial duels (34/64). Republic is averaging a 54.05% win rate on all duels over their last 5 matches.

70.5%
Lee Desmond’s aerial dual win rate this season, winning 98 of 132(!!) duels. Desmond is outrageously good in the air, and his 7 won aerial duels on the night led the team. 

With a hectic week (and a lot of travel) out the way, Republic can look forward to settling in at home and getting a bit more comfortable. Republic doesn’t leave the State of California again until September 26th—until then there are 4 home matches and quick trips to Monterey and Orange County. The players are looking forward to it as much as the fans are; Lee Desmond post match said: 

I did think it was interesting too that Lee brought up the field conditions on 4 separate occasions in his post match interview, calling both Tulsa’s and Pittsburgh’s fields "awkward," and saying that he was looking forward to getting back home to play on a “good field.” We all saw how rough Tulsa’s field is—Republic’s last scoring chance of the match ended because the ball bounced off the lip of the laid down turf that covers the baseball infield—but from what little information I can find, it looks like both Tulsa and Pittsburgh’s stadiums are more narrow and shorter than Heart Health Park by 10 yards each. That’s a 12.5% reduction in width and length, and given how wide Republic likes to play, that certainly had an impact. Desmond even went on to say that Republic can’t play the same way on the road as they do at home. 

So being back at home should be a major boon for the team and the 2 away days are at stadiums with similar dimensions, which should certainly help. But the biggest impact to these last 12 games may be in the form of a new signing—Cal Jennings. Quail City reported on that early rumor here:

If and/or when Jennings takes the field for Republic, we’ll dive into why he’s been the USL’s best striker over the last 6 years, and how it will change what Republic does. Until then, we have a home stand and 12 more games for Republic to find form and climb the table.