Was Casey Stoney the Problem in San Diego?
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- Опубликовано: 24 июн 2024
- This is an analysis of the problems with the San Diego Wave NWSL team. Head Coach Casey Stoney was fired, but is the lack of scoring the full story? This is mostly commentary but supplemented with some women's soccer film study where I analyze key plays.
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First analysis I went to after hearing the news.
You are the best on RUclips.
Very kind, thank you!
I appreciate your balance of data analysis with experienced eyeballs.
It is way too easy to get lost in calculations. You do a good job of saying "This data guided me to focus on these players in this way, this is what I saw when I did that."
It definitely seemed hasty to fire a manager eight months after winning the Shield. There must be off-field drama of some sort.
Thank you, there was a ton of potential storylines here so I followed one that had data I found interesting. The off-field drama has to have some part in it, the organization had everything so squared away last year it feels like too quick of a collapse.
Wow really good analysis. With new ownership coming in and no GM to protect the coach --- it's plausible to say her days were numbered no matter what she did.
Thank you! It's a sad reality, I suppose one positive is the results were bad enough to not drag the situation out.
i personally don't believe +/- is all that valuable of a tool in a 10 outfield player sport...? nor do i think the defense - which has given up a total of 13 goals in 14 games - is the problem. Colaprico is a defensive midfielder - a 6 - and is a part of that impressive defense, not a player who is responsible or brought in to contribute to goals being scored.
i think that the attacking players - save for Shaw - are all incredibly ill-fitting pieces & certainly were not hand picked by Stoney ffs. individual stats of McCaskill and Sanchez are eye watering and especially sobering given both of their contract status, +/- be damned (respectfully).
I love your breakdowns i just fundamentally don't think +/- works in this sport like it does w/ 5 players on the court / ice type sports.
and i agree with you in the end on Stoney - imo, the Wavè made a massive error in sacking Stoney and will come to regret that decision sooner rather than later.
Fair criticism on the +/-, it was difficult trying to pinpoint a problem here and it felt like a way to investigate the issue of the starting 11 missing goals.
Ill-fitting is a great way to put it, there's a lot of good players that just don't look good together. Do I think Colaprico should be benched entirely? No. Do I think she should be the stalwart starter on a team who are looking to play with a really wide offensive scheme? No, that's not her game at all. Do we need Sanchez to do a job Jakobsson was doing reasonably well? You'd think she'd be an upgrade but it's hard to build chemistry when everyone around you changes weekly. The decisions all feel extremely short sighted.
Really nice in depth look. Thanks for these efforts. Just a side note on some coaches that come into the American soccer scene on both the men’s and women’s leagues-they sometimes can get really hung up on the differences between their home leagues and the way ours are run. I’m not arguing which is ‘better’ just that it’s a known thing and they can get sidetracked sometimes. Her latest rant definitely had legit items but you knew what our vast geographical reality means to league play and everyone gets shafted at times but all go thru the travel consequences and I feel some foreign coaches can use these items as escapes….and not focus enough on their role in adapting to what’s in front of them.
I love this comment because I initially tried to structure this video as investigating her complaints. The scheduling stinks but Gotham who are also suffering from the extra game at the beginning seem just fine. Can't point to that. She's had some players leave for 3 national team stints since training camp, some of those players have long-haul travel to Europe and Australia. Well I couldn't point to over scheduling there, those players are mostly performing. Every excuse I looked for seem to have a disclaimer when the real answer is she wasn't doing enough with what she was given. Adaptability is supreme.
Your math is correct, and your XI very well might score more goals. You can't win without goals 👍. >>> Emily van Egmond? RUclips>Highlights | San Diego Wave FC vs Seattle Reign FC | March 29, 2024, 05:20... This is Emily van Egmond's major highlight, a well struck goal. But before she strikes it van Egmond gets pissed off because the pass was coming and Morgan accidentally intercepts it. Now, with the ball bouncing around in the penalty area and time running out Emily van Egmund turns and starts walking away 🤨until Morgan yells at her to turn around, gives her the "after you, please" gesture and van Egmond scores. My point, Emily van Egmund has lost focus this year, slow to react defensively, as well.
Oof that clip is a good summary for most of Van Egmond's defense. A lot of attempting to stand in the way without much consideration for what's happening. She's one where I'm very curious what her true +/- is because she somehow seems to be on the pitch for lots of goals conceded too.
The highlight for her goal doesn't go far back enough to show the build up but I'm pretty sure she was playing as a defensive mid and abandons her position without coverage. Just as easily could've been a quick goal the other way! I can certainly understand why she hasn't been starting.
Great flag, thank you
This is an excellent analysis. Data driven, with highlights. Fantastic! I will look forward to more of your work. Thank you. ❤
So happy to hear you liked this, thanks for checking it out.
Great video! I think people have also forgotten how much work Reihl and Hill did for this team last year... Both were not flashy players but Riehl was rock solid at the back and Hill did so much pressing (look at her rbref defensive stats they’re insane). They freed up others to be more adventurous
Wow great callout on fbref for both of them. I've watched a sad amount of Utah games and it's just now clicking Reihl not playing is probably part of their problem. I love a good "boring" player, both definitely bigger losses than I'd considered.
I thought this was an awesome analysis! I am wondering what you thought of our last game? Although a very tough loss, for the first time I saw our back line make some critical mistakes rather than our front line. We certainly had some mistakes offensively as well but it was the most aggressive I had seen us all year. I loved Barcenas coming back and causing some chaos. She was a treat to see.
Thanks for checking this out! I enjoyed watching the last game even with the result. I think the offense looked a little better, they seemed to let go of some the attacking width they were trying to force into their shape and it let them progress the ball into the attacking third a bit more. Sort of a mess when they were there, but I enjoyed seeing the team connect more passes inside the box. Defensively it was a disaster, completely burned by speed again and again. Not sure they can fix this midseason, just hoping to stop the bleeding. Barcenas was wonderful, she's got such furious feet, really hoping she starts getting a consistent 10-15 minutes per game.
With Jill Ellis as president, looking over her shoulder, it was inevitable that Stoney would not last when the wins stopped coming. I would like to have been the fly-on-the-wall who heard back and front office conversations as Stoney was trying to shore up the aging team, and make adjustments within her system. I'd expect she adapts more to a fluid system on the next job. There are two major personnel problems that I see, and both are age/performance related. Plus/minus is useful up to a point. It was interesting to read about the pluses. Of course there is more to the analysis.
So many things going on in San Diego, there's definitely a lot of interesting conversations happening across the building. I think your Jill Ellis comment could probably be taken literally, I normally see her pregame on the pitch looking over Stoney's shoulder. No sign of her yesterday but Ashton was certainly out and about. Probably not much fun being with the organization right now, too many difficult conversations about to be had to fix the on and off-field issues.
The plus minus seems kinda off. The team has a current goal differential of -1, why are all the players having positive numbers? Also, the wave have 12 goals scored, way off the leaders, though only 13 goals against, with the two leading teams with 11 goals against. The leading team in the league KC Current has 20 goals against, and the #3 is Washington at 17. I agree that Dalkemper isn't the best, but the Wave are in good company in terms of their defense. You just are not going to win games while scoring at less than a goal-a-game clip (12 goals in 14 games), especially in this league. Still I agree with the off season woes, but the offense is a mess with Alex Morgan scoring 0 goals!!
+/- is very off! It's just the + which isn't a full picture but does help for thinking about where goals are coming from.
Your point on goal differential is great one. If you look at last year's final standings, three teams had what I'd call a neutral differential (-1,0,1) and yet stayed close to the cut line for playoffs with 31 points. And the Wave won the Shield with 37 points. Even with the extra 12 points available because of expansion teams, KC and Orlando are on pace to absolutely smash that. Goal differential isn't looking like a good way to squeak by anymore. It was extremely foolish to think that the expectations wouldn't change season to season.
You were so right. After Stoney In the recent Red Stars game Emily van Egmond played well 👏, Abby Dahlkemper kept Mal Swanson on side, twice, then Lorne Donaldson subbed in a fresh Jameese Joseph in front of a spent Abby Dahlkemper 💣. >>> McCaskill missed a lay up in the first half, there was a Girma on goal and all that wasted energy came to nothing. >>> The players will have to learn a third philosophy with the permanent coach. Clearly they are building for next year, post Morgan and probably post Dahlkemper.
It was very cool for the lineup to be so close to what I worked out, made for a really interesting proof of concept! The McCaskill miss really bothered me live, it looks like maybe a tough bounce on the replay. But I think I'm starting to see a few more of the holes in her game. Some parts of the offense looked better, I liked more passing in tight spaces in the final third. Execution was off but there's some promising ideas. Curious to see if they bother trying to make any improvements to the team this season.
@@BusyWatchingWomensSoccer Thanks. I'll be waiting on the Emily Fox and of course USWNT Mexico/Costa Rica videos.
wow, watching the wave-chicago game (well, the highlights, because the game was 4am where i am now!) having watched this the night before was VERY interesting because i could see what you were talking about so clearly. most dramatically with the defensive side of things, of course, because letting the red stars score three goals on you...well, not even utah achieved that feat. wave are the first team to let in three chicago goals this season 😅 so those defensive issues may be more significant than you predicted.
but still, the goals scored showed the total disunity of san diego's back line along with the specific downfall (wrong word but that's all i got right now!) of dahlkemper. not good 😬
they were honestly some very fun highlights to watch because it was so unexpected. chicago scoring three? wow alex morgan penalty? thinking she was going to get revenge on the olympic miss and get her first nwsl goal of the season...and then she skies it. wow. (probably bad i felt vindicated instead of sad for her!) the team's lost the plot.
however: i am not a wave fan. if their downfall does in fact last, i wouldn't mind, even though two of my favorite players are on the team. yet i AM an uswnt fan and yes i get the first was an own goal but wow, that second goal just shows mal's finishing, and i am INCREDIBLY excited to have mal back in the form of her life for the olympics. what a player.
special mention to super sub joseph. what a way to get her first goal and second assist.
Last night's game, Wave versus Red Stars, is not a good example of any of the previous games over the short team history (except a 3 goal loss to Portland long ago). I feel that the new interim coach pulled out the riding crop and after 40 odd minutes of running as if their careers depended on it they were gassed. Until last night the wave had the second best defense in the NWSL. I don't know if Paul Buckle knew who to sub in. He just arrived. 👉>>> I don't deny that some changes need to me made.
The full game was honestly pretty great in the sense that there was a lot happening. I watched it live and haven't seen the full thing yet so I'm probably missing a lot of detail but it felt like for a while the Wave looked better offensively, and then for a spell they looked much worse than usual defensively. So maybe they didn't have the energy to keep up with the pace of play that was bringing them some good moments? There was some real pain in Morgan and Dahlkemper's body language, I do really feel for them. Maybe this is finally rock bottom and they can just mentally let go of the season or whatever else and move on to better football.
Wave are my local team, I love watching them win but I mostly love watching women's soccer win. I feel so lucky to be able to go and watch this level of competition in person. Definitely caught myself clapping for Swanson and Joseph, they were both stellar to watch. Mal is going to be a force at the Olympics.
Thank You Coach, I appreciate you.
I appreciate you checking this one out.
Very interesting video! Thanks for posting this! I never found the Wave to be that great even when they won the shield. I think they benefitted a lot last season by the league being more competitive and no team was racking up points for long unbeaten streaks like this season. I don't think they are significantly worse this year, (definitely not as good for all the reasons you listed) but the change in how many points the top teams have make them look even worse than previous years.
You make such a great point, there's more points available because of the expansion teams but the distribution is really skewed towards a few teams. Combine that with maybe looking at last year through rose-tinted glasses. The Wave came up short when it really mattered against the Reign, same story the year before with Portland. It make me feel more frustrated with the organization thinking about it like that, as if they hadn't considered the league will play differently season to season!
I feel like having Alex Morgan as your striker might have been an issue
I have been known to over-engineer things
Hi! I'm fairly new to soccer strategy/stats, and your breakdowns and videos have been so informative! Thank you for putting these out. I understood your logic around using + only as opposed to +/-, but am thinking that wen it comes to looking at + *and* # of appearances, you night be better served looking at the ratio between the two. For example, someone with 8 appearances and +6 would have numbers that look better (i.e. larger) than someone with 3 appearances and +3. But that first person is averaging experiencing goals in 75% of their appearances, while the second is averaging 100%, which reflects a better showing. My point is, the first way of interpreting the stat gives serious weight to Stoney's decision whether or not to give that player playing time, whereas the second method controls for that more -- although that method, as you mentioned, may be less accurate when it comes to players with fewer appearances due to insufficient sample size. Curious to hear your thoughts!
Hi! Looking at a percentage is a significantly better idea! It takes away the temptation to focus on players with the highest +. If I were to do this again I'd probably look at +/games started and also +/minutes played as a sanity check. This is where I kill a ton of my time playing around with data and looking for interesting things, this would've been smart!
@@BusyWatchingWomensSoccer Yessss, minutes played would be awesome! I thought of that but I figured it'd be terribly time consuming to collect -- is there somewhere you can get that data? Totally see how this could become a giant time suck lol, so many ways to slice it!
@@lillianbacon954 Minutes played may actually be easier, there’s a site called fbref that I look at stats on and I’m pretty sure it has minutes played. I had to manually work out who was on the field for each goal, why did I not think of this earlier!
@@BusyWatchingWomensSoccer Glad I could help! I do still think the "who was on the field when a goal was scored" stat is really interesting, and will ponder the implications of looking at that.
Never seen your content but it’s very good. Great analysis… but I think you should get a mic for better sound quality, I’m assuming you’re using the cameras.
Thanks for the feedback, I'm always looking for ways to improve these. Sounds like it's time to invest in a real mic.
Stoney loyalist. Wave blew it. Analysis is numbers...politics are personal....Stoney deserved better.....im done wit Wave.....
Definitely left me feeling bitter. Doing this right now feels like the wrong decision for fans and players.
I lost all respect for Stoney when she lied for Morgan. It was totally unnecessary. I'm OK with not calling Morgan out, but making up a lie for her and falsely blaming another organization is NOT a part of a coach's job description. San Diego can do better, much better.
Oh man I must've missed that, I don't recall anything recently other than her mentioning the excused absence. There's a better coach for San Diego out there, just not today or tomorrow, it'll be a while.
How about offer some context, probably most don’t know what you’re talking about 🤷
Nice job!!!
Too many coaches in the US suck the big one starting with youth it's mostly all parents thinking they can "Monday-night" coach the game so they pay a fee pass a test and bang, they are a "Bonafide coach" The sport in the US is still in its infantile stage... they all think they can be Ted L the game... know nothing about the game and win with bluster 🤣
Thanks for checking this one out! I share your feelings about the coaching, from the outside looking in it sure seems like there's a lot of coaches trying to put 11 of their best athletes out there and play a sport. That being said, I so need to take the entry level coaching course myself at some point, I'm definitely playing armchair quarterback right now!
@@BusyWatchingWomensSoccer Most coaches think they can pick who they feel are the top 11 put them on the field and they'll come through, even players at high level need development... You have very good instinct then, you must have played and/or are a keen observer?
@@min2oly I played competitively for a long time but gave it up to start earning some money. Occasionally regretting that decision!