MSU 2, Northwestern 0 (Men's Soccer analysis)
by HeckDorland on Sep 27, 2010 2:47 PM CDT
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Print[Bumped. This may be the first MSU soccer formation graphic in the history of entire internet. -KJ]
In their first big ten fixture of the year, MSU (7-1-0) faced off against Northwestern (3-4-0) within the friendly confines of East Lansing. The 15th ranked Spartans dominated nearly all facets of the game on their way to a 2-0 victory. Further analysis (now with pictures! And video!) following the jump
First off a nice little diagram that lays out the starting lineups, their typical position on the field in a 'neutral' situation, and their general movement when their team was in possession of the ball.
As you can see, like in the Marquette game, it was MSU in a 4-2-3-1 against Northwestern's 4-2-2-2.
More analysis after the jump
Spartan width; superior movement off the ball cause problems for Wildcats
As the diagram shows, with the exception of Schickel who generally maintained his position, Northwestern had a tendency to pinch their attackers(particularly Lepe Seetane on the left wing) in toward the center of the field. This meant there were many occasions where MSU would find the gaps on the edges of the field and exploit them. Spartan right back Jake Fullerton had a very nice game taking advantage of Seetane's absence in front of him, and Ricondo, playing a kind of free role in the center of the attacking third, roamed dangerously into open spaces (especially those made from Northwestern's Jack Hillgard getting caught too far forward).
In a different manner, striker Domenic Barone played as a classic holdup man in the up top, doing an excellent job of A. moving horizontally and backwards across the field to drag the Wildcat's defensive line out of shape and cause confusion and B. keeping possession of the ball and waiting for his attacking midfielders to make dangerous runs at goal before passing the ball to them.
Several times in the game, the trident of players behind Barone (or later, Rubin Bega when he moved up top) were able to maneuver themselves into dangerous positions but a series of saves by the Northwestern keeper kept them off the board.
Goalie mishap leads to 'free' goal.
With 21 minutes to go in the first half, MSU Defensive Midfielder Spencer Thompson delivered the first score of the match. Taking the corner kick from the left side of the field, Thompson fired the kick across the front of the goal to the near post. With no white jerseys in sight, the goalie jumped tried to deflect it over the top bar, but embarrassingly watched the ball burst through his hands and into the top left corner of his net instead. The scorer credited Thompson with the goal, but it seemed like a pretty clear own goal on the Northwestern goalkeeper to me.
This mishap by Wildcat goalie Drew Kotler was surprising to me, as he made several athletic saves on a handful of other Michigan State shots on goal.
MSU the better team in possession, defense
Despite looking dangerous in the midway of the game, NU had trouble holding onto the soccer ball. Spartan attacking midfielder Jeff Ricondo especially did an excellent job of getting back on defense, acting as a third defensive midfielder in the center of the field at times, and dispossessing Northwestern's attackers of the ball. In fact, this lead to the Spartan's second goal of the game as substitute right winger Tim Kreutz and Jeff Ricondo combined to dispossess the Northwestern left back of the ball and started a 2-on-2 situation deep in the Wildcat half of the field. Kreutz played a pretty through ball into the box as Ricondo raced past the last defender and calmly slotted the ball home into the bottom left corner of the goal to make it 2-0.
As the game wore on, Northwestern's strikers (in particular Oliver Kupe), frustrated at their midfielders inability to get service to them in the second half, started dropping further and further back away from the MSU goal in an attempt to see more of the ball. As you would expect, this took the teeth right out of the Wildcat offense. With a 2 goal lead, MSU could feel free to drop its players back into a more defensive look, and over the final 10-15 minutes of the game you could see NU get visibly angry at the way MSU defenders crowded them every time they received the ball. This anger lead to some rash challenges, and Northwestern finished the game with three yellow cards, all for reckless slide tackles to Spartan heels.
Other good assaults, but no more goals
Northwestern left back Peter O'Neil was generally given free reign to run up his side of the field when he felt like it. One such endeavor, right after the first MSU goal, lead to one of Northwestern's better chances of the first half. O'Neil received the ball in spartan territory, put a quick move around his man, and raced for the Spartan goal line. Just as he reached the edge of the field, he ripped in a cross along the ground that scooted dangerously through the MSU box before it was scooped up by goalie Avery Steinlage. Had one of the Northwestern players nearby been able to get on the end of it, it could have spelled trouble for MSU.
Near the end of the first half, Ricondo showed why he can be dangerous in his role behind the striker, as he dribbled around several Northwestern defenders, and played a nice give and go with Michigan State Attacking mid Cyrus Saydee. Upon recieving the ball back from Saydee Ricondo reared back and slammed a kick from just outside the 18 yard box towards the net. Luckily for Northwestern, the goalie was in the right spot to parry the ball out for a goal kick.
Early in the second half, the Northwestern midfield were able to make a few probing runs into the Spartan penalty box. Most of these efforts ended with the Wildcats losing the ball before they could get a proper shot off, but several times the ball found it's way to Northwestern striker Oliver Kupe in a post up position in front of goal. Usually a spartan defender was able to get a deflection on the ensuing shot, but one time Kupe found himself free to blast a close range shot on target. Through luck or good positioning, Steinlage found himself in front of the shot and was able to knock it down and cover it.
Wildcat winger Lepe Seetane (who is shown as Lepe on the diagram... Doh!), playing off the shoulder of one of his team's strikers, was able to dribble the ball into dangerous situations, but never did anything particularly impressive to turn those oppurtunities into shots on goal. On a side note, he is, I think the smallest Men's Division 1 athlete I've ever seen, at a towering 5''2 (seriously, 5 foot 2 inches.).
Later in the second half MSU was able to get out on the counter attack and even the defensive center backs got into fun a little bit. In one memorable example,Spartan Kevin Cope found himself on a one-on-one situation with the keeper following a Northwestern defensive giveaway. Unfortunately his lack of finishing touch betrayed him and the GK made a solid stop to keep him from getting on the scoreboard.
Lastly, the Barone brothers (I assume they're brothers at least) Mark and Domenic almost were able to combine for a third goal as with 15 minutes left Domenic laid out a pretty pass into the penalty box that was just a bit too far forward for a surging Mark to latch onto. The gracious Wildcat goalie rushed out to cover the ball and that was that.
Substitutions have varying levels of effectiveness for both sides
By request, here were some substitutions I had jotted down and their general impact.
1st half
13 minutes left in the first half:
MSU- Brent Rosendall for Rubin Bega, Rosendall moves up to striker, Barone drops back to the attacking midfield spot behind him, Ricondo takes over Bega's spot on the right wing. These shake ups didn't produce any real standout offensive moments.
NU- Piero Bellizzi comes on for Lepe Seetane. See above note on effectiveness.
7 minutes in the first half
NU- Nick Gendron for Matt Eliason at striker. I don't remember Gendron doing a thing.
MSU- Nosa Iyoha for Josh Barens at defensive midfielder. Iyoha seemed equally effective at shutting down the NU attack as Barens when he was in.
2nd half
22 minutes left in the second half
Mark Barone and Tim Kreutz come in for Cyrus Saydee and Rubin Bega respectively. Here's a swap that actually improves the team's play, as these two create several chances and an assist on the second goal in their time on the field.
Late in the second half Rubin Bega comes on and replaces Domenic Barone up top. Bega does a great job keeping the ball out of Northwestern's hands (feet?) and provides fresh energy to close the game out.
There were more (someone replaced Wesley Curtis real late, I think it was Josh Barens?), but frankly, I forgot to write them down, and at any rate they weren't all that important on the final tally. Michigan State was able to use subs in the second half to bolster their attack, but in contrast, the Northwestern switches did very little to help their chances throughout the game.
The stats tell the story
NU - MSU
0 - 2 goals
6 - 10 shots
4 - 6 shots on goal
2 - 4 corner kicks
3 - 0 yellow cards
10 - 11 fouls
Fun, physical game with a great result for our boys in green and white!
Some odds and ends
-televised by the big ten network means... TV time outs during the halves. That was a new soccer experience for me.
- No one entity kits out our team's cleats, so we have a rainbow of colors on our player's footwear. If you're you're the type that freaks out over the greens not matching in our football uniforms, you have my permission to go nuts.
-The raucous alumni atmosphere I was told to expect did not materialize. One MSU player's mother was especially feisty though, so that slightly made up for it.
-The official in charge today wasn't nearly as big of a douche as the ref from the Marquette game was. It was nice to see the ref NOT making himself the center of attention.
Video Highlights
Enjoy (complete with terrible Big Ten Network d-team guys breaking it down).
This is a FanPost, written by a member of the TOC community. It does not represent the official positions of The Only Colors, Inc.--largely because we have no official positions.
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Wow, very well done.
Rec’d. Please keep doing these!
Thanks also for the highlights link. The Northwestern keeper certainly made hash of the inswinging corner on the first goal. Looked like he was trying to parry but didn’t realize he was farther off his post than he thought.
That was a lovely through ball to Ricondo on the second goal.
100 Agreed with CPT, keep these posts coming.
Good analysis and breakdown. The picture is my favorite part, though. Awesome diagram to help understand the formations used. Well done!
My Michigan State (and Big Ten) Baseball Blog.
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Keep these up!!!!
I love seeing the soccer posts because I rarely have time to make it to the games. Some quick constructive criticism: we play a 4-4-2 not a 4-2-2-2 you use three numbers to define the formation, defense-midfield-forwards. If you feel like clarifying more you say things like diamond midfield, flat back four, or what we actually run which is two attacking midfielders on the sides and two defensive midfielders in the middle. Also please describe the gameplay I don’t know if Northwestern had any chances at all because your post leaves that out. Also you said Northwestern’s goalie had some great save, but who took those shots? What substitutions did each team make, and how did that affect the gameplay? These posts are still invaluable thank you for doing them and keep improving them (btw the diagram is awesome!) ohh and the only control on the shoes is that they are nike, but nike doesn’t really have green and white as an option on most of their boots so the guys just get to wear whatever they like best, guys on the basketball team and football team wear different shoes all the time its just not as obvious because they are all green or white, or black, or some combination of those instead of bright yellow.
That's not entirely accurate
Four numbers are often used to describe the formation (sometimes even 5, as in a 4-1-2-1-2 for the diamond mid and flat back four) when there’s a clear distinction between attacking mids and defensive mids, or even if there’s a designated sweeper in a highly defensive formation (a 1-4-3-2 instead of a 5-3-2) or a distinction between a main striker and a support man (4-4-1-1). Heck, much analysis of the World Cup this summer talked about the rise of the 4-2-3-1 formation.
That said, I don’t know how our formation is best described (and some of your other suggestions have definite merit).
Thanks for the input + edits
I added some of the stuff you requested under the headings ‘Substitutions have varying levels of effectiveness for both sides’ and ‘Other good assaults, but no more goals’.
As far as whether to differentiate between defensive, central, and attacking midfielders or just call them all ‘midfielders’ I fall in the first camp and it seems like you fall in the second. I think the system of four number (or five or six if we’re living in some Coach Loco Bizzaro World) labeling offers a better idea of where the player is typically at on the field and is generally more precise. With that said, a ‘4-4-2 diamond’ and a ‘4-1-2-1-2’ literally mean the same thing to me in soccer terms. I prefer the second way of presenting that information, but if you don’t, that’s fine. I’ll try to provide both ‘notations’ in my next offering.
When you say ‘we’, are you a Northwestern fan? If so, always nice to see fellow B11 on The Only Colors.
I appreciate the correction on footwear, I wasn’t aware of that.
Hope you enjoy the additions! Thanks again for commenting!
-Heck Dorland
nope not a northwestern fan
im going by the way soccer is usually described in the premiership, and by the announcers at the world cup etc. If you feel like keeping the 4 number system anyone who is soccer literate will understand well enough it just throws off people used to the 3 number system that is the most prevalent in british football. I feel like another way I have seen that described is by saying that player-x is an attacking midfielder while player-y is a holding or defensive midfielder, that allows for the change in formation when substitutions are made, since most times, at least in fifa rules where you only get three subs, a substitution in the midfield will change the formation in some way. So team=a may be running a four four two with three midfielders attacking and one holding and then sub in another holding midfielder without changing their basic formation. Lastly there is a magazine called 4-4-2 for a reason… Still PLEASE KEEP THIS UP I LOVE READING THESE POSTS and GO GREEN
Soccer Alum here again...
Great post! Love that my old team is getting some love. A few notes:
-On the goal, the goalie was trying to catch it and hit it into his own goal. Spencer better have sent him a thank you card.
The guy above is right MSU has always traditionally run a 4-4-2. Hate to break it to everyone, but we’ve always just called it a 4-4-2- really doesn’t matter though- I see how you are understanding the formations. Recently, under new head coach Damon Rensing- the formation changed a bit to run a flat back four. Though guys may get pulled out of this shape and appear to be player other positions, most of these moves are tactical in nature and either trying to defend the other team’s strength or take advantage of one of their weaknesses. But when you come right down to it, it’s still a 4-4-2.
Third, great goal by Jeff off the freshmen’s through ball. It’s been great seeng Jeff grow from a redshirt freshmen with a broken foot to a senior leader and one of the Big Ten’s most underrated players. The kid always comes through when it counts see last year’s IU game.
-Fourth, the MSU freshmen look great. However, I’m not sure if he’s injured or not, but to see that Nosa has not been on the field has been really shocking. If you talk to me or other alumni, many of them would tell you that Nosa is one of the most skilled players MSU has ever had.
Fifth, I was the one who told you to expect a rowdy crowd due to alumni being back. I was recently informed that since the turnout for this weekend was so low, alumni weekend is being rescheduled to the Indiana game (a HUGE MSU rivalry outside of UM, they are the team we always hated most- I was lucky enough to be on the field the first time we ever beat them back in 2004). Due to the hatred for IU and the UM game being away this year, according to the coaching staff, there will be a ton of alums back in town for the IU game. In fact, they have officially moved alumni weekend to that weekend due to the response they have been getting for it.
Sixth, As I stated last time, if you ever want any help or inside scoops, just let me know I played with most of the upper classmen and I’m still good friends with a few. Great article though, and thanks again! Go green! Go white!
by spartysoccer16 on Sep 29, 2010 12:23 AM CDT reply actions
Good stuff
Agreed on the Thompson goal. My first reaction upon seeing it go into the net wasn’t a cheer, but a laugh. As you guys have noted, the second goal was a beauty.
We might just have to agree to disagree on the formation thing. It’s sounds ridiculous for me to be arguing with a former player who has access to inside scoops, so perhaps I should just shut up on this, but I swear to Izzo that, to my novice eyes, we most often lay our players out in the way I set up in the diagram (i.e. one player clearly higher up than everyone else, one clear bank of three behind him, one clear bank of two behind them, and then a line of four at the back).
Here’s a question. You say,
Though guys may get pulled out of this shape and appear to be player other positions, most of these moves are tactical in nature and either trying to defend the other team’s strength or take advantage of one of their weaknesses. But when you come right down to it, it’s still a 4-4-2.
Is it? To use a football analogy, if I, Coach Dorland, have a defense line up with three down lineman with a hand in the dirt, and four players standing up and roving behind them, wouldn’t you call that a 3-4 alignment, even if I the coach told you that one of those linebackers was a ‘stand up defensive end’? When it comes to formations isn’t it less important what the player is called than where he is actually playing/what he is actually doing?
I’ll be sure to pay extra attention to this issue my next time out as it seems to be the biggest point of contention and I very well could be wrong. This is a helpful debate to help me get better at this stuff though, so I welcome the argument.
I’m excited to hear you say that about Iyoha. I haven’t seen much of him in the two games or the team’s box scores, so I’ll take your word on his skill. And don’t worry about the alum thing, I’m just giving you crap.
Thanks for the comments. I’ll be sure to get in touch with you if need be. Feel free to tear me to shreds on this formation squabble.
-Heck Dorland
Tactical formations...
The answer to your question is not really yes or no. I understand what you’re saying about them being pulled into different positions offensively and in some respects, you’re probably right about their formation. In what they are actually doing, they probably are in the formation you described. One of the reasons behind me calling it a 4-4-2 is that’s what we’ve always called it and if you ask a guy on the team, that’s probably what they’re going to say they are playing. And with this, though they may be ACTUALLY doing things that are outside of the classic 4-4-2 formation, the 4-4-2 formation comes with particular BASIC responsibilities that each player must adhere to to make it work. Occasionally however, players must go outside of those responsibilities (by either taking on additional responsibility or by dropping off responsibilities to others, or “cheating”) to ensure creativity and unpredictability in the game in order to try to gain an advantage. I hope that at least makes some sense. Also, and probably more importantly, if you watch their defensive shape, more than likely they will be in a 4-4-2 with the occasional forward dropping back into the mix to help out. I will describe this in somewhat boring detail as follows:
I’m not sure how aware you are of tactical formations in soccer or not so forgive me if I’m explaining something you already know. As you noted, offensively the 4-4-2 or whatever you want to call it, can mold itself into different shapes, forms or numbers. A key thing to note however when you are considering formations, is how they line up defensively. Defensively, when the game is played correctly, is a much more unified and team oriented activity within the game then offense which can occasionally be created by one individual (example: a player can dribble multiple players and score while defensively there are some 1v1 battles, more often than not, you are depending on and communicating with teammates to win the ball back). Therefore, shape while in the defensive position throughout a game, is much more communicative of the actual formation than offense is. To put it simply, offensively, you are constantly moving and changing team shape to be unpredictable and create space by pulling the defense out of alignment. Conversely, defensively, you are trying to “hold your shape” as a team.
Now, I have not seen an actual game yet while you have, so you can probably attest to this better than I can. However, I’m guessing that more than likely, if you watch their defensive shape during a game, you will see a 4-4-2 with a flat back four which Damon instituted when he became head coach. Without going into the intricacies of the flat back system, I’ll try giving you an example. Say the other team is playing a traditional 4-4-2 and their right back has the ball. If our defense is back and set, our left mid should be the “first defender” pressuring the ball. The rest of the midfielders should be forming a sort of “U” shape behind him, so all of four of them almost look like a Nike symbol with the top point as the left mid and the bottom point as the right mid. This creates, a second defender (center mid) also referred to as a “cover”, and a third defender (center mid #2) also referred to as a “balance”. Meanwhile, the defensive line is taking about the same shape with the left back pushed up to cover the other team’s right mid, and more than likely one or both of the center backs marking a forward while the right back is free. Without going into way more detail than I already have, when the ball moves, the whole team adjusts to one, most importantly, where the ball is, two, where their teammates are (this helps create an offsides line) and three where other team’s offensive players are positioning themselves. So long story short, I think you’ll see a 4-4-2 pretty clearly at least defensively (I would explain the forward’s role in this system but I don’t want to bore you too much). Now with that said, you may see a forward drop back to help out or occasionally pressure an outside back, especially if we are winning- and I think you mentioned that you saw Ricondo doing this a bit, which is also largely attributed to Jeff being an opportunistic player and a guy with one of the best motors on the team.
Now with all that said, to be honest, I’d love for you to mention formations and whatnot about as much as you already have. I’d much rather hear about gameplay, stats and what you thought of each player’s contributions. I’d love to see you rank each player’s game that day on a 1-10 score and an explanation for that score, much like ESPN does after national team games.
As for Nosa, he’s always kind of had the injury bug, but when the kid is healthy (and even sometimes when he is not), I would dare say that he’s the best player on the field. When I left in 2007 after his freshmen year, I was fairly certain he would eventually have what it took to play in the MLS. And after going back and playing a few times, it was pretty clear that he did as long as he could stay healthy. I suppose we will have to wait and see.
Just as another note on him, when he was a freshmen, his job was basically to man-mark, or defend one player for an entire game, arguably the best player in the country, Joe Lapira, who won the Hermann Trophy the year before. I hate admitting to anyone that anybody from ND, UM or IU is any good, but Joe was sick and an absolute goal scoring machine. Let’s just say, that until Nos got injured with about 20 left in the game, Joe was an absolute non-factor in the game. (Let’s just say, after he got hurt, yours truly had to follow Joe around and it was a huge pain in the ass. I did ok even though he did get one shot off and one cross off on me, but I will say Nos did a much better job than I did.)
Anyway, it will be interesting what they do when we play UM this year. UM has a big time freshmen named Saad (no idea why he didn’t come to State since we kick their ass every year). It will be interesting to see if they take a team approach to guarding him or put someone like Nosa on him. I’m guessing they’ll take the team approach so big guys like Cope and Barone can take some shots at him, but who knows, they could go with a one-man marking strategy while everyone else just helps out where they can.
Sorry for the long post, but I’m trying to keep my mind off this MSU B ball news.
by spartysoccer16 on Sep 29, 2010 6:58 PM CDT up reply actions
Sorry about the dashes
Sorry about the lines through the above posts, I was trying to just make dashes as bullet points.
by spartysoccer16 on Sep 29, 2010 12:25 AM CDT reply actions
And about Nosa...
Sorry, didn’t read that he subbed in. Still, he may be coming back from an injury- not sure why he’s not playing the entire game.
by spartysoccer16 on Sep 29, 2010 12:27 AM CDT reply actions
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