The Myth of "Defensive-Oriented Soccer"

You may have picked up by now that I think the post-hoc labeling of former Fire head coach Denis Hamlett as being "too defensive" is grossly unfair. My hunch has been that this assessment is not borne out by the fact, so I decided to take a closer look. Bear with me, because it's also a very long look. I'm pretty sure my math is right here, but I trust you'll tell me if it's off.

First off, what is "defensive-oriented soccer," anyway? The way I figure it, you've got three key positional "zones" where this may come into play. If memory serves, the Fire have played a 4-4-2 formation with two holding/defensive midfielders ever since Peter Nowak retired. Fans all over the world hold this sort of formation as an affront to "attractive, attacking soccer" -- Dunga was almost run out of Brazil when he started using this formation for their national team -- but I don't think you can hold this one against Hamlett. In part because everyone else does it, and in part because he didn't really have many other options. I don't think any coach in MLS would start Blanco in that second central midfield slot, and Peter Lowry or Baggio Husidic were still adjusting throughout the season. And if you want to bench Logan Pause because you think he's too defensive, then congratulations, you don't know anything about soccer.

So, with two defensive midfielders, that leaves a "front four" of attacking players, and here, again, I don't think there's any evidence that Hamlett was overly conservative in his choices. I've seen the charge leveled that Blanco and McBride shouldn't have played as much as they did given their age, but that is complete and utter bullshit. These are World Cup veterans who can change a game at any time. They are marquee players, and yes, Blanco gets petulant if he's not playing as much as he would like. That was the deal when the team signed him.

As for the wings, playing a natural forward (Rolfe) as a midfielder hardly seems a defensive choice. I really think Hamlett did as well as he could given the circumstances here. With the exception of playing Rolfe up top and Nyarko on the wing in matches when either Blanco or McBride was unavailable, I really don't think Denis could have dealt with the peculiar constraints of his lineup much differently.

As an aside, I think that the Fire will end up benefiting from some addition through subtraction this year with that front four. Replacing Blanco with someone who might actually shoot the ball when he has it in or near the penalty area instead of trying to do something cute should help on the goal-scoring front, and having a natural wing midfielder in that position will probably help as well. That one of those guys might have English Premiership pedigree is the icing on the cake.

This leaves just the backline, and while that's perhaps a counterintuitive place to look for your attacking soccer, I think this is, in fact, where the most important story of last season lies. If you've (arguably) got quality forwards, and attacking options on the midfield flanks, one variable that can push you from a defensive to an attacking posture is the ability for your fullbacks to get forward and join into the attack. If you remember back to the beginning of the season, both Tim Ward and Gonzalo Segares were very good at this.

Neither Tim Ward nor Gonzalo Segares played a match for the Fire after the SuperLiga Final in early August.

Instinctively, this feels right. And when Daniel Woolard went down with an injury, the ranks got even thinner. So, from a coaching perspective, I don't think it's any sort of indictment to batten down the hatches when you don't even have your second choices available. Brandon Prideaux simply isn't going to be an attacking threat, especially given his late start due to his own injury.

That said, I don't want to just lay this down to instinct, so I compared the Fire's performance with all combinations of Ward and Segares to see if this theory was borne out in the numbers. In matches where both of these defenders played significant minutes, across all competitions except for the SuperLiga match against New England (because I can't find that lineup), Chicago notched 5 wins, 2 losses and 4 draws, taking 58% of the points available. They scored 1.45 goals per match and conceded just one. In games where neither played, the team's record was 4-8-4 (33% of available points) with 1.06 goals for and 1.19 goals against per game.

Now, focusing on the two outside backs ignores what's going on right in front of the Fire goal, so I threw Wilman Conde and Bakary Soumare into the mix. Here's where it gets really interesting. In games featuring both Conde and Baky, the Fire went 8-0-4, scoring 1.73 goals and conceding only 0.83 per game. Among other things, I think this also negates the argument that the Fire relied on the long ball too much, as these were the guys hoofing it all the way upfield with the greatest frequency.

That really interesting part is what happens when you look at games that had either Soumare OR Conde, but not both. In those games, the Fire went 2-10-7, scoring just 0.83 goals per game and allowing 1.37. Compare that to game where neither of them played, which garnered a 4-3-1 record (1.13/0.75 GF/GA). These guys needed each other, and this speaks to defensive cohesion as being a big key to the team's success.

Extending this notion to the entire backline, the Fire posted a 5-0-3 record in matches where Hamlett was able to use his first choice defensive lineup of Segares, Conde, Soumare and Ward. And this is where I think the criticism becomes unfounded. Last year's Fire team played its highest-scoring, most dominant soccer when they were playing their best defensive soccer.

I will concede that losing Bakary Soumare hurt, but the majority of the losses in the back were hardly Hamlett's fault. Rebuilding your entire backline is going to be a challenge under any circumstances, and as I said before, focusing on defending first given the players you have to choose from doesn't strike me as such a wrong-headed decision. And we saw Hamlett adjust towards the end of the season by converting Mike Banner to a fullback, which allowed for another attacking option once he got settled in. Maybe Hamlett could have done more to get C.J. Brown and Conde on the same page in the middle of the season, but past that, I don't know what else he might have done with the players he had. Plus, the team fell just one match short of MLS Cup despite having had to rebuild that entire backline, which is something I don't think Denis gets nearly enough credit for.

What does this mean for Carlos de los Cobos' squad this season? Aside from the offensive tangent earlier, it means that the central defensive pairing needs to gel in pre-season training in order to get out of the gate strongly. Add a healthy Tim Ward and the potential of Krzysztof Krol on the left side, and hopefully the Fire can re-establish that brand of defensive soccer that proved so effective last year under Denis Hamlett.