2022 MLS Season Previews: San Jose Earthquakes, Seattle Sounders FC, Vancouver Whitecaps FC

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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!

San Jose Earthquakes: One guš, two guš, red guš, Greguš

By Sean Steffen

It’s been an interesting off-season for the Quakes. Perhaps the biggest change to the team comes at the very top, with Chris Leitch taking the helm as General Manager, but some other big changes have been in the pipeline as well. Edicts have been sent from on high to retool the team around data and actual staff has been hired to facilitate this. These are good things, and Quakes fans should probably be excited about them.

Of course, optimism isn’t new for Quake fans. They’ve been fed a lot of it over the years.

When Matias Almeyda started his MLS coaching career with a 2-1 loss to Montreal, he expounded that he took away “a lot of positives from this game,” and would go on to predict “during the course of the year, we will probably win more often than not.” The Quakes would go on to a 13W-16L-5T record, finishing 15th in the league and missing the playoffs.

Here’s another example from 2021 when, in the early season, Matt Doyle declared that the Quakes are not only fun, but predicts they might actually be good.

The Quakes would go on to finish the season with a 10W-13L-11D record, finishing 21st overall in the league.

As I have stated, there are legitimate reasons to be excited for the long-term prospects of a data-driven team in the heart of Silicon Valley. That said, these are LONG term. In the short term, the Quakes have quite the mountain to overcome.

Offense

When looking at a team, a good place to start is how they move the ball and where they like to keep it. In 2021, the Quakes were 6th in the league in possession, but, spent very little time in the attacking third.

This is not a bad thing, in itself, but it leads to the next crucial point of evaluation. Chance creation.

San Jose ranked 26th in the league in non-cross passes into the box and 26th in expected assists. It is no coincidence that these ranks are grouped. How you try to create goals is directly correlated with the quality of chances you get.

For more evidence of this, let’s look at receiving g+ in the important chance creation zones 22-24 and 27-29 in the hand-dandy ASA app - in those zones San Jose’s receiving g+ is 24th in the league.

Again, SJ fall in the mid-twenties, and, again, it’s no coincidence that all these ranks are aligning. SJ is inefficient in build-up, and, once in the final third, they aren’t getting good additive value in positions that matter. In WGCF terms, this means fewer progressives, cut-backs and through balls from good areas into better ones. When you layer in the previously stated fact that the Earthquakes don’t spend a lot of time in the final third to begin with, you have yourself a problem – a team that is rarely in positions to create, and, when they are, go about it in an inefficient manner. 

Considering their chance-creation woes, it was in SJ’s best interest to go out into the market and snag themselves a 10. Instead of going the popular route of bringing in a guy from Europe or South America, SJ has seemingly addressed the issue in-league, with Jamiro Monteiro.

Whether this was for budgetary reasons or not is unclear, but the game of taking players that aren’t working at other clubs and turning them into projects at yours, while intriguing, is inherently risky. When we look at his wheels over the years, it’s fair to ask which Monteiro the Quakes are going to get. This is not the most reassuring question for Quakes fans, given that this is a signing that the Quakes probably need to hit on to make the playoffs.

Again, with a data team on board, perhaps SJ spotted something in the data that suggests they are getting a real diamond in the rough, and, if that’s the case, hats off to them on their early success. But, again, anything exciting about the future of the Quakes must be weighed against their history, and by that standard, it is entirely possible that this is yet another traditionally scouted signing from a team that has failed so many times on the scouting front.

Defense

The Quakes leaked goals last year. The following graphic breaks down how SJ was getting and conceding xG by the 12 goal types described in the Where Goals Come From series, published here on ASA’s site.

While we once again see evidence of SJ’s struggles to create goals for themselves via the pass, let’s focus on those defensive numbers. The running narrative around the Quakes’s unique man-marking system is that it struggles with individual play and quick passing, and when you look at the xG opponents accumulated via individual play and progressive passes, the data seems to give credence to it. 

While a breakdown in the viability of man-marking as a strategy is far beyond the scope of this preview, at the very least, the numbers suggest SJ were not successful at it last year, so it will be interesting to see if Almeyda goes to that well once more, and if he does, what, if any, tweaks are made to it to slow down the torrent.

Conclusions

At the end of the day, the benchmark for this team is making the playoffs, and given the roster, it’s not an impossible ask, but it will rely on the answers to a lot of questions. Which Monteiro will they get? Will the data-oriented approach seep into Almeyda’s game model year one? Do they continue to run a man-marking system, and if they do, can they do so successfully?

If I had to guess, and that’s generally where people get in trouble in previews, I would say that this isn’t SJ’s year. There are simply too many question marks and the transformation required is massive. That said, if SJ is serious about this data pivot, the future of the Quakes is bright. 

I know. You’ve heard that before.

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Seattle Sounders FC: Nouhou. Who dis?

By Ian L.

Opening/Thesis/Last Season Remarks

Soccer is a damnedable, maddening thing. It giveth and taketh away with equal volatility. Yes, some teams wind up on the receiving end of the blessings or curses more consistently than others. After all, we can certainly please or enrage the mercurial gods of bounce with our preparations or lack thereof. But any given team can beat any given team on any given Tuesday night at 11:30 PM Eastern time. And so it goes. The Seattle Sounders, the very model of a team who has gluttonously received the favors of sport through sheer competence can be ousted from the playoffs by a team who managed not one single shot. Maddening sport, isn’t it? And yet, we’d be remiss if we didn’t recall that Seattle’s first championship trophy came in similar circumstances on a frigid night in Canada. A damnedable, maddening sport indeed.

To look back at Seattle’s 2021 campaign is to find that quasi-Dickensian paradox. It was the best of times, it was the meh-st of times. Or perhaps a more apt allusion would be to Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, except , it’s more like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but instead of Mr. Hyde, it’s still Dr. Jekyll but he’s just kind of tired and maybe just got back from some international games and has to go through COVID protocol. That’s all a lot of words to say that the highs were high, the lows were low, and the mediums were just far too frequent to live up to the billing of heightened expectations.

Seattle made a bit of a mockery of their signature slow start by starting out looking nigh-unbeatable for the first 10 games or so. It was frankly, the most inspiring 10 game run I’ve ever seen from the team, and visions of Supporters Shields danced in my head. The rush of power was only magnified by the qualifiers. Hey bro (nudge), and we don’t even have Lodeiro and Morris — can you even imagine?

As it turns out, imagine was all you were going to do. Lodeiro’s mysterious ailment just never really got around to being dealt with. Morris did actually come back sooner than expected, but it was not the Morris that we saw ripping through Major League Soccer defenses with abandon, and it would have been completely unreasonable to expect him to be. Stefan Frei missed a chunk of time, although back-up Stefan, Stefan Cleveland deputized admirably. Ruidiaz stopped being around as much as you would have liked at exactly the time of year you really need him to not do that, and well, if you follow the Seattle Sounders you know how this part of the story goes. The Supporters Shield was not to be. It seems that every year, there’s some team that just comes out of almost nowhere and goes off, and New England were always out of reach for  a Seattle side that ultimately wound up finishing below the Colorado Rapids. It was just that kind of year. 

Anyway, this is a statistics webpage so here are some statistics.

Seattle Sounders’ Home Form

So…yeah. This was a real problem for Seattle last season. In a table where you want most of these numbers to be as high as possible, Seattle has lots of them that were the lowest they’ve had since 2016 (and I’ve added 2020 just because somebody would complain if I didn’t, but I don’t consider anything that happened that season to be statistically canon.)  I wouldn’t say that Seattle “struggled” at home. 1.71 ppgs is reasonably decent I guess, but you would expect them to do better with their vaunted atmosphere, and their unvaunted? I guess? Playing surface. While it wouldn’t be accurate to say that they did “better” on the road, what they did do was better than any other MLS team on the road. So, you know, weird sport bro.

I’m reasonably confident without doing any actual calculations that if Seattle had managed to have the best home record in the league AND also the best away record in the league that there is a very high probability they would have finished with the highest overall record in the league, but sadly there is no way to figure this out for sure on our budget here at ASA. 

Anyway — they didn’t, and that just gives us a very clear objective for improvement in the coming season. Be as relatively good at home as you were relatively good on the road and stay as good relatively speaking on the road as you were in 2021 and you’ve got that Supporters Shield you’ve been looking for. So. 

Offseason Changes

Brad Smith is now one-million dollars in GAM

Brad Smith was an occasionally great, far more regularly not great player that nobody in their right mind would have predicted would have commanded 1 million dollars in GAM, but you know NFTs and all that, the market, the economy etc. Good work by Seattle to flip him for 750k and his international spot for another 250k.

Shane O’Neill is now Toronto’s deal

Shane O’Neill was a decent, but not extraordinary, center-back who you love to have as your third choice CB and love a lot less to have as one of your starters. Anyway, Toronto needs a ton of defensive help so this move makes sense for them.

Nouhou became world-famous

Nouhou bested Twitter’s favorite soccer player, Mo Salah, in a game of 1-on-1, and so now Nouhou is probably worth 20 million dollars on the international market, so that should be interesting, but also makes selling Brad Smith for 750k a little bit awkward since Seattle’s left-back depth chart should Nouhou be sold would look like:

Jimmy Medranda
Kelyn Rowe

And while there are a great many reasons to celebrate Jimmy Medranda, durability isn’t one of them, and while Kelyn Rowe’s flexibility to play reasonably well just about anywhere is scandalously undervalued by a disappointingly vocal portion of Seattle’s fanbase, you don’t want your third choice left back starting important games.

So if Nouhou goes?  Who be the new Nouhou? Who knew that Nouhou would be a player who was on the new who’s who? Nobody knew, that’s who! Now who knows who could do what Nouhou do? No clue. Do you?
Or to summarize: Nouhou's adieu, a big who knew. Seattle’s to-do: Who's the new Nouhou? 

It’s weird that The Athletic hasn’t hired me yet right?
Anyway, Seattle might need another left back at some point this season.

Albert Rusnak is a Sounder

There was a lot of offseason hype for this deal which featured its own hashtag #rusnakwatch and ended with the man signing on as revenge for RSL’s no shot playoff win (maybe, probably not, but it’s a narrative). Now this was billed as a triumph by the club, and understandably so as not much else was going to happen in the way of new signings this offseason. However the question remains: Is Rusnak any good? RSL fans say yes. Seattle fans say yes. Analysts say yes. The numbers say yes.

The numbers also say that you probably shouldn’t play Rusnak out wide. Which is fine, because reportedly one of the conditions for his move to Seattle was that he would mainly be played centrally. But also maybe not, because the guy who moved him out wide, is now an assistant coach for Seattle. Also, there’s the whole thing where, at least nominally, Lodeiro plays centrally. Really, the efficacy of this signing is going to mainly be judged on what Lodeiro’s role/health status is going forward. If Lodeiro is missing a lot of game time this year, you could do a whole lot worse than having Rusnak available to fill in as a #10. If Lodeiro is healthy, then he’s out on the wing. If he can be productive out there, it’s a really good signing. If Rusnak and Lodeiro are both fighting for #10 minutes because neither one winds up being very good out wide, then it probably wasn’t a good signing. 

My prediction: Lodeiro has done the wide-creator thing in the past, and his position tends to be less “Center Attacking Midfielder” and more “Wherever the hell Lodeiro thinks is the best place for Lodeiro to be currently.” If you don’t want to play him out wide, you can push Roldan back out on the wing, where he was excellent last season, and drop Lodeiro centrally next to Paulo. I’d be a little concerned about the wear-and-tear that kind of role entails, but you can’t deny Lodeiro probably still has the work-rate for it.

So how are they going to line up? 

This is just my best guess. I think last year’s 3-5-2 that was so effective at the beginning of the season was a product of necessity. I think adding Rusnak, having Morris back, the emergence of Leo Chu, all point to using wide attackers again this season. As always, injuries, call-ups, covid, fixture congestion etc, mean that you’re probably going to see the 3-5-2 again at some point this season, and it’s nice that Seattle have that tactic well drilled and in the locker should it be required at some point.

[Author’s Note: Schmetzer has two goals in life: To win championships and make me type wrong words on the internet where everybody can see them. As such, their first CCL lineup kind of went against that whole cool paragraph I wrote where I talked about it would probably work to have Lodeiro out wide, and he put Rusnak out there despite my very solid proof and advice that he not do that. Results were…I think mixed and the jury is probably still out on a final formation, but just so we’re clear, swap Loderio and Rusnak in that lineup and you’ve got what he went with in the first competitive match of the season.]

I’ve got to do some analytics now so here we go: No matter what shape you put those guys in, that team absolutely slaps. It’s bae. It slays. It’s lit. It owns. It rules. It’s boss. It’s the bee’s knees and the cat’s pajamas. Point out the worst player in that lineup and you’ll have picked a guy that 90% of other MLS teams would love to have on their roster. That’s analytics for you.

But... but... what about “depth” you whimper whilst breathing through your mouth. You fool. Gaze upon a bench containing Will Bruin, Fredy Montero, Leo Chu, Kelyn Rowe, Jimmy Medranda,  Josh Atencio, Danny Levya, Stefan Cleveland, a lot of exciting youth and despair.

You sound pretty confident, so I’m guessing you’re predicting Seattle to win the league?

What? No. That’s not how Major League Soccer works. Seattle will be just out of the Supporters Shield race while we all watch in confusion as, I don’t know, let’s go with Chicago suddenly becoming the greatest team in MLS history. Then, it feels like it’s been a long time since Seattle went to the MLS Cup final (one whole year), so let’s go ahead and pencil them in for that at least. I think it’s also their turn to win the final too, so I think that’s more or less what we’re looking at for the coming season. As usual, anything less is a failure.

Can they win CCL?

Probably not, but if Seattle can get through the first bit of CCL without  kneecapping their season with severe injuries, it’s kind of a win for them in the end. I mean they could. I think they have a good enough team to do it with the right breaks and stuff, but they probably won’t. I don’t say this because I doubt the team or anything, it’s just really hard to win CCL and a vast majority of teams almost always don’t win CCL and so it’s a pretty safe prediction that they won’t. But they could, I guess. They for sure could.

But they probably won’t. 

They could though. Maybe. 

They might.

But probably not, no.

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Vancouver Whitecaps FC: I repeat, is this the year they’re finally good?

By Kieran Doyle

“Tonight we're going to get so drunk, we wouldn't be able to play tomorrow!”

That is the quote Vanni Sartini said after Vancouver clinched a playoff berth for the first time since 2017. It was the first time they had a non-negative goal difference since 2017 as well (hey, 0 counts). I asked at the end of the preseason preview last year, “is this the year the ‘Caps are finally good?” The answer was a resounding kind of? The faster we move past the Marc Dos Santos era the better, but this team is on a real upward trajectory and I think my expectation to the question this time might be a yes.

Here are three things to keep an eye on for the 2022 season out of Vancouver.

When depth isn’t really depth

The Whitecaps have a lot of dudes. Twenty-four players played four 90s or more last year. Twenty-two played seven or more. They rocked up to training camp with six viable center backs and 10 center midfielders. TEN. I’m going to list them: Giovanni Aguilar, Caio Alexandre, Michael Baldisimo, Janio Bikel, Luis Felipe Fernandez-Salvador, Ryan Gauld, Kamron Habibullah, Leonard Owusu, Russell Teibert, Pedro Vite. They then added Seb Berhalter on the nothing-est of nothing trades. The drafted guys and Habibullah will almost certainly spend the season with Whitecaps 2, and Bikel has already left on loan. That leaves seven center midfielders for ~2.5 spots depending on whatever the third guy is asked to do that day. There isn’t really room to add someone without moving someone else first. 

Of the six real first-teamer center backs (Facchineri is a Whitecaps 2 guy), all are top 3-4 CB’s for most teams in the league. Blackmon might flex out to RWB every now and then but there’s a lot of buzz around Matteo Campagna, who looked unbelievably mature for a 17- year-old playing in the Canadian Premier League. The biggest problem is that a lot of these players are very same-samey. From August 27th on (we will now refer to this as VSE, Vanni Sartini Era), Godoy, Jungwirth, and Veselinovic all come in between 0.19 and 0.23 g+ generated per 96 minutes. Similarly, Teibert, Owusu, and Bikel all come in between 0.11 and 0.07 g+ generated per 96 minutes. Between the fully stocked midfield and back line, I would keep my eyes peeled for a consolidation trade. Move some depth pieces for an upgrade at one of the spots, or to shuffle depth around.

O’ Keeper, My Keeper

Heading into preseason, the Vancouver brass faced the unfortunate need to move Player of the Year Max Crepeau due to a “very special personal issue.” First off, hope whatever that is gets solved on a personal level. Second, the ‘Caps lost the Matt Turner-best-xG-goalkeeper-of-the-year from last season, even better than actual Matt Turner! According to Statsbomb via FBRef, who have the benefit of Freeze Frames for their xG model, Crepeau was outrageous, conceding only 29G from 36.7 post shot xG. That level of production is basically impossible to replace.

Table. xG data for GKs from Statsbomb via FBRef.

Luckily, they have a fairly ready-made replacement in Thomas Hasal. Only 22, Hasal conceded 14 goals off 12.6 xG in his seven 90s, which was an improvement over his 15 goals off 11.7 xG the year prior. You don’t often get GKs this young with real minutes in MLS, so there is a lot of room for growth given he’s already playing and is broadly fine already. I would expect the ‘Caps to go out and get somebody, whether as a safety net or as a starter (may I suggest a gently used Dayne St. Clair in Minnesota?). If things get rocky in defense, I’d expect it to be the growing pains of a young goalkeeper, but with the addition of Triston Blackmon, the Caps should only improve on what was already a solid defensive unit.

Solid base means time to experiment

One of the benefits of having a pretty good-and-settled first-choice team heading into an offseason is the ability to experiment to get better and solve problems. Ryan Gauld popped about as much as any midseason arrival ever has in MLS and his connection with Brian White was *chef’s kiss.* Goals added hates White but loves Gauld, but White doesn’t really do the stuff that g+ likes. White presses and gets shots, chases lost causes into channels, and he doesn’t really beat a man or drop deep and progress the ball, but he is really good. With 0.52 xG+xA, 20 pressures, and 3.5 aerial duals won, he’s like the perfect “works for the team” guy. Tesho Akindele with a little more sauce. 

A big thing to watch is who becomes the third attacker for the Caps this year. Sartini hasn’t shown any appetite to play Cavallini and White together and mostly went with White and Dajome in 2021. However, with the departure of Bruno Gaspar from his loan, Cristian Gutierrez is now the only natural left sided wingback at the club. Vancouver do have Canadian Premier League standout Kwame Awuah on trial in preseason, but if he doesn’t stick, one option is Dajome slotting in at wingback (Sartini has suggested as much in an appearance on the AFTN Soccer Show). Sartini has shown no reticence to getting frisky with some unconventional lineups and Dajome is a strong, progressive ball carrier and an above average defensive winger both in terms of activity and execution. With Javain Brown being much more of a fullback at wingback, there are some really fun asymmetric tactical things that can happen. 

All in all, the expectations have grown a little bit for next year. Vancouver ran really hot on their xGD (GD of +6, xGD of -5) in the 14 games under Sartini, so we will see what a full season looks like and how drunk Vancouver fans can get when all is said and done.