NWSL Week 13 Recap- The Croix Bethune era is here and the Worst Cascadia Derby of all Time

Thanks to:

Pass Maps: https://btvc.beehiiv.com/p/nwsl-week-13-xg-race-charts-pass-networks-2024

Data vis: https://x.com/nwslstat

Game 1: Seattle Reign 0-0 Portland Thorns

Alas, I must recap this game. A game I was unable to watch for the first 25 minutes because of CBS's inability to program properly. A game in which the Thorns were missing nearly half a starting lineup. A game in which the Seattle Reign played soccer (kind of).

While Lumen Field's lack of atmosphere typically erodes some of the usual drama of the Cascadia Derby match, it was Portland's lack of star power that made Sunday's match one destined to become the third scoreless draw of the weekend. Already missing winger and famous derby antagonist Morgan Weaver, the Thorns were also without Sam Coffey (due to her allegedly "not serious" ankle injury suffered the week prior), Sophia Smith (Out: Did Something Stupid), Isabella Obaze (still unclear what's going on with her), and Olivia Moultrie (who showed up late on the injury report with something knee-related).

Despite their poor form throughout the 2024 season, Laura Harvey's fully healthy Reign side must have liked their chances against Portland's depleted starting eleven. The newly-fit Quinn promised to add some stability to a midfield core that was run through, around, and by last weekend by the firepower of the Current. Harvey ditched the 4-4-2 used the week prior, bringing Ji So Yun back into her starting eleven in place of Tziarra King and reverting to her typical 4-2-3-1. It didn't work. Huitema, whether by direction or nature, repeatedly tucked inside to partner Balcer up top, leaving LB Ryanne Brown isolated on the Reign's attacking left side. The Reign's lack of pace allowed to the Thorns back four to keep the action in front of them, while the midfield trio struggled to impose themselves on a Thorns team playing both with the 70000 year old Christine Sinclair and without a true defensive midfielder. Defensively, CB Alana Cook was unceremoniously dropped from the side entirely after her error-strewn performance against KC and was replaced by McClernon.

For Seattle, nothing much changed from the week prior, or indeed the 11 weeks before that. The attack was once again impotent, generating just 0.5 xG on afternoon. The defense looked competent, but much of that was down to the lack of a challenge put up by a slow and indecisive Thorns front four. In attack, the same issues --lack of pace and creativity-- plagued the Reign throughout. Seattle fans, buoyed Monday by the announcement of the Reign's sale to an ownership group including owners of their MLS counterparts, will have to hope that a full revamp of the roster --and possibly coaching staff and decision makers-- is on the horizon. Because boy, there just isn't much there.

Portland and their noticeably loud suite of away fans would probably have taken the point given their missing personnel, but this was undeniably a missed opportunity for the Thorns to sweep their rivals and take advantage of dropped points by all three teams that came into the weekend above them in the table. Manager Rob Gale, embracing his Malfoy identity fully with a vest and green Slytherin tie, didn't have many options without Smith and Weaver, opting to start his only two healthy wingers either side of Izzy D'Aquila and in front of Christine Sinclair who replaced the injured Moultrie. The Thorns had moments of success, particularly when they pressed Seattle high and forced the Reign to try to play through. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that Smith's suspension for sideline shenanigans probably cost the Thorns two points- Poor D'Aquila, finally given a start in a big game, failed to impress, looking cautious and indecisive in front of goal on multiple occasions before wrapping up a disappointing day by failing to make an effort to chase a slightly heavy through ball when she could have been in on goal late on.

Without their star forwards and playing against a sieve-like midfield, this really should have been a game where Gale adjusted his tactics to play through the midfield more than typical ---and they did to an extent-- but this remains a team that wants to hunt wing matchups. Matching the eye test to the numbers regarding the tactics we see from the Thorns week-to-week is a bit of a challenge, so l decided to do a bit of a deep dive on why the Thorns seem like they don't build through the midfield as well. asthe talent suggests they should.

Let's start with a macro look at how the Thorns build. The table below (via American Soccer Analysis) shows a number of passing stats that are not super intuitive, so let's walk through some of them:

• The Thorns are a good passing team: They have by FAR the highest pass completion rate over expectation rate (Per100F) in the league. This means that they are completing more passes than they are expected to complete based on the difficulty of pass.

• The Thorns are a relatively patient team: The average vertical distance traveled of their passes (VertF) is 4th smallest, ahead of only NCC, Gotham, and ACFC. This means that they're playing passes that travel sideways or backwards at a higher rate than most of the league. So, the narrative that they're just hoofing the ball to Smith? Not strictly accurate!

• The Thorns have both the second most total touches, and total touches in the attacking third behind only North Carolina and Kansas City respectively. So, we know they see a lot of the ball.

Now, let's look into some of the more detailed numbers. First and foremost, the Thorns are a team that likes to concentrate its attacks down the wings, which is where that "hoof the ball up to Smith" narrative comes from. A core tenant of how the Thorns play is the belief that they have mismatches with their wide players against opposing defenses, and that hunting those mismatches is the best way to generate chances. This is primarily a Sophia Smith and Morgan Weaver driven strategy, which makes sense to an extent --you want to get your best players the ball in positions where they're successful-- but it means they often bypass their midfield and struggle when their speedy duo isn't available. A few numbers regarding chance creation:

• The Thorns are 8th in the league in raw possession percentage, behind North Carolina, San Diego, Bay FC, Gotham, Angel City, Washington, and Utah.

• Smith leads the team in shot-creating actions with 50. No other player has more than 34. As Smith is usually receiving passes high up the field, this means that she is often creating chances for herself. As a point of comparison, six of the teams that are ahead of them in terms of total ball possession --Gotham (Yazmeen Ryan), North Carolina (Ashley Sanchez), Bay FC (Tess Boade), San Diego (Savannah McCaskill), and Washington (Croix Bethune)-- all are led in chance creation by a player who plays a large portion of their minutes as either a midfielder or inverted winger.
  

• The Thorns lead the league comfortably in progressive passes received with 551. The next closest is Kansas City with 531.

• LB Marie Muller is 3rd (just four touches total behind 2nd) on the team in touches in the final third of the field with 180.....over 45 touches ahead of the trio of Fleming, Coffey, and Hina.

• The Thorns are 5th and 7th in the league in touches in the opponent's third and penalty area respectively, but first by a mile in touches in the middle third of the field. All those times the Thorns play it around the midfield and then chip it forward down the line? Yeah, that's what this stat shows.

So, how can we reconcile the first set of stats -- which generally show the Thorns are a patient team that plays a lot of horizontal or backwards passes at a high rate of accuracy while having a high number of total touches-- with the second set of stats --which shows that the Thorns lead the league in progressive passes and create most of their chances from the wide areas?

My takeaway is one I think many who watch the Thorns consistently will generally agree with: The Thorns are both a patient team and one that often has a lot of the ball, but also lack penetration through the midfield. A lot of the ball progression --when it does occur-- comes from their FBs, specifically Müller on the left side. They often fail to integrate the midfield with their forwards, meaning that the their attack is less fluid and more two banks of attackers: The midfield and FBs and the front three. This also limits the direct impact of players like Sugita and Fleming, who thrive in tight spaces where they can use their skills to influence chance creation more directly. Would a different manager with a different philosophy have an impact on the way the Thorns create their chances? Is the lack of midfield fluidity a major problem, or does the Thorns' offensive success indicate that this style of play is actually the best way to maximize Smith's prodigious talents? Is the biggest issue more the lack of flexibility to play a different way when either Smith or Weaver aren't available? Let me know what you think!

Quick Hits:

• Meghan Klingenberg got about 15 minutes at the six and looked comfortable- Something for Gale to have in his back pocket should Coffey miss more more time.

• Janine Beckie rotated inside a number of times to fill the gap --where Sinclair should have been-- at the ten. Beckie was probably Portland's most effective player on the night, but struggled with the final ball.

• I would have liked to see Nicole Payne earlier. Upon coming on late, she immediately created the best Thorns chance of the night before drawing a yellow on Huitema moments later. With the Thorns' lack of speed without Weaver, Gale should be more creative with how he uses Payne and her track speed.

• Seattle's first move --of what needs to be many-- should be finding a top class winger. There's just nothing there, and it's wasting the finishing talents of Balcer and Huitema.

• Ji So Yun has fallen off after a strong start to her Reign career. Leaning on a 33 year old for all the team's creation needs was never the best idea, but it looks downright unfair to Ji with the Reign's flair-less roster.

Game 2: Washington Spirit 1-1 San Diego Wave

National television apparently can't quit the San Diego Wave, who traveled to Audi Field in DC to face the red-hot Spirit and their record breaking crowd. The Spirit look a transformed side on the field, but the marketing job Michelle Kang and the Spirit marketing department have done to attract fans in DC is one that other franchises should copy. The switch to Audi field along with the Pizza box covers, cookie packages, Metro station banners, and questionable brand changes resulted in that record breaking Saturday crowd of just under 20K and an average increase of around 3K from 2023. When undisputed Rookie of the Year and MVP candidate Croix Bethune smoothly pounded the ball past SD keeper Kailen Sheridan at her near post in the 97th minute before pulling out a cold "rolling the dice" celebration, the place absolutely exploded. You could feel the energy through the TV screen.

On the field, the Spirit have been on a roll since their road loss in Portland, winning four straight. Admittedly, their opponents during their win streak were hardly a murderer's row --Seattle, Utah, ACFC, and Louisville-- but they had taken care of business nonetheless. Behind talis(wo)man Trinity Rodman, the enigmatic stardom of Bethune, Ouleymata Sarr's revitalization, and a solid midfield, the Spirit have jumped ahead of their timeline, putting themselves in a great position for when new manager Jonathan Giraldez and new signings Leicy Santos and Esme Morgan join the squad this summer.

With Andi Sullivan out, Paige Metayer joined rookie Hal Hershfelt at the base of the Spirit midfield triangle against SD. The Spirit are not a particularly deep team yet: They have both a lot of talent on the top end and players who can do a job, but they still rely heavily on their stars to produce. Without Sullivan, the midfield didn't work as it had been for most of the season. Hershfelt had to play the Sullivan role next to the more attack-minded Metayer, and the Spirit struggled to get much going in the first half as San Diego brought themselves into the game primarily through their left side of Maria Sanchez and Savannah McCaskill. The Spirit's typically disciplined box press (where they press the opposition's FBs in the corner in the shape of a box) did work as intended a few times early on, Wave RB Hanna Lundkvist struggling to cope with a particularly challenging version of the press resulting in a giveaway and a Croix Bethune effort that hit the post.

When RB Gabby Carle left the game with a concussion (after initially getting cleared by the Spirit's medical staff), Hershfelt had to drop into RB and was replaced in midfield by left winger Courtney Brown, who was in turn replaced at LW by Ashley Hatch. The pass map was thrown off by the change, Brown's average position moving much more central and Hershfelt's in into RB. With that said, the hole on the Spirit's left side has been there all season as a result of Sarr's shift up top and the lack of a true left winger to replace her. Interim manager Adrian Gonzalez has tried a few different players --including the beleaguered Hatch-- and none have really taken hold. Gonzalez has been able to use the consistently excellent Casey Krueger as a pseudo left midfielder, helping the Spirit overcome some of the problems created by the lack of a true left winger. With Croix Bethune locking down the 10 role, I wonder if Giraldez views new signing Santos as an inverted left wing: Santos' ability to cut in and create from the wings would fit in well with Krueger's marauding forward runs.

San Diego played arguably the best half I've seen from them all season after a chaotic first 15 minutes where Washington's superior athleticism gave the Wave fits. Once Washington's press ran out of gas, the Wave looked much more like the Shield-winning side of last season: Still incredibly dull, lacking creativity, and risk-averse almost to a fault, but dangerous when they managed to get the ball to the feet of their best players. The Wave used the same, intentionally direct ball-progression method multiple times throughout the first half: Girma into the feet of a back-to-goal Alex Morgan, into a quick lay-off to an overlapping Sanchez or Kristen McNabb. Sanchez had one of her better games since moving to SoCal from Texas, consistently looking dangerous when she got on the ball and creating Shaw's goal with a typically brilliant cross. Unlike last week where rookie Mya Jones was the focal point of the Wave's attack on the right, Sanchez was the more-involved SD winger on the day....though Sofia Jakobson --who has consistently underperformed with the Wave and was poor again on the day-- replaced the rookie on the Wave right side. It is also worth noting that the lack of attacks down the right may be in part down to the Casey Krueger effect.

San Diego lost some of their stability in the second half as Washington pushed for an equalizer. The Spirit often felt just a split second behind on a number of their typically well-timed counter-attacks, their midfielders frequently late or early on the out-balls to Rodman. The Wave are at their best when protecting a lead, and the midfield duo of Danielle Colaprico and McCaskill dealt with Bethune surprisingly well....or, DID deal with Bethune relatively well until the youngster took a sweet chest touch off a long ball and powered home the equalizer deep into stoppage time. San Diego's performances have mostly improved over the past few weeks, but their meek offense and penchant for late concessions (as I write this, they conceded yet another late goal to Gotham on a Wednesday night) have kept them from moving up the table. They are another team that needs a talent boost in the summer, but it may be that Stoney's medieval tactics will keep any version of this Wave attack from thriving.

Quick Hits:

• Alex Morgan is still a half-decent player on her day, but those days are fewer and farther between. She doesn't offer anything beyond her hold-up play at this stage in her career. Look at this radar chart- She's just not doing anything at all.
  

• Shaw got her goal, but once again didn't really have a major impact on the game in the run of play.

• Naomi Girma played one of the best defensive matches I have ever watched. She's like if you made a create-a-player in a video game and bumped all the stats up to 99: Perfect positioning, effortlessly cool on the ball, supreme recovery pace, and good in the air for her height. Remarkable player.

• Hershfelt didn't have her best game, but her versatility and seamless fit has been massive for a Spirit team in need of supplementary midfield talent early on.

Game 3: Kansas City Current 2-2 Chicago Red Stars

As we pass the season's halfway point, the importance of depth has become more and more clear. The two teams that have it in spades --Kansas City and Gotham-- look like the two most likely shield candidates while teams that don't --Portland, North Carolina-- feel like they're a tier below.

Despite dropping another two points to inferior opposition on Saturday via yet another set piece concession, my feelings about Kansas City's shield chances remain unchanged: They have the most terrifying attack in the league, a tremendous amount of depth in their central midfield, and an iffy defense without Gabrielle Robinson that will cost them points. But, more often than not, elite offenses win in this league, and the Current are on pace to score the most goals this league has ever seen.....and, through 13 games, have already exceeded the league-winning 31 goals scored by the 2023 Wave in 22 matches with 33.

Kansas City's all-gas-no-breaks approach is likely befuddling to anybody who watched the USWNT play from 2019-2023. When they play teams lacking attacking threat like Chicago, the Current play virtually a 4-2-4. Throughout the first part of the season, the Current were missing one of Debinha and Bia Zaneratto, which naturally balanced out KC's eleven while still allowing Andonovski to field all of his dangerous attacking weapons. With a fully healthy roster for one of the first times, Vlatko played FIVE attackers and no true six, with only Lo Labonta holding down the central midfield. To compensate for the six-high lineup, RB Hailie Mace held back to form what played as almost a back three, with Michelle Cooper and LB Izzy Rodriguez playing as pseudo wingbacks.

Unsurprisingly, KC's line of confrontation was high throughout, completely disregarding Chicago's attacking options on the left side. On the right side, Mace and Cooper were a little more cautious than their left sided counterparts, understandably so given the threat Mallory Swanson carries. The attack felt a little unbalanced at times, Dibernardo and Debinha playing high on the shoulders of Bia and Chawinga, closing down the space that the two forwards typically thrive in. This was, in part, a function of how deep the Red Stars sit: It's hard to draw out a back line that has no interest in being drawn out and is perfectly happy to sit in.

The Red Stars actually did a reasonable job of limiting major opportunities for the Current, but were broken far too easily on the two Current goals early in the second half. Fundamentally, however, the Red Stars just don't have enough juice. They are, understandably given the last few years, completely deficient in both the midfield and attack outside of Swanson. They have some nice pieces in second year forward Penelope Hocking and rookie midfielder Leilani Nesbeth, but Swanson is carrying a near impossible attacking load. And that's fine! Coach Lorne Donaldson and the Red Stars FO have started the rebuild from the back; a smart plan that has seen the Red Stars acquire core pieces in Natalia Kuikka, Sam Staab, and Maxi Rall. Next on their list needs to be a few high end central midfielders, one to sit in front of the back line and one to provide some service to Swanson, who far too often can be seen with hands up in frustration after making a run forward.

Donaldson has done an admirable job with the resources he has, setting up his team in a compact 4-4-2 where his wide players tuck in defensively to constrict opposing midfielders. Even those who had faith in Donaldson --a group which includes myself-- wouldn't have seen Chicago as a playoff team in 2024. Their late leveler from Staab off a corner is emblematic of how they've played throughout the season: Hang on, fight like hell, and then take your chances when you get them. For Kansas City, it was yet another concession (Their 5th of the season) from a set piece. In a tight shield race, I imagine they'll be kicking themselves.

Quick Hits:

• Selfishly: GET MAL SOME HELPPP

• The Spirit failing to retain Stabb was a strange move. Kudos to Chicago for convincing the CB of their project.

• Hocking is a fun player! She's a smart mover and a good sidekick for Swanson.

• I understand giving teen midfielder Claire Hutton a rest, but she's been arguably KC's best midfielder. KC had no issues with control in this game, but were unbalanced at times. It's remarkable how important Hutton has become to a team leading the shield race. She's legitimately just really, REALLY good!
  

Player of the week: Naomi Girma, San Diego Wave

Goal of the Week: Bethune's leveler at 6:58 of the highlight video below.