2022 MLS Season Previews: Atlanta United FC, Houston Dynamo FC, Minnesota United FC
/We’ll be publishing three team previews every weekday until the MLS season opens on Saturday, February 26, 2022. You can find all of them here!
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Atlanta United FC: Ozzie-Almadias
Atlanta United and Money
Because kicking a ball while running is really hard, soccer is super random. We tend to think of these global giants just dominating the rest of the field – the Bayerns and the Madrids. But basically, this only happens because some teams in Europe spend somewhere between 5-20x more on player wages than all the others (that is to say, they build teams that are possibly multiples or orders of magnitude stronger than everyone else). While the reporting on this isn’t completely transparent, it’s somewhere in the ballpark of... the top four teams in the Premier League paying 50% of the total player wages in the league.
We don’t see this as much in MLS because there are rules (and are there!). A sizable portion of the overall league spend on player wages is centrally funded and shared evenly amongst all the teams. Accordingly, since 2013, the publicly released MLSPA wage documents paint a different picture about parity and player investment than you see on the world stage. Sometimes the Cup is lifted by more budget-conscious clubs, and sometimes it’s won by the “big spenders,” but on average the MLS Cup champions spend 30% more than the other clubs, not 500% more.
According to the latest MLSPA release, Atlanta United ended 2021 paying a higher total wage bill than anyone else in MLS and 50% more than the average team.
They did not win MLS Cup.
Atlanta United and Soccer
Atlanta came into last season under a ton of pressure to improve upon what were some historically poor underlying performances in a 2020 season which had seen them lose their star forward on opening day, then fire their big name manager in July, then stay really, really bad for the rest of that season.
It must have been agonizing then behind the scenes as 2021 unfolded in the same way, despite the club spending big money on the roster. Somehow they played even worse(?) than the season before, and then fired their big name manager(!)… in July(!)… again(!). While this preview is about expectations for 2022, expectations are hard to untangle from the past. The chart below spans the entire history of this young MLS franchise. That little yellow nose dive on the recent end of the timeline is Gabriel Heinze’s brief time at the club.
But to rewind to last offseason, I was pretty confident when I wrote the 2021 Atlanta preview for ASA that they weren’t going to contend for the Cup, and I probably wasn’t alone in this. I don’t think anyone expected Atlanta to burn through another high-profile coach in a matter of months, but the roster just wasn’t really good enough either for anyone to expect them to compete at the top of the league (a league that is admittedly pretty random). It turns out that there are better ways to try to measure what a team is capable of in MLS than the wages it spends on its players. As a back of the napkin analysis last year, I introduced “The Five Guys” method, whereby I took a look at the top five returning players on each cup- and shield-winning team back to 2015 based on their g+ scores not from that trophy-lifting season itself but from the trailing two seasons before the success. It turned out that since 2015, these trophy-lifting teams fit a certain profile in terms of how their top 5 returning players had recently ranked in the league based on their g+ outputs. Heading into 2021, Atlanta’s top 5 returning players were miles and miles off this pace, even if you penciled Josef Martinez in for a normal Josef year instead of one where he was clearly coming back from multiple knee surgeries, an experience so traumatic he had allegedly considered hanging up his boots for good.
As 2021 kicked off, what such an abysmal early season performance looked like under Heinze was that in a league of 27 teams, only two created fewer chances (xG), and only five put together a worse xGD over those first 13 games. Moreover, a key characteristic that had defined the club’s past successes was notably missing: the high press. According to Second Spectrum, during Heinze’s time in Atlanta, the club was dead last in individual pressures in the opponent’s half of the field and second to last in team presses. All that grueling fitness work Heinze was supposedly putting the players through – the official complaints levied by the players union to the league office — all of that hair-on-fire Bielsan man-marking… it just failed, and failed embarrassingly.
When Heinze was fired (it was not mutual this time), interim coach Rob Valentino stepped in immediately and successfully righted the ship, and right as Ted Lasso was at peak popularity, Valentino appeared to focus on a certain brand of man-management that was reportedly missing under Heinze. Under Valentino, the team also returned to a back three – something of an Atlanta-United-in-crisis-midseason-tradition, and for seven halcyon matches, Valentino’s philosophy seemed mostly to be about getting all of the best players on the field at the same time, asking them to run really hard and press opponents, positions and tactics be damned. It worked mostly. These matches were fun to watch, full of transition chances both for and against, and with players appearing to give their absolute all for their very young interim coach. They averaged 1.6 PPG and ranked in the top 10 in pressures in their opponents’ half.
In a dramatic close to the end of the MLS summer transfer window, Atlanta United signed their third DP Luiz Araujo from LOSC Lille, a 25-year old Brazilian wide attacker who would be Atlanta’s highest paid player play like a top five winger in the league for the rest of the year.
Soon after, Arthur Blank literally chartered a yacht out to the Pacific Northwest to pry Seattle assistant Gonzalo Pineda away from the Sounders to be his next head coach. Pineda arrived in Atlanta with positive vibes swirling. The team was rolling again, he said the right things, he could recite the xG during the post-game pressers, and he talked about “game models” and “space and time.” Under his watch, a reinforced Atlanta United’s results improved further to finish the season, partly due to a back-loaded home schedule full of weaker opponents. Some of the stylistic characteristics between these three 2021 Atlanta United coaches are interesting and on display in the images below:
In the end, despite a surging xGD trend-line to recover the season after Gabriel Heinze’s dismissal, Atlanta finished the season having only beaten one playoff team all year. They qualified for the postseason but in the first round, they were pretty much bodied as expected by eventual champions NYCFC in the Bronx.
Atlanta United in 2022
Will the new guy work out?
Perhaps the team’s most important player in 2021 Esequiel Barco has been loaned to River Plate, and replaced by promising Argentinian starlet Thiago Almada for the upcoming season. For the sake of my word count, I’ll direct you to another piece I wrote in the last couple weeks – an amateur scouting notebook on Thiago Almada, and what Atlanta United might expect from him in 2022. You can read that here, but TLDR: if he’s going to be a big contributor, I think it will be in transition.
Will Gonzalo Pineda convince Atlanta United’s front four to get in the f****** box?
For some time now Atlanta United’s attack has been full of players who like to be on the ball early, relishing the privilege of getting to decide where it goes next (and the privilege that if the ball’s turned over it’s now in front of them vs behind). They like that a lot more than they like to run in behind to get on the end of an attacking sequence. For several offseasons running, Atlanta United has collected players who were decorated with elite dribbling/take-on numbers, but not since Tito Villalba and Julian Gressel have they fielded attacking players who were committed to consistently arriving off the ball in the box with the hope of receiving to shoot. Theory question: Is a manager simply stuck with the players as they are, and that’s just kinda that, or can he effect change and change the front four’s overall mindset? I don’t know.
Further, Josef Martinez needs to start running into the box again. According to 2S, the Revs’ Adam Buksa led MLS in runs into the box per game at 13.5. The remainder of the top 10 runs-into-the-box leaders average something like 8.5 per game. Rounding out the top 25, the next 15 players average seven runs into the box per game, and then the next 50 players after that average 5.2. And then there’s Josef Martinez at #76, averaging 4.3 runs into the box per game. Surely, the second year back from knee surgery will be better than the first.
Will Gonzalo Pineda’s team press high (and effectively)?
I mentioned those dreadful Heinze early season pressing numbers, which were nearly rectified in the brief Rob Valentino period, but what of Gonzalo Pineda and his plans to use pressure to disorganize the opponent from here on out? According to 2S, Seattle put up mostly average opponent half team pressure numbers (18th out of 27th) until Pineda left for Atlanta, at which point they dropped to second to last in MLS. But Atlanta’s press also weakened when they made the switch from Valentino to Pineda (relative to the rest of the league), so it remains to be seen whether Atlanta United will bring any sort of concerted high press to MLS in 2022. Pineda will almost definitely improve Atlanta’s transition game year over year, but whether he does so with proactive defending or defensive restraint will be something to watch, and really important should the team start slowly.
Will new signing Ozzie Alonso help Atlanta United’s very, very poor middle third passing?
Given the very segmented 2021 season for Atlanta, it’s troublesome to paint it with a broad brush, but in general it has to be said that Atlanta just struggled to pass the ball through midfield. They were a team (made up of individuals) much more focused on dribbling through opponents.
While it’s helpful to dribble through teams, it’s not enough. You have to be able to pass, and when you look through Atlanta United’s returning central midfielders, the very veteran Ozzie Alonso feels like Atlanta’s best hope.
Since I haven’t followed Alonso’s career closely (just know he was one of the most lauded central midfielders in the league years ago), I pulled up his g+ by component back to 2013. While his passing contribution (black line) has trended lower on a per 96 minute basis as of late, it’s still noticeably higher than the average defensive midfielder baseline, and it’s something to watch. We can’t expect 3,000 minutes from him this season (it’s been a few years since he logged a full campaign), but it feels fair to expect a boost in what Atlanta can do passing the ball when he’s on the field.
What about the “Five Guys” though?
In closing, if we accept that the 2021 team returned the sort of roster that was never going to compete at the top of MLS in 2021, what then of the returning players for 2022? Curiously, there is hope:
Nobody show Josef Martinez this list, or this g+ wheel…
Actually, do show him.
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Houston Dynamo FC: Orange you glad we sold the team?
By Zach Beery
Dynamo fans were very optimistic about the future of the team after the hiring of USYNT manager Tab Ramos in the 2019 offseason. After two last-place finishes in the Western conference, Dynamo fans are ready to get hurt again.
Ted Segal purchased the team in the summer of 2021 and made some major changes by bringing in club legend, Pat Onstad, as GM and Paulo Nagamura as the 5th head coach in club history.
2021 in Review
The Dynamo started the season with three wins in their first seven games. However, the results significantly dropped off during the summer. The Dynamo then went on a 16-game winless streak. Results slightly picked up once Tab reintroduced the Dynamo’s best player, Darwin Quintero, into the starting lineup.
Along with the 16-game winless streak, the Dynamo had another impressive feat – the Dynamo were the only team to go winless on the road. Under Tab Ramos, the Dynamo won one game out of 30 on the road. On a more positive note, the Dynamo offseason signing of Fafa Picault impressed fans with 11 goals and four assists – leading the team in both categories.
Offseason Roster Changes
With a new owner and GM in place, there were high expectations for the offseason. The most noteworthy move was signing striker Sebastian Ferriera from Paraguay for a club-record fee. Sebas will replace the outgoing journeyman Maxi Urruti. With Maxi Urruti up top, the Dynamo struggled to score– 1.17 xG per game (21st in the league). The Dynamo also brought veteran keeper Steve Clark from the Portland Timbers. Clark should be a huge upgrade compared to the Dynamo’s error-prone keepers from last season.
David Steres from the Galaxy was brought in for additional CB depth. The Dynamo also brought in free agent Brazilian RB/LB Zeca, who should be expected to start as soon as possible.
There are still a lot of familiar faces on the team from last season. Dynamo fans were expecting more of an overhaul after two last place finishes in the Western Conference, but I think it will take another couple of offseasons before we can judge the new front office. There are rumors of additional possible signings, but Dynamo fans may have to wait until the summer to see how the rumors play out.
One Big Question: Can Paulo implement an effective offensive identity?
Tab’s theoretical strategy for the 2021 season was to press high and score on the break. Hence the singings of Fafa Picault and Maxi Urruti, who are known as high-energy pressing attackers. In practice, it did not work out as well. According to fbref, the Dynamo averaged 137 pressures per game, ranking last in the league and, using data from ASA, the Dynamo averaged 5.2% of their shots on the fast break – 3rd in the league. While the Dynamo were effective in creating fast break shots, the Dynamo only averaged .14 xG per fast break shot – the worst in the league. For comparison purposes, the average xG per fast break shot was 0.21 during the 2021 season. The inability to create consistent high-quality opportunities was the downfall of the Tab era.
The field on the left shows the types of passes the Dynamo completed at a higher frequency than the rest of the league. The field on the rights shows the types of passes completed at a lower frequency than the rest of the league. We can see that there is only one type of pass on the two charts, demonstrating that Tab was unable or unwilling to implement consistent passing patterns besides building up through the left wing.
Throughout preseason, Paulo Nagamura has pretty much hit all the new-coach cliché boxes: we want to have the ball; we will be an attacking team; we aren’t going to sit back and defend, etc. If Paulo is able to implement a possession-oriented attack, it would be an impressive accomplishment considering the Dynamo were second to last in % possession (45.1%) and third to last in total xG (39 xG) for the 2021 season.
The lack of roster turnover, specifically in the midfield, is a concern if Paulo is trying to drastically change the play-style of the team. I believe Coco Carrasquilla and Darwin Quintero could have the ability to be able to balance maintaining possession without being stagnant. However, I would worry that a midfield with both Coco and Darwin could get burned in transition if the Dynamo’s high press fails.
2022 Prognosis
The mistakes and lack of pragmatism of the prior regime has left the Dynamo in a deep hole. To turn the current roster around and bring in higher quality players, I think it will take a couple transfer periods for the Dynamo to become a probable playoff team. The Dynamo have made enough steps this offseason — a proven GK and big money Striker (for the Dynamo) — that I think they will be realistically competing for a playoff spot for a decent chunk of the season but will ultimately fall short for the 8th time in nine years. Anything above last in the Western Conference will be seen as a win for Houston fans.
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Minnesota United: Dark wings, dark horse?
By Paul Harvey
Minnesota ended the 2021 season with a heartbreaking playoff to the eventual Western Conference champs, marking the third season in a row they had a respectable finish in the table and a bad playoff result. For fans of the Loons, it may feel like the team is in a holding pattern, not quite ready to take a spot among the elite teams in MLS. And yet, despite the frustration and roster turnover, there are glimmers that this team might be something special.
A Promising Rebuild
The list of players that departed Minnesota United after the 2021 season was long, and notable. MLS stalwarts like Ozzie Alonso, Juan Agudelo, and Fanendo Adi were gone. Two DPs were moved on in Jan Gregus, traded to San Jose, and Thomas Chacon, whose miserable Loons career ended in a waiver. On paper it seems like significant turnover but Minnesota still returns the players who accounted for 75% of their total player appearances.
Even more than that, they return a large number of their good performances. Let’s classify a good performance as one where a player performs at a level equal-to or greater-than the 75th percentile of MLS player performances by G+. In 2021, Minnesota had 126 performances that met that mark out of 449 total. That means 28% of their total performances were good, which was third best in the league. They return players who accounted for 108 of those performances, a total loss of just 18, despite cutting the players responsible for 112 overall performances. Only Portland brings back more good performances, and with much less room to bring in new players.
If they replace those performances at a standard rate - so one out of every four being good - they should easily have the best offense by G+ in the league. The strong correlation between G+ and xG should be encouraging; this team has all the pieces to make a splash.
Wondering about the Wall
Of course, offense has not been Minnesota’s problem in the past few years. Despite top offenses in 2019 and 2021, Minnesota has been distinctly average on the defensive end. They do a reasonable job of holding teams in their own half; their opponent’s touches to attacking third touches ratio was 4.12 to one last season, good for 7th in the entire league. They did increase the overall pressing in their opponent’s third to do so, but it had a positive impact.
Once their opponents reached the final third, Minnesota struggled to put up much resistance. Their opponents only needed 111 attacking third touches to generate 1.0 xG, which put Minnesota firmly in the middle of the pack. Not a disastrous defensive effort, but one that needs improving.
With Ozzie Alonso and Gregus being moved along, the door is open for new signing Kervin Arriaga to make a statement as a defensive midfielder. The lanky Honduran is flexible, able to play either as part of the back line or in the middle of the field. He may provide the bite that has been lacking. His countryman Joseph Rosales, a mid season loan, has found some minutes as well. Hassani Dotson, a human Swiss Army Knife in terms of positioning, may continue to find minutes in that role when not filling in as a winger or fullback. Jacorio Hayes also stands out with his defensive contribution and could continue to push for minutes.
If there’s any clear weakness with Minnesota’s defense, it’s down the right flank. Romain Metanire has been one of the best attacking fullbacks in the league for years, but he is only getting older. DJ Taylor is a younger defender with an excellent defensive record, and could be called on to provide stability for the team.
Finally, the team has to make a difficult choice regarding goalkeepers. Dayne St Clair has widely been considered the future at the position after a great 2020 season, but Tyler Miller had a solid 2021 season and St Clair disappointed in key moments in the playoffs. The goalkeeper battle is probably more contested at Minnesota than at any other team in the league. Both are excellent choices and either could raise their level and make the job fully their own.
Wil Trapp Renaissance
One of the more interesting storylines of the 2021 season was Wil Trapp’s recovery from a MLS journeyman midfielder to an important piece of a great team. Once one of the better midfielders in the league, his last two seasons in Columbus and Miami were disappointments. He was viewed primarily as a depth piece when acquired as a free agent, but he quickly won the starting role from Jan Gregus and did not relinquish it.
At this point, Trapp is what he is as a player. He has his weaknesses, and can be one dimensional, but few can match his ability to impact the game through distribution. He may not ever again contend for a role on the US Men’s National Team, but he has the capability to be a valuable piece on a championship contender.
The Four Horsemen
You can tell a lot about a team from their front four, and Minnesota’s could make a case for being the best in the league. International appearances and late arrivals meant it wasn’t until the end of the season that all four could play together, but it was promising when they did. Led by El Rey, one of the most exciting players in the league, and supported by two capable wingers, the team is a threat from anywhere on the field. Reynoso seems to have put his legal issues behind him — hopefully he can put his tendency to take unwise shots behind him as well. Lod and Fragapane are consistent performers, able to pick up each other’s slack if one struggles to make a contribution.
Adrien Hunou is the one question mark. He put up a respectable 0.54 xg per 90 for Minnesota last season, but that is a step down from the 0.66 he had for Rennes in the 2020-2021 season. Can he find the connection with the rest of the attacking group? If so, he could be a Golden Boot candidate. If not, Luis Amarilla has returned to the Loons. He may not slot in as a starter right away, but Hunou and Amarilla between them will account for plenty of goals in 2021.
Eyes on the Prize
Minnesota United has all the pieces to make some noise in the 2022 season. Their biggest competition has to deal with CONCACAF Champions League fixture congestion, and they could establish a comfortable lead heading into the summer. Loons fans have every reason to be excited about the coming year.