Sacramento vs San Antonio: Tactical Analysis - Dominant In Defeat
05/23: Sacramento’s line up, the good, the bad, and what stood out
The Lineup:
A 2-1 loss in San Antonio puts an end to Sacramento Republic’s 4-game unbeaten streak, and gives them their first loss in USL league play since March. And while the loss is disappointing, made even more so given the history between San Antonio and Sacramento, Republic dominated large stretches of the match and were extremely hard done to not come out of this match with at least a point. And why is that? Well, because the numbers don’t lie.
Before we dive into those numbers, let’s take a look at those lineups. Just looking at the starting XI, this is certainly not a first-choice lineup from either team. While old Republic faces Emil Cuello and Mitch Taintor took the field for San Antonio, missing was Cristian Parano, who suffered an injury in last week’s match. On Republic’s side, still missing are Kleemann, Crisostomo, and Memo—and while Kaye was on the bench and Timmer started, neither are 100% either given both of them played only a half.
What was additionally new for Republic this week was how high they played the backline, completely abandoning the single deep center back that we’ve seen in many previous matches this season. Look how high the defensive line is here, even after San Antonio sends the ball up:
And then take a look at the average positioning of both squads, Republic on the left and San Antonio on the right. Notice how high up the pitch Republic’s main two center backs are (#4 and #5), compared to San Antonio’s 3 center back formation (#21, #43, and #3)—it’s night and day:
When I see this sort of positioning and see that 2 goals were allowed, I would generally assume that the 2 goals were from the defensive line getting beat over the top, leading to one-on-one breakthroughs on goal. But that didn’t happen. Both goals, which we will get to below, were scored from in front of the defensive line. Arguably, Head Coach Neill Collin’s defensive strategy worked as planned here—Republic caught San Antonio offside 9 times.
Also interesting was how Republic coped with 2 players clearly being limited to 45 minutes of play. Rather than sub a center back on for Timmer as he came off at half time, Kaye was subbed on for his half of work. This pushed Essel into the backline instead. You can kind of see that with his average positioning (#15) above, his positioning further back is indicative of this shift.
The Good:
Dominating the Stat Line
Despite the scoreline, Republic dominated the match in nearly every stat outside of “goals scored.” You list it, they won it. xG, duels, possession, final 3rd entries, touches in opposition’s box, passes, shots, passing accuracy, dribbles, etc. etc. etc., all in Republic’s favor. But the most impressive stat is just how far away from goal Republic kept San Antonio—there’s a reason both SAFC goals came from distance.
Of all passes in the match, for both teams, only 18% of them were attempted in Republic’s 3rd of the pitch. Compare that to the 39% of passes occurring in San Antonio’s 3rd (and, of course, 43% in the middle 3rd). Republic controlled play even when they didn’t have the ball—and largely kept the danger out of their part of the pitch. They didn’t even allow San Antonio a single corner.
One player in particular who stood out was Aaron Essel—he went 11/14 on duels, had the most passes on the team, had a shot on target, and was the 2nd highest-rated player on the pitch among both teams. And he did all this while splitting time between CDM and center back.
Chance Creation:
Republic certainly made their chances. We’ll discuss the finishing of those chances below, but you can’t say they didn’t create them! They managed 15 shots, had 81 final 3rd entries, and had 24 touches in San Antonio’s box. You do have to give credit to San Antonio’s keeper—he made 5 saves, including this quick double save off the post that is up for Save of the Week:
Does That Count?
And, we almost had a corner goal! I’m not counting it as breaking the streak—there’s too much build up from the corner for it to count, for me. Let’s call it a goal from a corner instead of a goal on a corner. You can, of course, comment below if you disagree with me. But it’s a great planned play, straight from the training ground, and the interplay between Benítez, Arturo, and Casas is beautiful to watch, giving Ajago a tap in finish:
The Bad:
Defensive Miscues:
One major downside of the high line Republic played is that it works most of the time.. But when it fails, there’s little chance to recover. San Antonio’s first goal appears to be just onside:
The San Antonio player gets around the Sacramento defender, and then that’s... it. There’s no one else around to close down because there’s no one else back. If you’re going to play this high up, you have to get it right every time. Now, it’s a tidy little finish around Vitiello, but even if the SAFC player takes more time, he’s off to the races.
But Republic had the opposite problem on San Antonio’s 2nd goal. First, the backline turns the ball over and, when they do, there is just miles of space between the midfield and the backline, which no one steps into before the shot:
I mean, just look at all this space. Erofeev has so much time on the ball, this may as well be a free kick:
Yes, Republic is out of position here due to the turnover, but you still can’t give up THIS much space outside the box. Also, I don’t think Vitiello was really expecting a shot here. I’ve cleaned this up as best as I could and slowed it down, but you can see this is definitely not his best footwork; he doesn’t even get a full push off the ground when going airborne because he can’t get his feet under him in time:
I think he was expecting a cross or through ball he would need to come out and collect. That being said, it’s an incredible goal, one that was up for the USL Goal of the Week. Sometimes, you do need to tip your cap to the finish, even if more could have been done in the build up.
Lack of Finishing
“Ah shit, here we go again.” When Republic loses, it’s largely because old problems rear their head again. Of course, we’re talking about their inability to shoot on target. When you typically are looking at the “shots” stat, they come in 3 flavors: “On target,” “off target,” and “blocked”; the latter being when the shot hits a player and never reaches the goal. So while you may have 50-60% of your shots not be on target, a large portion of those missed shots are blocked shots, not shots that miss entirely. Just over the last 2 games, for example, Republic “missed” 9 shots against Oakland—5 of those actually missed, 4 of them were blocked. Against Orange County, a similar story: 9 “misses” were really 4 actual misses, and 5 blocked.
Not so against San Antonio, where Republic again had 9 misses. But of those 9 misses, 8 of them were off target and only 1 was blocked. Look at Sacramento’s shot map:
Circles with a dot in them are shots on target, circles without a dot are either blocked or missed, and the soccer ball icon is Republic’s one goal. To make things easy, I’ve selected/highlighted the one blocked shot. Republic had 3 shots that were completely off target from right in front of goal. You just can’t do that and expect to win games. Also, all those shots right outside the box that missed are rough. While a few of these missed shots are close, like this shot from Casas in the 30’ on the left, others like this shot from Malango in the 44’ on the right just... aren’t close:
What Stood Out:
Despite the final score line, Republic genuinely played well here. Sometimes, you just have to tip your cap to 2 great goals and acknowledge that it wasn’t your night. I mean, San Antonio’s 2 goals had a combined xG of just 0.26! Three Republic players individually had a higher xG than that—Ajago (1.46), Wanner (0.30), and Arturo (0.27).
But Republic is on the upswing over the last 5 matches, and 1 road defeat to a good team shouldn’t shake the team of all their confidence. Over the last 5 matches, they’ve had a positive xG difference in every match, averaging nearly 2 expected goals a game while only allowing under 1 expected goal against. And for all of Republic’s goal scoring woes, they only have 1 league match this season without a goal, and that was way back on the second match of the season against Lexington.
A frustrating game? Yes. A sign of trouble? Absolutely not.