The decisions have been made. Or occurred. Things have been decided, but in the boxing sense, I guess. I’ve never really liked #decisionday as a moniker for the craziest day in Major League Soccer. First of all, Decision Day is already a thing in another sport, and in THAT sport people are, you know, actually making decisions so it works better. Here are some alternate suggestions for what to call this most exciting day:

The Final Whistle (But For Real)
The Last Kick
Porter’s Lament
Table Setting Day
The Final Day of the Regular Season
Three Whistle Day

Ok, I’ve given this like five minutes of workshopping, and Decision Day is fine I guess.

We’re going to reboot this whole column a bit here in week three. All of the greatest columns get reboots in week three. Dear Abby was actually just edgy political cartoons for its first two weeks. Don’t look that up. Anyway, rather than show you the best raw top 5 goals added plays from each week, I’m going to ask the computer to show us its favorite play of the week from each of the g+ categories: Receiving, Passing, Dribbling, Interrupting, Fouling, and Shooting. This will give us a better variety of plays to look at every week, and also give us a better idea of what the computer is looking for in each of these scenarios.

Anyway, let’s boot up the soccer computer and see what it wants to show me today.

+0.50 Lassi Lappalainen - Receiving

You’re killing me computer. We just did this last week, and you’re hitting me with this one right out of the gate? The computer is starting off on a very computery read here. It’s not that the play is bad. Quite the opposite, it’s great. Montreal dragged literally half of Miami’s outfield players towards the left sideline. I’m not sure who is meant to be picking up Wanyama here, but nobody really does. He receives the ball in enough space to declare himself the sole resident of an autonomous region of Florida, and drives forward a few steps before playing a simple pass to Mihailovic.

Take a look at that freeze frame. You show this to me without me knowing what’s going to happen, and I would very likely tell you that Mihailovic’s best option is probably going to be to just tap it right back to Wanyama, make a run, and hope for the best. Instead, Mihailovic sees a tiny CAM shaped seam in the defense, and somehow manages to dance through 4 Miami defenders, using a sudden burst of acceleration to leave poor Aime Mabika grabbing at air. He plays a perfect ball across the face of goal, and finds Lassi Lappalainen who taps in from two yards away. Guess who the computer is giving all of the credit to?

Yep! It’s Lassi. You can’t even see Lappalainen for a vast majority of this play, but he’s just over there chilling, waiting for an opportunity like this to present itself. Yedlin actually does a decent job keeping himself between Lassi and the ball, but once Mihailovic breaks through, everybody focuses on that very immediate problem, and Lassi is able to ghost in behind everybody for the easy finish.

It does seem quite unfair here that Lassi gets a lion’s share of the goals added points, after Mihailovic does that incredible dribble and pass. It’s the same thing we had with that Gauld play last week. The computer puts very little value in “dribbled an entire defensive unit” and premium value on “was right there to receive the pass in a high leverage location”. While, I vehemently disagree from an aesthetic standpoint, the computer is, as ever, technically correct in its read. Nobody else is going to make that run, and if Lassi doesn’t, we’re not looking at this play for any reason ever again. It’s not fair, but neither is the mercurial definition of a “handball”, and we’ve managed to survive that for years.

+0.49 - Dribbling - Kei Kamara

Let’s stay in Florida for another one, and I don’t really even know what to say here. I see why the computer likes it, but the computer also doesn’t see that the entire Inter Miami squad has seemingly passed on being involved at any stage of this sequence.

Waterman starts the play off, by having about an hour and a half on the ball. He opts for a simple pass to Wanyama, who turns around and sees Kei Kamara surrounded by four Miami players. This play doesn’t really look like it should go anywhere, but Kamara manages to dribble through 4 Inter Miami pla-and hey this sounds familiar right? What’s actually happening here is just a complete defensive breakdown. Mabika steps off of Kamara to try and keep Mihailovic in check. Mabika is annoyed with somebody for something, which is good, because it means that this wasn’t really the plan. Lowe steps to Kamara who just casually dribbles past him and now he’s behind Miami’s entire back line, and just has to do what he’s done his whole MLS career. A solid finish, and it’s 3-0 Montreal after 35 minutes.

It’s a great dribble whether you’re looking at it with human eyes, or computer ones. Kamara receives the ball 40 yards from goal, and three seconds later he’s taking a more or less uncontested shot from the penalty spot. It was fast, it moved the ball from somewhere not so dangerous to one of the most dangerous spots on the field. I can’t argue with the computer on this one at all.

+0.45 - Interrupting - Keegan Rosenberry

Fagundez seems to have found a new lease on life in Austin. Here he picks the ball up from Driussi who dashes towards the goal in hopes of receiving a return pass, but Fagundez ain’t about that today. Fagundez dribbles toward the goal at an acute angle. It’s helpful to his cause that Gallagher comes in and lays a pretty hefty block on Sam Nicholson. It looks like a foul in real time, but I, like the computer, make no value judgments on this either way. Regardless, that opens up space for Fagundez to cut back and lash a shot at Yarborough. That ball has eyes, and it’s remarkable it makes it all the way to Yarborough, and it’s very close to creating a goal. I’m not sure what happens to Yarborough here that causes him to cough this up, but I can only assume that he saw it very late. The ball falls kindly to Urruti, who should have a fairly simple finish, but Keegan Rosenberry dives in and uh, well, it’s kind of hard to tell from the broadcast angle, but he does manage to just get enough of his foot on the ball to kill any power from the shot. It trickles slowly to Yarborough who clutches it gratefully. Crisis averted. FOR NOW.

Full credit here to Rosenberry. That’s a dangerous challenge in a last-ditch situation. The computer loves it because it stops a golden opportunity dead in its tracks, and once again I have no arguments. Rosenberry could have gotten this wrong easily, we see penalties in this situation. We see the defender accidentally kicking or deflecting the ball into their own net. It wasn’t the cleanest tackle, but it was enough, and our best interrupting play of the week.

+0.23 - Carlos Vela - Passing

Here we go. The computer and I are in lockstep agreement on something. This is the best pass of the week. Willis plays it long. Hollingshead brings it down nicely and strokes it to Blessing. Blessing has both time and space, but is smart enough to know that if you are the Los Angeles Football Club, your best play is almost always going to be “pass it to Vela”. Vela picks his head up and plays just a glorious ball to a streaking Bouanga. It’s also a really smart run from Bouanga who sees the passing lane present itself at the same time Vela does. Bouanga finds himself behind the entire defense with just Willis to beat. His first touch is maybe just a BIT too heavy though. Between that and Willis coming off his line quickly, Bouanga is forced to just sort of try and stab the ball past the onrushing keeper, but Willis somehow manages to keep it out. Just a great play all around.

As for the computer’s take, you have probably already guessed: Ball was far away from goal, now ball very close to goal. Pass good. I don’t know why I gave the computer the voice, diction, and syntax of a caveperson, but I am merely the conduit through which the muse speaks.

Great pass. Great run. Great save. A worthy addition to the goals added canon.

+0.051 - Lucas Zelarayan - Fouling

For the purposes of looking at the “Fouling” category, I’ve decided to filter out penalties, because I think these ones between the boxes are a bit more interesting, and we all already pretty clearly comprehend the value of winning a penalty. So let’s go to back to Florida again, but Orlando this time. Where in a tight match with massive postseason implications, Columbus are pressuring.

Luis Diaz receives a good pass from Nagbe, and has space to exploit on the left flank. Ruan actually does a good job defending this. He’s not jumping in for a rash challenge, he’s just looking to slow the play down enough that his team can get back and get organized. It’s a bit hard to read what Columbus is doing here. There aren’t any runs being made into the box until Cucho Hernandez kind of ambles into the area about a half second after Diaz has already mentally moved on to the next option and drops it back to Zelarayan. And, to be clear, it’s not a bad option.

Zelarayan loves to operate in these spaces, but good pressure from Facundo Torres forces him to cut the ball back and try something else. He slips the ball to Molino and starts making a good run here to be an option as Columbus try and work something in tight space. Molino fires to Cucho Hernandez, who taps it towards the arriving Zelarayan. The speed at which Columbus is moving the ball is the only thing keeping this play alive, and Orlando are having trouble reacting quickly enough to snuff this out. Zelarayn does a sort of dumbed-down version of a Ronaldo Chop, but he’s already done the mental math and decided that getting a free kick here is his best outcome. Schlegel impedes him and Zelarayan goes down and is awarded with a direct free kick in a very dangerous position. Schlegel will proclaim his innocence loudly here, and insist that Zelarayan went over too easily. He’s not wrong, but this is one of those instances where a foul did occur, but also the attacking player did go down to win it. No harm no foul. Or, I guess “No harm; foul” is more accurate here.

Ultimately, Zelarayan smacks the ensuing freekick against the wall harmlessly, but this is a good example of how to win a foul that impresses our computer.

+0.07 - Brandon Vasquez - Shooting

The actual highest g+ shot of the week was, unsurprisingly, from Lassi Lappalainen which we showcased earlier in our receiving section, so we’ll take a different one here.

By this point, I think you know what the computer is looking for in a shot. Remember, that despite it’s vastly superior ability to store and calculate complex data and algorithms, times-tables, other math stuff, rubik’s cubes probably I don’t know, it is not as good as we are at looking at a soccer play and determining the actual level of danger a single shot may or may not have. It only cares about one thing here “where they shoot from tho?’ In this case, he shoot from close, and so the computer is happy.

It’s a good build up from Cincy all the same. Powell finds Brenner, who sees a great opportunity to change the point of attack, and plays a lovely ball to Acosta. Acosta baits Skundrich off of the overlapping run, and tapes it to Barreal who has all the space he needs to play a nice low cross to Vasquez. It’s very easy to see why the computer thinks this is dangerous, but watching the play in real-time, I was surprised Vasquez even managed to hit this one off of the post.

As good as all of the build up was, the angle isn’t QUITE right to make this a simple finish, and Barreal’s cross is maybe a few degrees too spicy. With our human eyes, we can see that the DC’s center backs and GK are more or less in the right place to deal with this. We can see how much quicker the pass comes than Vasquez expected, and that his body shape suggests that he’s sort of just desperately reaching to make any touch on the ball he can. We don’t get a super good look at the chance from another angle, because Vasquez actually scores on the next possession so this doesn’t get an alternate angle replay, so I can only just posit that it was a very good effort from Vasquez to come as close to scoring as he did here. The fact that he scored on the next possession is proof that soccer is always completely fair and rewards always come to those that deserve them. Right?

Well that is all for this week’s edition. Next week, we’ll take a look at the computer’s favorite plays from the entire season. No promises or spoilers, but if you’re a betting person and can find a reputable bookmaker to take your wager on this, I’d bet pretty heavily there will be a really solid back post run or two involved!

American Soccer Analysis

Ian Watches Soccer With a Computer - Decision Day