Chart Party: previewing Tormenta-Knoxville
Chart Party: previewing Tormenta-Knoxville
What to expect when two of League One's most interesting teams face off this weekend
One Knox sits atop the USL League One table, two-for-two in the wins column this season. South Georgia Tormenta aren’t far behind, but they’re in the advanced stats pit, having put up a -1.0 expected goals margin per match. Unstoppable force against movable object? Maybe, but there’s more than meets the eye in the match-up to come this Saturday.
Last year, the clubs met thrice, with Tormenta winning the lone game in Knoxville and the results split in Statesboro. Tormenta is a vastly different club now, having retained just 37% of their minutes played from 2023. One Knox, meanwhile, have kept their starting lineup relatively consistent but look a heck of a lot more composed.
Tactically, Ian Cameron’s side employ a 4-2-3-1 with an aggressive pressing scheme underlying their approach. Mark McKeever’s unit, meanwhile, has played around with a 3-4-3 in 2024. Let’s dig in to the specific features of each system - mapped as a set of four key facets above - that might decide things this weekend.
1. The Spengler Effect
Ajmeer Spengler was a standout at South Florida during his college years, putting up 0.58 goal contributions and almost three shots per 90 minutes in his final two seasons in the NCAA. Given a chance with trial with Tormenta this winter, he was a star - the 23-year-old was a one-man offense in transition during a friendly against the Charleston Battery in particular.
Nailed down as a starting winger in regular season play, Spengler has kept up that level.
You see that energy and impact above, with Spengler assisting on the match-winner for Tormenta against the Richmond Kickers last weekend.
The clip actually starts with Richmond breaking the lines in the midfield, earning a touch behind Tavio D’Alemida in the pivot. Immediately, though, #21 makes rotates low around the back, deftly stripping the Richmond player of possession. That’s where the magic begins: Spengler dances past three Kickers, takes out three more with a through ball, and creates a chance because of the effort.
Tormenta’s reads in transition are uniformly impressive beyond #21. Pedro Fonseca, the No. 10, makes a run to the left to fill in for Spengler. Niall Watson makes a matching burst on the right. Their paired moves doom the backtracking Richmond center backs.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Spengler turn a takeaway into offense, either. He did something similar with a final-third tackle against Forward Madison that was a block away from swiftly turning into a hockey assist. There’s more to his game within this Tormenta system as well; Preston Kilwien’s left-footed switches to the right wing haven’t bore fruit yet, but they will.
In fact, Kilwien’s penchant for cross-field diagonals could play into another tactical facet to keep an eye on for Saturday, challenging One Knox’s defensive identity.
2. Center Back Manipulation and Pressure
Per American Soccer Analysis, Knoxville has been the second-least effective club in League One in terms of interrupting play in the final third. That same inefficiency applies over the entire pitch, in fact. (Sorry to last-place Fuego, who can’t beat the ineptitude allegations in either category.)
Still, McKeever’s side has been defensively successful without upfield takeaways because of a 3-4-3 pressing system focused more on funneling play into traps than directly interrupting. They’re above league average in terms of dribbling and receiving goals added against, which is fancy talk for “opposing attacks aren’t doing good things.”
More often than not, those traps are founded upon the efforts of Jalen Crisler and Dani Fernandez at the outside spots of the back three.
In the restart situation above, One Knox presses in a 3-4-1-2, the shape they used against Lexington’s build-up. The two Knoxville strikers match the opposing central defenders man-to-man, Angelo Kelly-Rosales marks the deep-lying center mid, and the wing backs and pivot a line behind pressure the remainder of Lexington’s personnel.
By the time a pass is played to break the lines, Knoxville has shut down all clean outlets into the middle of the park. A risky ball along the sideline ensues, and that’s where the wider defenders are crucially allowed to intervene.
Crisler and Fernandez both ranked in the bottom quartile of League One defenders for defensive actions last season, but they’ve done a splendid job of acting to pin receivers this year. The sequence above obviously ends with a foul, but it’s indicative of the way this team has controlled the tempo of matches and broken attacking rhythms.
It hasn’t always been perfect. Lexington’s Ates Diouf found too many touches in the channels last weekend, especially in the second half. The fear is that a Kilwien type can force One Knox to break their entire shape with his game-altering distribution. Still, Jordan Skelton has been unassailable in the center of the back three, registering a league-best 16 clearances and rarely whiffing in rotation; that’s your safety net.
The center backs have been allowed to drive forward in possession, too, giving Knoxville extra bodies in the half spaces. Hinging Crisler and Fernandez upfield allows the wing backs to overlap and move into the final third with more freedom in turn; it’s a virtuous cycle in possession, of which this club has held 55% of to date.
Pushing the defenders forward in that manner could bear fruit given the up-and-down levels of cohesion we’ve seen from the Tormenta press thus far.
3. Pressure, Gaps, and Ford Parker
Ian Cameron’s side lines up in a 4-2-3-1 as a baseline, but their aggressive use of Tavio D’Almeida and staid deployment of Conor Doyle as a pivot pair often alters the shape into a pressureful 4-1-4-1. Indeed, D’Almeida - a new signing this year from USL League Two’s Fort Wayne FC - has attempted 15 duels in 2024 versus six for Doyle.
When the offset pivot has worked, it’s been a potent stopper of opposing sides before they can enter the attacking half. However, that connectivity and orderliness hasn’t been a guarantee.
Above, Richmond works to Tormenta’s left (ignore the mislabeled winger) and quickly pings a pass to their full back in open space behind the press. Because D’Almeida has stepped upfield, that Richmond player can easily play a centering pass behind #19.
Suddenly, the Kickers have beaten the Tormenta press and found themselves in a hugely dangerous position against a backtracking opponent.
Breakdowns in that manner have been far too common thus far in Statesboro. In each game this season, Tormenta have conceded 1.9 non-penalty expected goals or more. The opener against Fuego was something of an exception given that Central Valley went almost entirely route-one to get their chances, but the issue of defensive frailty remains.
What’s kept Tormenta from disaster has been Ford Parker’s utterly ridiculous performance in net this season.
Parker, who played just six matches in four years as a backup for the Birmingham Legion and New Mexico United, has faced 21 shots on target in 2024, 10 more than any other League One goalkeeper. He leads the league in goals prevented above expected by a country mile, and he’s getting there on the back of hugely reflexive and athletic stops.
Minimizing Parker’s role and making sure the advanced stats don’t have to keep growing is crucial, but Knoxville may well have the tools to cause problems.
4. Angelo Kelly-Rosales
To say that Angelo Kelly-Rosales has been a revelation for Knoxville this year is underselling it. The Honduran midfielder made 23 appearances for the Pittsburgh Riverhounds in 2022, passing like a ship in the night while the aforementioned Preston Kilwien exited Highmark.
Last year, Kelly-Rosales was very good in the pivot in Tennessee, putting up 89th percentile defensive actions and an 89th percentile Goals Above Replacement rating in more than 2,400 minutes. Still, he only registered one assist on subpar expected assist returns.
This year, he’s become an indispensable part of the attacking line.
In the season opener against a Charlotte Independence team that pressed in a 4-1-4-1, Kelly-Rosales started on the right side of the front line. He was legitimately unstoppable in the half space, finding innumerable gaps to the side of the opposing No. 6. The One Knox midfielder ultimately won the Player of the Week award and the even-more-prestigious nod of me making a highlight reel.
In the clip above from the Lexington game, you see a few strands coming together. Dani Fernandez hinges upfield from the left. Meanwhile, Kelly-Rosales makes a super clever run, looping over a fellow attacker to get in behind. The move is cut out, but it evidences how this team is operating.
Kelly-Rosales’ motion from side to side was especially key in that game last Saturday against Lexington. His role marking the opposing No. 10 often took him into narrow positions, but he flitted all over the pitch linking moves after turnovers.
Stuart Ritchie, a key addition at the left wing back spot, has often been the beneficiary of Kelly-Rosales’ impact, whether as a direct recipient of passes or the man left available when the opposition collapses to the opposite side. Added from Columbus Crew 2 this winter, Ritchie is tied for fourth in League One for chances created this season.
That fourth-place tie, of course, comes thanks to Spengler and right back Nick Akoto from the Tormenta camp. It’s evidence of the firepower that’ll be on display on Saturday at Regal Stadium.
With all that said, who gets the job done? I lean One Knox’s way thanks to the excellence of their system so far, but Tormenta has the weapons to get over the hump. Whichever side can control the run of play and run a clean defensive system will likely get the points this weekend.