Sacramento vs Phoenix: Tactical Analysis - Mostly Back on Track
04/04: Sacramento’s line up, the good, the bad, and what stood out
The Lineup:
Republic’s offense finally left the gate firing on all cylinders, as 2 first-half goals lead them to a 2-0 win over the winless Phoenix Rising. Phoenix, who had tied 3 straight before this week, struggled to contain the Republic offense in the first half and then couldn’t get their offense working in the second half—even with Republic all but giving them control of the game for the last 45 minutes. It’s a good win for Republic, even if it wasn’t the most convincing; I have some real concerns about that second-half performance. That being said, 3 points is 3 points, especially with the continued absence of several key players.
Still missing from the lineup due to injury is Gurr, Memo, Reedy, and Timmer, and we now add Spaulding to that illustrious list. This growing list of injuries is concerning, as Republic has yet to field what I would classify as a “full strength” squad. Also not starting was Malango, who had just played 60 minutes for the Malawi national team in Botswana on Tuesday, though he did come in later as a substitute. I can’t imagine the jet lag after that quick of a trip is particularly comfortable.
On the bright side, the “next man up” mentality is really working in Republic’s favor. In for the injured Spaulding and Gurr was Aaron Essel—who quietly had the best performance of the night of any player on the pitch with an 8.2 player rating. And starting in place of Malango and Memo were Dominik Wanner and Blake Willey respectively, who both scored. The first-half performance out of this group was the best we’ve seen Republic play on the year.
The Good:
First-Half Dominance
Before tonight, Republic hadn’t scored earlier than the 62nd minute in league play. Then, they showed up and scored 2 goals in the first 25 minutes. What was great to see was how dominantly they controlled the first half—despite only having 51% of the possession. They did this by largely confining Phoenix to their own half when they had the ball; while Rising had basically the same number of passes as Sacramento did, they coupled it with only 3 shots (none on target) to Republic’s 9 shots.
For this first half, Phoenix tried to get their offense going in by predominantly playing over the top, but Republic won 10/18 aerial duels and were successful on 78% of their tackles, largely negating Phoenix’s attempts. Republic also set the backline fairly high, catching Phoenix offside twice in the first half. They did all this by regularly switching to a back 3:
Republic here have just lost the ball on a turnover in Rising’s side of the pitch, and Rising have booted the ball upfield to their up-top outlet of Studenhofft… . But you can see that Republic, despite having 4 defenders, are actually holding 3 of them back —Desmond, Kleemann, and Essel. This, in turn, allows one of the 3 defenders back to step up when needed, which you can see Lee Desmond doing here, and allows Benítez to get forward up the pitch, where he grabbed himself an assist. Compare Benítez and Essel’s heat-maps:
Essel does get forward occasionally, but not as often or as far as Benítez, and Essel drops towards the middle right of the pitch more often than Benítez drops to the middle left. This largely shifts in the second half, where Republic start to give up more ground with a 2 goal lead, but the flexibility of the defense to allow Benítez to push forward really unlocks the offense.
Dominik Wanner and Blake Willey
Speaking of that unlocked offense, the player that is most unlocked by Benítez pushing forward is Dominik Wanner. Look how far his average positioning is compared to every other Republic player—he’s number #17:
He’s able to move so far forward because Benítez (#22) is pushing up the same side. Wanner was largely a fringe player after he was signed last season, and more than a few folks were disappointed with his production. In 2025, he had only 12 starts and had just 4 goal contributions (3 goals and an assist)—good for a goal contribution once every ~289 minutes. But just this week, he’s already matched 2025’s goal contribution total, with 2 goals and 2 assists. In total, he has 2 goals and 3 assists on the year, good for a contribution once every ~74.5 minutes. A significant portion of this is the formation change—Wanner was able to get up field last year with the 5-2-3, but the 4-2-3-1 of this season means that there are more numbers crashing the box, and more defensive stability behind him.
Blake Willey also showed up in a big way, and I couldn’t be happier for him. He became the 5th Republic academy prospect to score for the first team when he scored his first professional goal in just the 10th minute of the match. Doing it during a home match in his hometown makes it even sweeter. Blake really deserved a goal last season with how well he played, and he is really developing into a true box-to-box midfielder. Look at his heat map, he’s all over the place:
The goal he scored was interesting for a few reasons. First, it’s just a great finish, one timing it into the bottom right corner. And second, this is the first goal Republic have scored that played out in the way we thought they would score before the season started. I didn’t predict Forester Ajago to be the top goal scorer for a reason—because this is what I figured we would see:
Ajago is quick, strong, and really good with his feet, so he is really quick to get on the ball and get behind the opposition's lines. But by the time he does so, he’s drawing all of the attention, with 2 defenders crashing on him. What this does, though, is completely open up the player playing at the 9 (in this case, Willey) to make a late run into the box for a backwards pass. I think we’ll see more of this as the team starts to click more—Ajago is going to be the creator that sets up the goals, while occasionally snagging a few himself.
Defense bent, but didn’t break
The second half was a different story, one we’ll touch on below, but to their credit, the defense did not break. In the second half alone, they faced 11 shots and 6 corners. Only 3 those shots were on target—1 was blocked and the other 7 were off target. A big part of this was that Republic kept Phoenix largely out of their side of the pitch: despite Republic managing just 28% possession in the second half, Phoenix only had 31 final-third entries to Sacramento’s 29. And look at Phoenix’s shot map:
See that big grouping of shots from way outside of the box? All of them but one were during the second half. That speaks to Phoenix’s frustration with their inability to move into Republic’s box for better shots. The defense also stepped up when things did get dicey:
Danny steps out too early here, but he’s able to confidently do so because he knows he has defenders like Freddy Kleemann, who instantly runs to the goal and perfectly positions himself to block the shot off the line. Lee Desmond did a similar thing during the Open Cup match last week. It’s a bit nervy, but these are the moments that make the opposition wonder if they can do anything to get a goal—and it leads to Phoenix taking the long shots we discussed above.
The Bad:
Sitting Back a BIT too early…
Three points and a clean sheet aside, the second half was a bit… nervy. Republic sat back in defense way too early. In the second half, Phoenix took 72% of the possession, 11 shots to Republic’s 2, and 6 corner kicks to Republic’s 0. Republic sat back, sat deep, and struggled to not just break out, but hold on to the ball at all. A full 45 minutes of this is too much. Yes, it worked, but it doesn’t help that Phoenix wasn’t clinical. If Kleemann doesn’t make the goal line clearance we talked about above, this is an entirely different ball game. And when you sit back for that long, inevitably someone is going to miss their man mark:
How Charlie Dennis misses that is a question for the ages. This match could have very easily ended in a 2-2 draw. Collins tried to fix the lack of forward movement in the 72nd and 77th minutes as he brought on Malango, Edward, and Cambridge in to replace tired legs, but neither of the trio did much to change the game—they combined for just 22 touches total due to how late they came in.
I am glad that the defense held, but the second half should not have been as defensive as it ended up being.
The Linos…
Special shout out to the line judges tonight—it’s not often that they do a bad enough job that they make the center official look poor. There were several missed calls on who touched the ball last before it went out of play. One or 2 I can excuse at this level —3 or 4, most of which were seemingly obvious, is not a good performance.
But there is nothing worse than a misapplication of the Laws of the game. The broadcast was showing a commercial here (a tirade I will save for another day…) so the clip is cut a bit short at the beginning, but this was called offside:
However, this can’t be offside—it’s not a pass by an attacking player or a “save” from a defensive player! The Phoenix player is the one who deliberately kicks it out wide, and then a Republic player collects it. The International Football Association Board, or IFAB, literally have this exact situation as one of their questions under the Law:
“A defending player (Team A) challenges an attacking player (Team B) and deliberately kicks the ball (no foul is committed). After that, the ball goes directly to another Team B player who is in an offside position. What is the correct decision?
Answer: The referee allows play to continue. There is no offside offense if a player in an offside position receives the ball from an opponent who deliberately plays the ball”
I can excuse officials at this level missing judgment calls—there’s no VAR, and the game moves fast. But to misapply the basic rules, especially one that is literally a question that IFAB clarifies, is inexcusable at this level. Someday, officiating in the United States may reach a decent level, but that requires a level of investment that few organizations seem to want to make.
What Stood Out:
With exception of maybe the Tulsa match, we still haven’t seen a full, cohesive, second-half match out of the Quails. While last week’s match was “As poor of a first half” as head coach Neill Collins had seen, he called this week’s first half “as good as we’ve been”—but neither match’s opposite half was particularly good. Phoenix is showing themselves to be a weak team as well, given they don’t yet have a win, so the falloff in the second half was a bit of a disappointment. Ideally, Republic would have gone for a third goal instead of sitting back. We’re still waiting for a “definitive” win that really shows that Republic can play a full 90 minutes of top class football. With several injuries to key players though, it could be that the club is just trying to ride things out until those players can return.
That being said, 3 points puts Republic right back up to third in the Western Conference. San Antonio and El Paso above them are the two scariest teams in the West for now, and Republic will need to perform significantly better against lower-tier teams if they want to match either of them. The next opportunity for that comes against Las Vegas on Saturday, in what will be an intriguing matchup. Sacramento USL-Cup hero Jared Mazzola is now in between the sticks in Vegas—and we all know what Jared can do. On top of that, Vegas is one of the top scoring teams in the entirety of USL, trailing only El Paso and Louisville, but they also have the second-worst defense in the entire league too. Matching that sort of team up against the low scoring but best defense team that Sacramento has historically been leaves a critical question: What happens when an unstoppable defense comes up against an unstoppable offense? We’ll find out this weekend.