2021 MLS Season Previews: Atlanta United, Chicago Fire, and FC Dallas
/We’re publishing three team previews every weekday until MLS First Kick on April 16th. You can find all of them here. Today we’re looking at three teams that are hoping to forget their 2020 seasons and do better in 2021.
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Atlanta United: Heinze-sight is 2021
By Tiotal Football
If the story of Atlanta United’s 2019 season was the underperformance of a loaded roster experiencing culture clash within the locker room, then 2020 was something else: a team kneecapped by embarrassing roster moves and an unfortunate injury to their best player in the season opener. Frank de Boer who had underperformed in 2019 couldn’t make this cobbled together roster work at all in 2020, and neither could an overwhelmed interim manager Stephen Glass after ATLUTD finished dead last in the “MLS is Back” tournament. Ultimately the club missed the last “normal” playoff spot of 7th, and also the 10th place tee-ball threshold temporarily instituted in the extraordinary circumstances of the 2020 season.
The g+ stats were grim and only additive to the above summary to the extent they place the performance in the larger more recent historical context. The following are all based on even game state performances in MLS from 2017-2020 (the entirety of the club’s history).
Worst team in MLS since 2017 at accruing g+ in the final third (primarily failing to receive passes there compared to other teams)
Worst at accruing g+ from pass receipts in the penalty area
Second worst in buildup play, measured as the accrual of g+ via passes and pass receipts in the first two thirds of the pitch
Second least “high pressing” team (Nashville), and one of the seven worst since 2017. See the graph below:
Appointment of Gabriel Heinze
The front office responded by making a splash with a new manager: Gabriel Heinze, a highly decorated player in his own right and one of the most talked about young coaching prospects in the world, most recently at Velez Sarsfield. Heinze likes his teams to keep the ball (Velez led the Primera division in possession in 2019/20), attacking with orchestrated movements based on positional play and defending with an aggressive mid-block press.
The challenge of fixing a broken team is nothing new for Heinze, who was hired in December 2017 by a Velez Sarsfield in free-fall, hovering just above the drop in 24th place. Under his management, they finished the season mid-table in 14th, playing at a 10th place pace for the remainder of the season. Velez would improve from there, finishing 6th the following season, then 3rd behind perennial giants Boca Juniors and River Plate in the truncated 2020 season. Before the turnaround at Velez, Heinze had been appointed manager of the freshly relegated Argentinos Juniors in 2016, and led them to an immediate rebound via first-place promotion back into the Primera division in his first season. That this context is relevant for Atlanta United in 2021 surely stings for many. That Velez’ upwards trajectory under Heinze took a few seasons to reach the top tier of the league should temper some of the wilder expectations for Atlanta in 2021.
Two Questions:
1) If Gabriel Heinze wants to keep the ball on the ground and build slowly from back to front, does he have the players to accomplish this?
The 2020 Atlanta United buildup seemed totally lost. Under de Boer, center backs spent most of the game passing it to two central midfielders and back, sporadically joined by the team’s two DP playmakers, dropping back in the worst possible spirits, itching to touch the ball but man-marked. After de Boer, there was an attempt to build out of the back in a 4-3-3 that quickly devolved into long, direct wing play and the occasional lofted cross. They just couldn’t build up in ways that put them in positive final third situations. See Atlanta putting down roots in the sad quadrant of the below chart.
Considering this, you can start to imagine why the club’s transfer strategy in the offseason was heavy on central midfielders and some defenders, and not a full rebuild of the attacking positions (the more typical next move of a terrible team). Outside of much needed forward depth, virtually all the ins and outs this offseason have been in the first two thirds the field.
Some of the most anticipated arrivals are young midfielders, Santiago Sosa and Franco Ibarra. In a perfect world, these guys turn out to be phenoms and well above average CMs in MLS. That said, with young players comes a short playing history at the professional level and a small sample size from which to draw insights, analytics-based or otherwise. The limited tape on Franco Ibarra looks promising to my eye, and the pedigree of Sosa suggests a high ceiling. But these are big and risky bets the club is making, bets that must pay off now if the biggest challenge of 2021 is to rebuild the team’s on-ball ideas.
2) How much does coaching matter? And does Atlanta United have the players to be a top tier MLS team in 2021?
The first question is one which I can’t fully resolve today, but the basic literature to date includes the finding in Soccernomics (2009), that results correlate resoundingly with wage bill in the Premier League at a rate of 89%. In The Numbers Game (2013), Anderson and Sally refreshed this effort and found a slightly lower (but still very strong correlation), and further analogized to studies in the business world of executives taking unexpected breaks impacting their companies’ results by 15-25%. On the whole, while nothing is ever so binary and the truth a complicated interdependence, the general consensus wisdom is that when it comes to results in soccer, the players matter more than coaching.
As for Atlanta United’s roster strength in 2021, we don’t have a lot of data on the incoming players but for returning MLS guys, the numbers just do not resemble those of a top tier team. Here’s a back of the napkin analysis, I’m christening the “Five Guys Method.”
I pulled the two-year trailing historical non-interrupting g+ per 96 rates for the individual players on all Cup and Shield winning teams since 2015. On average. I found that for these Shield and Cup winners, the profile of their top 5 players based on these metrics looks something like this:
And here it is in more detail including how the 2021 returning Atlanta United stacks up:
As you can see the case against Atlanta United as a trophy-lifting unit in 2021 is strong. Outside of a healthy Josef Martinez who fits the profile of the best player on a top-tier team, Atlanta is just nowhere close in spots two through five (players like Ezequiel Barco and Miles Robinson). If you were to really relax the findings here and cobble together a “Five Guys” lineup of players based on the worst ranking in each 1-5 slot from Cup and Shield winners since 2015, it’s still a better top five than the 2021 returning Atlanta team.
You might say this is overkill – that Atlanta United, one of the absolute worst teams last year should not be expected to lift a trophy in 2021 – and that’s fine. I agree, but all big spenders are aiming for silverware, and beyond this goal, basically all MLS teams compete with one another in a whirlwind of “playoffness.”
To circle back, for things to go remarkably right in 2021 and result in ATLUD lifting an MLS Cup or Supporters Shield, Josef Martinez needs to be at full pre-surgery strength AND there needs to be an unprecedented performance from a team returning players significantly worse than the returning players of past champions.
As a start, it would need to be the case that the very young newcomers to the team are some of the top 50 players in the league or that Gabriel Heinze is such an immense talent that he has an historically outsized impact on the team’s results to such an extent that it shatters the conventional wisdom of the scale of impact a manager can have on a team while also happening quicker than it did at Velez Sarsfield. This is all possible in Major League Soccer.
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Chicago Fire: We Didn't Light It, But We Tried to Fight It
By Jacob Beckett
| GD | xGD | GD-xGD | Pts | xPts | Pts-xPts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| -5 | 3.5 | -8.50 | 23 | 34.19 | -11.19 | |
| 6 | 12.15 | -6.15 | 42 | 54.07 | -12.07 | |
| -14 | -19.65 | 5.65 | 32 | 33.38 | -1.38 | |
| 14 | 4.62 | 9.38 | 55 | 49.07 | 5.93 | |
| -16 | -7.44 | -8.56 | 31 | 40.88 | -9.88 | |
| -12 | -1.17 | -10.83 | 30 | 45.45 | -15.45 | |
| -9 | -4.68 | -4.32 | 36 | 42.43 | -6.43 | |
| -4 | 1.94 | -5.94 | 49 | 47.62 | 1.38 |
In the ASA era (dating back to 2013), the Chicago Fire have underachieved their expected goal difference in six out of eight seasons. In one of the two seasons they bucked the trend (2018), that overachievement carried them to the dizzying heights of 32 points and a 10th place finish in the East. Last year was no different: Chicago’s xGD was a solid +3.5 (good for 5th in the East), while their actual GD was -5, which left them 11th in the table and out of the playoffs. If you prefer xPoints instead of xGD, the story is the same: 34 expected points, 23 actual ones.
What’s the deal here? Chicago’s history of underachievement covers several iterations of rosters by now. It spans three coaches, a couple owners, two logos (soon to be three of these, too) - they’ve even played in two different stadiums by now, so it’s not like the field is haunted. One working theory is that some nerd at ASA snuck a bug in the code for Chicago with the hopes that the continual underachievement would eventually lead to the team hiring him to turn it around.
Anyway - what should a franchise do when their results are below what advanced metrics say they should be? One approach is to run it back with faith in the analytics, and hope your results catch up with the xG sooner rather than later. The opposite viewpoint is that the lack of good results might weigh on your team, causing performances (and therefore your underlying numbers) to deteriorate down the table to where you already sit - so it’s better to shake up the squad in search of improvement. I’d argue that the Fire have taken the second tack far too often, when they’d be better served with the first.
Just looking at that span of eight seasons, I count somewhere between four and six “eras” of roster cores for Chicago: there’s the (MVP!) Mike Magee-led team, at least one core built around David Accam, then one or two iterations of Schweinsteiger-centric squads, and finally the current version built around Alvaro Medran, Ignacio Aliseda, and Robert Beric.
So, what have the Fire done this offseason, after yet another forgettable season when they missed the postseason while underachieving advanced metrics? Mostly stood pat. The only outgoings of consequence were CJ Sapong and Djordje Mihailovic, and the only incomings who might contribute this year are forward Chinonso Offor, midfielder Jhon Espinoza, and winger Stanislav Ivanov. These are young dudes (20, 22, and 21, respectively) who seem like signings based more on potential value than current. Chicago’s biggest signing of the offseason leans even more heavily into this lane - Colombian Jhon Duran apparently comes from great pedigree, but he’s only 17 so he can’t even join the team until next year when he’s an adult.
I like this approach from the Fire. Last year was admittedly miserable at times (like when this play finished off their playoff hopes), but a majority of their play was good and the analytics say they should’ve been higher up the table. Keeping the faith that a second (hopefully more normal) year of training under Raphael Wicky will yield better results doesn’t seem unreasonable. This team was a mish-mash of new guys from all over in 2020, so a second season of gelling could perhaps benefit Chicago even more than other teams - particularly if youngsters like Aliseda and Mauricio Pineda can take a step forward. Chicago has a decent shot at making the playoffs this year, and if a secondary goal threat emerges to complement Beric, they could even make some noise above and beyond the top seven.
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FC Dallas: Sometimes It’s Better To Be Luchi Than Good
By Jason Poon
I finished my 2020 FC Dallas preview with the following:
“Given that the core of the team is back, and with most of the players who played significant minutes under the age of 25, there will be high expectations for Dallas and their 2020 campaign. Getting into the playoffs was the goal for 2019, and with the upgrades in place and Jara coming, Dallas should be aiming for a top four finish in the West.
If Dallas does build on their 2019 season and nobody has a major regression, I can see this team challenging for the top three in the West. The bottom would be finishing 7th.”
Had Colorado played more matches, I think I may have been right for once?
2020 in Review
This was probably the most forgettable year in FC Dallas’ recent history - from pulling out of the MLS is Back Tournament due to COVID-19, the sudden departure of Zdenek Ondrasek, Jesus Ferreira’s rapid drop in form, Jesse Gonzalez being released due to legal troubles, the sale of Reggie Cannon, and Paxton Pomykal only playing in five games last year - finishing in the top six was a good achievement all things considered.
Dallas did knock out Portland in the opening rounds of the playoffs in an 8-7 thriller on penalties, but like clockwork, subsequently bowed out in the next round to Seattle. Dallas’ team xGD was -0.64, good for 12th in the league, which aptly summarizes the team in 2020 - everything was just OK. Considering all the mayhem related to COVID-19 and the roster churn, perhaps the OK season can be seen as a positive, but the final result just left everyone wanting.
A lone bright spot was seeing Ricardo Pepi start making strides with the first team and push Franco Jara for minutes at the striker position.
| xG | G | xA | A | xG+xA | G+A | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.19 | 0.05 | 0.22 | 0.16 | 0.41 | 0.21 | |
| 0.19 | 0.16 | 0.21 | 0.26 | 0.40 | 0.42 | |
| 0.21 | 0.21 | 0.22 | 0.10 | 0.44 | 0.31 | |
| 0.18 | 0.10 | 0.18 | 0.31 | 0.37 | 0.41 | |
| 0.19 | 0.33 | 0.08 | 0.00 | 0.27 | 0.33 | |
| 0.23 | 0.36 | 0.08 | 0.05 | 0.31 | 0.41 |
Offseason Changes
Dallas made some big changes during the offseason, most notably trading away Michael Barrios (211 appearances, 37 goals and 48 assists during his six years in Dallas) who transformed himself from goal scorer to goal provider in the last few years, but his diminishing returns in 2020 meant it was time for a change (his 0.21 G+A p96 mins was the lowest of his career with Dallas).
Disappointing Designated Player Santiago Mosquera, whose on field production didn’t remotely come close to justifying his salary, was also unloaded. Mosquera’s production was on a steep decline ever since he first arrived. In 2018 he had a respectable 7.25 xG+xA but in 2019 that dropped to 3.32 xG+xA. In 2020 it was 2.12 xG+xA.
On the defensive side, aging Reto Ziegler was also not brought back. Despite being the team’s best penalty taker, and a generally reliable partner for Matt Hedges, his lack of speed was starting to be a major liability as the league’s attackers got younger, quicker and more athletic. And of course, Bryan Reynolds made a giant move to Roma despite having only 15 MLS starts to his name.
Dallas did make some moves to bring in players to replace the departures, rather than fill them in with Homegrowns. Jose Martinez is making a push to be the starting centerback partner for Hedges and Freddy Vargas is on loan from Deportivo Lara and looks to bring more reliability on the attack from the wings.
Probably the most intriguing addition is former Philadelphia Union Homegrown Player, Kalil ElMedkhar. Dallas isn’t known to acquire other HGPs but rather sell them. Being the first certainly raises some eyebrows to see how it’ll pan out.
One big question: Will Paxton Pomykal and Jesus Ferreira step up?
The two Homegrowns are the faces of the franchise; Homegrown, long history with the club (Pomykal having taken the iconic number 19 as an homage to the late Bobby Rhine and Ferreira being the son of a former league MVP) and ultimately two players that have been given the keys to Luchi’s team.
Both players had a disastrous 2020 season with Pomykal out injured, and Ferreira being a shell of his 2019 campaign. Both players combined for just 1233 minutes and one goal and one assist, shockingly bad numbers considering their talents. But despite their poor showing domestically, both have shown - especially Ferreira of late - an attacking prowess on the international stage.
Will Pomykal finally be healthy in 2021? Will Ferreira’s production match his talents?
2021 Prognosis
FC Dallas may be the team to beat in the Western Conference this year; they shed (almost) all the dead weight from the roster, reloaded with exciting talent and still have one DP spot open for a summer transfer. It is Luchi Gonzalez’s third year at the helm, and he did what he could with the team he inherited, but now had several transfer windows to get the players he needs to carry out his vision for the club. It won’t surprise me if Dallas challenged for a top two spot in the West this year, but a lot of that will depend on the team finally figuring out their offense and having a reliable goal scorer again.