The Back Four: Takeaways from Week Three
Tactics, stats, and other developments that defined the week for Louisville, Madison, Tampa Bay, and Hartford
Howdy, and welcome in to the usual set of four deep dives on USL items that caught my attention. Per usual, be sure to check out Backheeled for the dive into every team.
Without further ado, let’s get to it for Week Three.
The Ray Serrano Show
Has anyone started 2024 better than Ray Serrano? Now 21 years old, the former Tacoma Defiance starlet is finally reaching his potential with consistency, and so far this year, he’s been the driving force to return Louisville City to the top of the East.
Serrano’s ability to variously stretch the left wing or tuck into zone 14 in Louisville’s 3-4-3 has been the club’s best driver of offensive opportunities. Indeed, attacking play has been heavily slanted to Serrano’s side, as evidenced in the heat map above.
That slant has come for good reason: the winger is in the top quarter of USL attackers by almost every imaginable metric. He’s been progressive as a passer, menacing as a scoring threat, and precise in his creation. There’s a track record here, too: as a teenager with the Tacoma Defiance in 2021, Serrano put up four goals and six assists as a right wing back in a similarly high-flying 3-4-3.
While used on the left, Serrano is more than willing to tuck inside onto his stronger right foot and receive line-breaking passes. He still knows when to stretch, smartly choosing moments to make runs over the top; in that context, he’s a vital outlet on the end of successful counterpressing actions. LouCity has been 15% more likely to pass right than left this season as well, so Serrano’s comfort navigating without the ball has been crucial.
Against El Paso in Week Two, the Washington native put up a stellar stat sheet. He created two chances, added another successful entry pass into the box, and racked up three shots. The quality of impact didn’t change against Pittsburgh on Saturday, but Serrano’s most stellar moments came while tucking low and narrow to overload. His chance creations came as a deep-lying initiator of counters.
Take the two chances Serrano was responsible for above.
The first starts with the winger hedged all the way over into the center circle in the press. When the guests play past Serrano, he wisely makes a deep rotation to cover for a supporting Elijah Wynder; Wynder then forces a turnover, continues his run, and receives a nice dink over the top from #7.
Similar idea in the second example above. Again, Serrano tucks into the middle of the park, this time in the midst of a defensive zone exit. Keeping his head up, the left winger spots Wilson Harris making a run into the channel and plays him in for a shot.
Of course, Serrano had four attempts on net of his own against Pittsburgh and scored, but it’s the variety and confidence of his game that impress me the most so far. Serrano’s impactfulness has allowed Adrien Perez to ease into life at Lynn Family Stadium, too: the former San Diego man is taking 13 less touches a match so far this season, but it hasn’t hurt one bit.
This LouCity team is impressive in a lot of ways, but the rise of their young star on the flank has been especially crucial.
Madison going forward
Two matches and two draws into their 2024 season, Forward Madison aren’t looking like the titan I had #1 in my preseason power rankings and predicted to win the League One title. Still, to say that the performances have been bad isn’t quite right either. What should we make of the early returns in Wisconsin?
Right off the bat, it’s clear that the defense is still legit. The ‘Mingos had that fifth-best expected goals against (40.2) and fourth-best in terms of actual goals against (40). They’ve actually improved in terms of expected concessions (by 0.17) in the way-too-small-sample this year.
Matt Glaeser finished 2023 settling into a 4-2-3-1, but his signings of Ferrety Sousa at wing back, Juan Galindrez up top, and a whole slew of players in the central midfield made a return to a back three the logical pick. Still, the attacking returns to date have been moderate: Madison hung 1.9 expected goals on Tormenta in their opener but sputtered to 0.4 against Greenville on Saturday.
The shape has changed, but the general philosophy and slightly stunted chance creation haven’t. Last year, Madison’s average pass traveled 6.7 yards; that’s 6.6 so far in 2024. Bernd Schipmann - the penalty-stopping hero against the Triumph - went long on 47% of his passes last season, and he’s similarly at 39% in the two games this year. Glaeser doesn’t want to get away from his principles, even if this club finished third-from-bottom in scoring in 2023.
In match one, Madison left Chaney on the bench and adopted a 5-4-1 or 3-4-3, depending on your taste for formational descriptors. The shape relied on Derek Gebhard and Devin Boyce, the wider members of the attacking line, to make smart runs into the channels or deftly loop underneath the No. 9 when off ball.
You see such a sequence above. As Boyce cuts inside from the right, he slices a leading pass into Gebhard on the left. Meanwhile, Galindrez - a 13-goal scorer in his last League One season - goes at net simultaneously. There’s a final, crucial run to consider: watch Jimmie Villalobos (a member of the pivot) stalk a few yards behind Galindrez, shadowing into the box to replace Boyce as he makes the in-cut.
The second play highlights a second shape, the 5-3-2 used in South Carolina. That was the baseline, but Gebhard and Boyce were allowed to make supporting runs into the channels despite ostensibly being the No. 8s in the midfield trio. John Murphy stayed on as a lone holding midfielder, while Villalobos was sacrificed to accommodate Chaney’s entrance into a strike pair.
You see the Gebhard-Boyce activity stand out in the back half of the clip. Madison breaks through the middle, moving via Murphy into Stephen Payne at the wing back spot. At the same time, Gebhard makes a daring cross-field run from the left channel, cutting underneath the strikers and into the right channel to find a hole. #17 then receives from Payne, cutting the ball back to create a shot from there.
What’s the takeaway? Though this side ranks second-from-bottom in League One for their goals added in receiving, they have bright combination play and clever movement in their bag.
Bringing in the extra layers is the necessity now. Payne and Sousa haven’t been able to crack the chance-generating nut from the wing back spots. They’ve created just one shot for teammates so far this year in total, and, as seen the pass map above, they’re a combined two-for-12 on cross attempts. With Sousa, especially, you can feel the hesitation to serve balls in.
Balls over the top are a viable route to offense that ought to be relied upon, too. Chaney got a brace in the Open Cup by either scoring from himself off a punt or finishing a cross directly generated by route-one distribution. Boyce and Gebhard have the movement chops to find chances off of knockdowns, too.
I’m ultimately quite bullish on Forward Madison, and I’d hold the line on my preseason hype given the talent on this roster and early signs of progress. Like any other club, they have room to improve, but the vision is already aligning in a meaningful manner.
Hartford’s wing separation
There’s “creating a lot of good chances,” and then there’s whatever Hartford Athletic did to Birmingham on a rainy Saturday afternoon.
Putting up 4.89 expected goals as they did against the Legion is silly. It’s one of the 10 best offensive performances in USL since 2017 as per American Soccer Analysis’ records. No one has done better in attack since the August of 2022. Hartford had nine big chances; they actually fluffed eight of them! Just three of their 27 shots came from outside of the 18-yard box.
Week One wasn’t as historic, but Brendan Burke’s side showed similar gumption, especially in the first half against El Paso. The attacking midfield line of Deshane Beckford, Marcus Epps, and Michee Ngalina totaled four shots and three chances created versus the Locomotive. Their squad neared two expected goals even while sitting off in a deeper block for much of the match after taking a lead near minute 30.
The root of the success has been a unique 4-2-4 shape with deep-lying full backs and a reliance on speedy wingers. I used this stat in my Backheeled piece this week, but Hartford’s full backs - Joey Akpunonu and Tristan Hodge - didn’t attempt a single cross against the Legion. Their focus was to sit low and gird their side against the opposing press, facilitating from deep.
Given that setup, defenses have two choices. You can (1) close down on the full backs to force high turnovers but leave yourself vulnerable against longer passes over your pressers. Alternatively, you can (2) sit back, encourage the Hartford back line to carry the ball upfield, and trust the fact that your low-block defense is organized enough to get the job done.
Both El Paso and Birmingham tended to traverse the former path, and we already know how that turned out. Still, even the other scenarios ended in chances more often than not.
You get two tastes of the dynamic above, evidencing that Hartford can be equally dangerous even if a defense drops low. In the first case, the Locomotive let the full backs pass back and forth unperturbed. As such, Beckford (the left winger) decides to drop to get a touch.
That’s where this team’s speed and dribbling ability come into play, and it’s why this system works. Hartford’s attackers are wildly gifted at taking opponents on. They can pass through a defense, but they’re equally able to break lines and beat set shapes with the ball at their feet. Beckford does so above, and it nearly results in a far-post goal.
The Locomotive ran a 5-3-2 defensive system that was too narrow to address the separation on the wing. By contrast, Birmingham’s 5-4-1 naturally had two players on each sideline (think about it: right wing back and right winger) and was theoretically aligned to get the job done.
Not so: you see Beckford blaze past a wing back with a clever chested touch, and a chance is on yet again.
So, is Hartford real? Birmingham looked like a sieve against Phoenix in their only other game this year, and El Paso are languishing in 11th in the West with one point from four matches. Even with the light opposition, Hartford’s high-end talent and process-driven success makes me optimistic. They didn’t need Romario Williams to put up historic numbers on Saturday, and they’ve got Enoch Mushagalusa as a trump card off the bench when the time comes. It’s time to start believing at Dillon Stadium.
Tampa Bay’s tactical transition
Are the Rowdies okay? Just about two weeks into the official Robbie Nielson era, this team has shown flashes but hasn’t had the consistency we’ve come to know and expect at Al Lang Stadium.
To be clear right off the bat, I don’t think there’s a massive problem, and I’d bet my life on Tampa Bay making the playoffs. I do worry about Nielson’s conservative tactical leanings as a limitation in a stacked Eastern Conference. We saw it bite against San Antonio by way of a late collapse, and risk aversion doomed the Rowdies to a draw in North Carolina as well.
Nielson’s offensive shape is a useful lens into my concerns. Away in Texas two weeks back, Tampa Bay employed a true 3-4-3 with Damian Rivera a legitimate part of the forward line. While Rivera wasn’t a font of chances, he effectively stretched the channels against San Antonio’s elevated wing backs. His average touch was 28.3 yards away from the endline.
That dynamic changed against the artists formerly known as the Railhawks. There, the Rowdies moved into a 3-5-2 with Rivera as the left-sided No. 8 and not a forward. His average touch was 47.9 yards away from the endline, but his deeper presence did nothing to create central overloads for Tampa Bay.
Deepening Rivera out was meant to establish three-on-two situations against a two-man North Carolina pivot. Instead, it limited the Rowdies’ threat over the top.
In both games so far, the Rowdies have adopted a fluid shape in the build-up phase. Against North Carolina’s high press, that shape was the back four you see above. Mechanically, Nielson kept his three center backs (Guillen, Lasso, Kleemann) low, and he also had wing back Jordan Doherty sit low on the right.
You can see how the conservative adjustments failed in the screen grab. North Carolina pressed with three players, but they matched their guests four-on-four by elevating a wing back up the sideline.
Tampa Bay, who ended with a 15% long pass rate, weren’t willing to play over that pressure. At the same time, they didn’t get enough movement from Rivera or Danny Crisostomo in the middle to break the press.
By contrast, the Rowdies also used nominal “back four” principles in Texas, but they were conceived with offense in mind. Against North Carolina, the right-side defender sat deep to form a foursome. Against San Antonio, that player constantly stepped high into the half space.
In moving upfield that way, Doherty left two defenders low to handle possession in front of Jordan Farr. That’s how a normal 4-4-2 works, for instance. Two wider players step up, two central defenders remain.
It was indeed a “back two” more than anything else, and it helped introduce a very direct approach. The Rowdies went long on 23% of their passes against San Antonio, and they had great success finding Cal Jennings and Manuel Arteaga upfield. Doherty’s high positioning let him battle for knockdowns and snuff out counters, too.
Back to North Carolina. When Nielson simplified into a standard 3-5-2, not some Frankenstein back four, the play improved marginally. North Carolina’s wing backs couldn’t be as involved defensively, and there were more opportunities for interchange upfield.
You saw that dynamic play out on the goal, where attacking interaction from Rivera and wing back Blake Bodily on the end of Lewis Hilton service did the job.
It was evident from the preseason onward that this Rowdies team would focus on the flanks, but it’s equally clear that they must supplement that Plan A with an added central threat. When Nick Moon’s locked down on the right and Charlie Dennis is back in the middle, things will change. Until then, Nielson needs to think on his feet and lean into a more direct style to earn some much-needed early points.
Threads!
I post too much, so here’s a backlog of my bigger game recaps. Interested in the Charleston win over New Mexico? It’s the USL Tactics Show this week.
Final Thoughts
In other news…
Nicholas Murray had a wonderful reflection on Orange County’s stadium fiasco from 2022 ahead of their sellout home opener over the weekend. Great perspective, and great quotes from the always-loquacious Dan Rutstein.
Make sure to check out the free-to-read US Open Cup superlatives I put out over at Backheeled. I had so much fun putting it together.
My friend and podcast co-host Kaylor Hodges has a retrospective on literally every player in the history of the Birmingham Legion that’s a super fun read. He taught me that there’s actually a team called Under the Radar FC, which rules so hard I can’t even fathom it.
Love Kartik Krishnaiyer’s perspective on the Miami phenomenon.
Sorry, not sorry, because this’ll be a space for Top Chef takeaways. Yes, I track and play a version of Fantasy Top Chef with my mom. This is the third year we’ve done this, and I’m 0-for-3. In any event, I’m big on Kristin Kish as the new host, and I’m bigger on my man Manny Barella as the winner-to-be of Season 21.
See you later this week with some League One talk!