The Second Club Thread

[Alan]

First time I’ve ever heard boos at the Bank.

Really, truly shocking. Confidence in Lattanzio firmly shaken.

 

[Alan]

Atlanta have taken their foot off the gas a bit but we’re still in this bizarre shape and can’t put anything together.

Jozwiak managed to dribble straight out of play for an Atlanta goal kick whilst under no pressure inside their box.

Fuck you, Derby County.

 

[Alan]

FT. CLT 0-3 ATL.

Really loud boos at the whistle.

 

[Lupo]

Aside from Atlanta, Napoli beat Atalanta 2-0 to go 18 points clear at the top of Serie A after Inter lost 2-1 to Spezia

 

[Alan]

I just met Adil Malanda!!!

 

[Alan]

[...] let’s start in Charlotte, where it was particularly gruesome…

Brain Capers

There was a dose of what I felt was justified optimism around Charlotte heading into this season. They had executed a textbook course correction in 2022 after Miguel Angel Ramírez’s… I guess we’ll call them “struggles,” going 10W-11L-2D after Christian Lattanzio took over in late spring. In the process, they’d established a compelling style of play (Lattanzio’s a City Football Group guy), figured out how to put DP Karol Swiderski in influential spots, and started squeezing more out of players like Brandt Bronico, Derrick Jones and Andre Shinyashiki than their previous clubs had managed.
The vibes were good, and there was reason to think, with the addition of a new DP No. 9 and a full preseason of learning Lattanzio’s system under everyone’s belts, that they’d come into 2023 and look like a more polished version of what worked so well in the back half of 2022.
Wrong.
270 minutes and three truly dispiriting losses have ruined those good vibes. Charlotte got worked 3-0 at home by Atlanta United early Saturday afternoon, a humbling loss that followed a 3-1 humiliation at St. Louis, which followed on the heels of their late, 1-0 home heartbreak against the Revs to open the season.
It is bad and while that is frustrating, I think the more frustrating part is that this feels like Ramírez-style self-inflicted badness born of a commitment to over-complicating the team’s entire approach. Let me run through it real quick:

• Charlotte are playing a base 4-2-3-1 set which is supposed to evolve into a 3-2-2-3 in possession.
• The evolution comes when the right-footed left back (Bronico) pushes up to underlap into central deep central midfield next to Jones.
• That releases the other deep central midfielder (Ashley Westwood) to push forward and orchestrate from the ball-side half-space, while the nominal No. 10 (Shinyashiki) pushes to the weak-side half-space as a connector.
• The right winger (Swiderski) stays wide unless possession is on the weak side, in which case he crashes back-post for pullbacks from the very right-footed left winger (Kamil Jozwiak) who has no goals and just four assists in 22 MLS games, and just one goal in his last 92 outings over nearly three years.

That’s a whole lot of moving pieces in midfield, two inverted wingers who actually can’t get to the endline to hit pullbacks, a new center back partnership that’s not protected by a true, stay-at-home 6 (Jones was so good at that last year!), and… woooooo boy does it look like these guys are uncomfortable with all of the above. Every rotation is complex, and thus every rotation is late:

The defending in the box was roughhhhh. This has got to be hard to watch for Christian Lattanzio...

1) Three players watching Robinson break their line with a simple pass

2) Wow, that's a lot of space in the midfield!

3) Brandt Bronico turned into a cone

4) Yikes in the 18! pic.twitter.com/AQ4kts6gjM
— Andrew Wiebe (@andrew_wiebe) March 11, 2023

Lattanzio wants this team to use the ball and I’m always a fan of that, but he’s gone about it in such a mad scientist way that his dudes are just lost out there. He even talked about it a bit in the postgame (though it was in reference to Atlanta’s first goal – also scored by left winger Caleb Wiley – rather than the coup de grace in Wiebe’s tweet above):
“When he scores, we go out of position too early. We take, at times, gambles, and this is something that I don’t want,” Lattanzio said. “I always say that we have to have a position where we are building first and we are in support, especially when the ball is on the opposite side, and then we release ourselves. Not to go higher before the ball is played, because then [the breakdown leading to the goal] can happen...
“So they had this moment when we were not rightly positioned, and with the quality they have they find a good pass, and they find a good goal.”
It’s grim right now but I think this is salvageable for the Crown, just as it was last season. A true left back – one who can provide occasional width in the attack – has got to get into the XI for one, and for two, Swiderski needs to be moved back into his shadow striker role underneath the No. 9. He’s not a true 10, but he’s very, very good there (he combines naturally in tight spaces and has an eye for the final ball), and leaving him stranded on the right wing, where he can basically only bend in useless crosses, is a waste of the team’s best attacker.
Put one of Westwood or Bronico alongside Jones and the other one goes to the bench. Put Shinyashiki on the left wing for his box-arriving abilities, or maybe try one of Nuno Santos or Kerwin Vargas there to see if they’ve got more juice. And yeah, that means the current left winger, Jozwiak, has probably played himself to the bench (though I wouldn’t be entirely against the idea of running him out on the right wing with a mandate to stay wide and get to the endline for pullbacks).
It’s a simpler approach, but simpler is often better in this game of ours. And bear in mind that this can still morph into the CFG-approved 3-2-2-3 shape in possession.
Lattanzio figured out how to clean up someone else’s mess last year. Let’s see how long he takes to figure out how to clean up his own.
As for Atlanta, the performance was probably not as promising as the scoreline suggested, but I loved the clear-eyed ruthlessness with which they exploited the disorganization of Charlotte's left side:

Atlanta's first-half attacks are all tilted down the right. They're pulling Charlotte to that side, then playing across the game channel to find Wiley in space again and again and again and again...

Weaponized the gravity Araujo creates w/ his extra touches. pic.twitter.com/lWmHUVhSgV
— Matthew Doyle (@MattDoyle76) March 11, 2023

Find the gaps created by Charlotte’s confused rotations, attack them, then play across the game channel to the left winger running free. Rinse and repeat and go home with three points.

A brutal and fully deserved takedown of Lattanzio's ridiculous tactics so far this season.

Credit: Matt Doyle @ MLSSoccer.com

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Those tactics sound like when we had Rob Edwards as caretaker. Yeah, brilliant if you have some of the best players in the world at your disposal, like Man City or Barcelona. Not so good when it's Cameron Borthwick-Jackson and a two stone overweight Matt Doherty as your full backs.

Also, 1 goal in 92 for a winger! Even Adama isn't that bad.

 

[Alan]

Truly, whoever it was at Derby that convinced us to pay $1.5m for Jozwiak probably deserves every penny of that fee to go straight to their personal account.

I've never held such a grudge against a player, and I was around for Jermaine Pennant. "Competition winner" is too kind.

And he's one of the three highest earners on the team. Infuriating.

 

[Alan]

Appreciate the frownies but it's all good!

Lattanzio has the answer right in front of him: just do what we did last season! Whether he will or not is another question, but the core of the team is the same (improved, even), so we know there's a competitive side in there.

Early days. We were never going to be in with a shot at MLS Cup this season but the time (and the solution) is there to turn things around.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

At least if you're shit, you can't get relegated!

Is the draft even worth anything these days? Can't imagine college soccer is a very high standard.

 

[Alan]

IMO the draft is mostly there because "that's how we do it in America".

Occasionally you find talent at that level (a lot of parents here would much, much rather their child follow a "traditional" schooling path than go full-in on an Academy, so "diamonds-in-the-rough" do exist), but generally speaking you wouldn't bank on a draftee becoming a star. Being good enough to get the occasional start for the senior team is usually the ceiling.

College soccer is a fucking mess. All sorts of weird rules. Like a mish-mash of football and hockey.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

When I lived in Hamburg, I met a couple of your countrymen, similar age to me (so early 20s at the time). Nice chaps, got talking, they played college football (NFL) to at least some level and they asked me if we had similar. Yeah, sort of mate, I play "soccer" for Manchester University. Now, even with your standard poor grasp of overseas geography they know where Manchester is.

"Oh wow, that sounds cool. How many people come to see your games?"

"Er, none I play a better standard on a Sunday in Burnage"

Baffled them.

 

[Alan]

It helped me put into perspective how much college athletes are not amateurs.

If you're drawing crowds of 100,000+ in a town like fucking Tuscaloosa, Alabama (great town, but literally nothing except the school there), you're a professional. Even if you're also taking classes.

 

[Tredman]

That fair. All my colleagues are obsessing over March Madness at the moment, I was baffled after they explained it.

 

[Alan]

I've always cared more about college than professional football tbh. But that's my dad's influence, I expect.

If he doesn't go to his grave in a houndstooth pattern (an homage to the late, great Paul "Bear" Bryant, who coached at the University of Alabama whilst my parents were enrolled), I'll be properly stunned.

In a very real way, the tribalism of English football is much more akin to college fandom here than professional fandom, especially in the South/Southeastern US.

 

[Johnny75]

It helped me put into perspective how much college athletes are not amateurs.

If you're drawing crowds of 100,000+ in a town like fucking Tuscaloosa, Alabama (great town, but literally nothing except the school there), you're a professional. Even if you're also taking classes.

Then they should be paid as such.

It's disgusting the crowds that college football gets and the players see nothing of that money.

 

[Alan]

You're preaching to the choir, man.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

When my Dad first moved to Texas he showed me a picture of the college stadium nearest him.

Fucking crazy, look at it

 

[WsWolf]

Then they should be paid as such.

It's disgusting the crowds that college football gets and the players see nothing of that money.

Thought NIL was put in to solve that?

 

[Johnny75]

Thought NIL was put in to solve that?

It's a fudge to benefit the rich. Embarrassing really.