2022 MLS Season Previews: Austin FC, CF Montréal, and Charlotte FC
/The 2022 MLS season is nearly upon us! We’ll be publishing three team previews every weekday until the MLS season opens on Saturday, February 26, 2022.
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Austin FC: Austin’s Power - International Spots of Mystery
By Jason Poon
2021 in Review
To put it bluntly, Austin was bad in 2021. They weren’t FC Cincinnati levels of bad, but if you just looked at the on-field product, you could very easily pinpoint that Austin was an expansion team. I took a bold stance in predicting that Austin’s ceiling was 3rd in the West and their floor was 10th. In hindsight, that was pretty optimistic. But then again, I also didn’t anticipate the team playing three straight months without a proper striker.
Is Maxi the answer?
To say the offense was lacking is putting it kindly for 2021. Austin suffered three, three-game stretches where they didn’t score a goal. A stretch that went from 5/15/21 to 7/31/21 where Austin only scored five goals in 11 games, with four of those five coming against Portland. To be fair, this was also the period where Austin didn’t have a single healthy striker available, though they did have five consecutive home games during this stretch. Austin averaged a paltry 1.01 xG during this 11 game stretch.
To address the issue and bolster their striker options, Austin picked up Maxi Urruti during the offseason. Despite a bit of a journeyman career, Urruti has consistently found the back of the net. Over the span of his MLS career, Urruti has averaged 0.33 goals per 90 and if he continues that output and logs roughly 2000 minutes, Austin can expect to see about 7-8 goals out of him.
The question is though, is that enough? Urruti has historically been a very streaky striker. That is, he typically finds an overwhelming majority of his goals during the first half of the season and then tends to go through very long stretches without a goal. Case in point, in 2021 he scored six of his seven goals in the first 11 games of the season before just tallying a single goal over the next 19 games. And this isn’t a one-off, as he’s done this in similar fashion just about every year since 2015.
Can Austin weather that kind of goal-scoring drought after the team itself struggled so much with scoring? Perhaps being paired with another Argentine playmaker (Sebastian Driuss) for a season will bring more consistency out of Urruti like Mauro Diaz did back in 2015 and 2016. If not, Austin could be in a world of hurt in their sophomore campaign.
Do they have enough defensive options down the spine?
As bad as the offense was in 2021, the defense wasn’t much better. Aside from Brad Stuver playing at an All-Star level for the first half of the season to keep Austin in most of the games, the defense was pretty disjointed, especially after Matt Besler’s season, and ultimately career, ended due to concussion.
Austin picked up a beefy Norwegian centerback in Ruben Garbielsen to add another body to the back line. The veteran centerback is expected to start and at least provide a steadying presence, but the biggest need and concern was the defensive midfield position, which had bodies occupying the position last year (Alex Ring, Dani Perreira) but nobody making it their own. So, enter Colombian midfielder Jhojan Valencia to have a crack at it. If Valencia can provide adequate coverage and better ball winning in the midfield, then Austin’s defensive woes from 2021 (3rd-most GA with 56, and 3rd-worst GD with -21 in the entire league) will be behind them.
Will Josh Wolff make it to season three?
When researching the outcome of expansion teams and their first year records, Austin ranked one of the worst (15th out of 20 in points per game). No team that finished poorer than Austin’s 2021 season saw their coach make it to a third season.
Though to be fair, only Bob Bradley (Chicago and LAFC), Sigi Schmid (Seattle), Frank Yallop (San Jose), Adrian Heath (Minnesota), and Peter Nowak (Philadelphia) ever made it to the third season with an expansion side. Tata Martino (Atlanta) would have made it longer had he wanted to stay.
At this point, and looking historically at other MLS teams in similar situations, unless Josh Wolff has Austin sitting at a minimum of 1.3 points-per-game by the 10th game of 2022, he may not survive the season.
2022 Prognosis
If Valencia can adapt quickly to the league, he can provide much-needed balance and stability to Austin’s midfield. Having a true-and-good defensive midfielder can unlock the offense and give the team more freedom to attack. If Valencia ends up being a miss of signing, then not only will Wolff not survive the season, but we can also expect to see Austin challenge Cincinnati for the Wooden Spoon.
But what if Valencia comes good? Then we might see Austin battling for the 6th or 7th spot in the West this year.
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CF Montréal: Slow and steady makes the playoffs
CF Montreal slid into a disappointing 10th place finish in the 2021 MLS Season after splashing big allocation money on the acquisitions of Mason Toye and Djordje Mihailovic, falling short with an assuredly still painful Decision Day defeat to Orlando. While the musings of expected goals difference and progressive pass metrics do not salve the wounds of a fan let down, they are reason for optimism. Montreal had the 5th best xGD in the Eastern Conference last year (6th, but Nashville are now West) at +6, compared to their +2 GD. It’s not everything, but they were broadly good enough to be a playoff team, and that is definitively green shoots of improvement.
Striker Go Brrrrr
While Montreal were far from bountiful in attack, they do have a solid striker corps that is yet to quite put it together. Romell Quioto, Ibrahim Sunusi, Mason Toye, and Bjorn Johnson all played 1000 minutes and put up passable or better attacking numbers (Quioto pops at 0.86 xG+xA, but the others are merely good). The problem is that not one of them played more than 1500 minutes. I wrote about this when previewing Mason Toye last year in expectation that he would be the one that hit, but when one of these guys puts it together next to Quioto (and Quioto can stay healthy), this attack might pop.
A Platform to Build From
Montreal made their money as a solid defensive team last season, and look poised to do so again in 2022. After hitting big with the acquisition of Kamal Miller, the front office splashed the cash on Alistair Johnston to put together two thirds of the best back line in CONCACAF (time for CanadianSoccerAnalysis.com). While I could wax lyrical about the individual defensive qualities of each of the centerbacks, or the ability of Victor Wanyama and Samuel Piette to break up enemy attacks, the real benefit of CF Montreal comes from their defensive cohesion as a unit.
Courtesy of Second Spectrum. Field Control here shows the space Montreal controls most defensively in red, white is contested, and blue is the attacking team in control.
Zone 23 or 14, as most coaches call it, and the halfspaces are key battlegrounds for attacking teams to get at. Montreal totally deny this space for the opposition.
Courtesy of our friends at Second Spectrum, consider the set of images (right). We can see Montreal’s team shape when facing a build or settled possession, where it is clearly a midfield 2 with Djordje Mihailovic defending much higher and much wider. Once the initial block is broken, one of the wider players drops, the wingbacks drop and narrow, and it’s a much denser 5-3-2. When we look at the Field Control figures, where red is the space Montreal is in control of, we can see just how dense and compact they are. They deny room to receive between lines, and deny access to the half spaces (one of the benefits of a back 3). If we consider “zone 14” and the two half spaces (the ones highlighted in blue), Montreal allowed the least g+ in those zones of ANY team in the entire league by about 1.25 g+, for comparison, 1.25 g+ is the difference between NYRB in 2nd and Atlanta in 9th. Even more impressively, Montreal allowed a whopping 0.21 g+ in zone 14 (23 in the graphic) throughout the entire season. That is just stupidly good defensive organization. If Montreal can maintain similar defensive organization for 2022, it provides them an excellent platform to be competitive in every match.
Do you want to be a star, Djordje?
Heading into 2021, it was clear that Djordje Mihailovic was expected to be a significant part of Montreal’s attacking production. Moving from position to position in Chicago, Djordje settled into an interesting #10/wide attacking midfielder role, either behind two strikers or as part of a front three, in Montreal. My biggest question when evaluating the trade was how much growth he was going to show as a passer. He always showed flashes of some higher level feel, but 2021 was his time to shine. Djordje generated the 4th most xA at 9.31 and led the league with 14 assists, both of which are more than literally the entirety of the rest of his career. Moving into 2022, Djordje simply has to maintain this output. Brault-Guillard and his barrage of crosses offered some creative help, as did Romell Quioto, but Mihailovic is decidedly the guy. If I was predicting somewhere Montreal might fall down in 2022, it would be him struggling to carry the load he did in 2021.
Playoff Push
2022 will be another sort of consolidation year for CF Montreal, but they are definitely in with a very realistic shout at being a playoff team. Their defensive identity in the East mixed with 1) Nashville leaving and a likely playoff spot opening up and 2) half of the East being complete and total rebuilds, should give them a head start to building back to a full Stade Saputo come the Fall.
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Charlotte FC: All brakes, no gas
By Paul Harvey
When Atlanta hired Tata Martino, it was widely considered a groundbreaking coup for the league. Landing a manager who was a certified legend in the game seemed far out of reach for a league that was still viewed as a minnow in the broader soccer world. The hire of Tata, and his subsequent success, marked a seismic shift in the way MLS was perceived both globally and in the American sporting landscape.
Charlotte FC has made a managerial hire that in many ways mirrors Atlanta’s ambition in pursuing Martino; this time, though, the manager is not a legend but instead a rising star. Miguel Angel Ramirez was the subject of many breathless reports during his time in Independiente del Valle. The Athletic went as far as to call him “the best coach you’ve never heard of.” He was tipped as the next Pep, a visionary who was destined to take Europe by storm. A tumultuous and short-lived period at Brazil’s Internacional left him available for hire, and Charlotte pounced.
All in on Auteur Theory
How much does a manager matter? It seems like the growing consensus is that they don’t matter much, if at all. At the same time, Charlotte FC’s ambition to go out and get one of the best coaches they could is a sign of a desire to compete. In a salary-capped league, the fact that a manager’s salary has no cap can potentially provide a leg up for the team willing to spend big on a manager.
Charlotte’s first signings - Riley McGree, Sergio Ruiz, Christian Fuchs, Jan Sobocisnki, and even Adam Armour - showed a preference for European experience. However, since Ramirez was hired, the focus has shifted towards South America and those with a previous relationship with him. Vinicius Mello, a former Internacional player with no remarkable record in Brazilian Serie A, was signed to a U22 initiative contract. From the outside this move seems to be based on personal familiarity rather than an impartial assessment of ability. With Marc Nicholls’ oddly timed departure and lateral move to the Columbus Crew, is there some behind the scenes conflict around the vision of the team?
The Man in the Driver’s Seat
Hiring a manager with a clear vision is an interesting approach for an expansion team. There won’t be any need to try to fit pieces from an old regime in where they don’t belong. If there’s any time a manager can make a serious impact, this is it. So what are the principles Ramirez brings to the game?
Ramirez is a disciple of juego de posicion, an approach to the game that any sophisticated fan will claim to understand - just don’t ask them to explain it. It can be boiled down to the search for superiority in possession, using that numerical superiority to break through lines of pressure, and repeating the process until the player with the ball is in a dangerous position.
Possession is at the heart of the approach, though the goal is not just to hold onto the ball but to aggressively move the ball and force the opposing defense to disorganize themselves. That should sound familiar (and foreboding) to any USMNT fan. It requires players who can work together, understand each other’s movements on and off the ball, and make the right decisions in high pressure situations. The aggressive approach to breaking lines of pressure can lead to positive field tilt, keeping the ball in a dangerous position.
When out of possession, Ramirez’s teams have aggressively pressed in the opponent’s third. They immediately attack, trying to force their opponents into a turnover or a hopeful long ball that can be recovered and recycled into possession. The goalkeeper often takes aggressive positions, sweeping up long balls before returning the ball back into the opponent’s half.
Does that sound familiar? It’s an approach we’ve seen before, most notably from Bob Bradley’s LAFC. Aside from that obvious outlier, most of the teams that have found themselves near the top of the table tend to press high and keep possession in their opponent’s half. The game model is a successful one in MLS, but the challenge will be to build a capable team while more established opponents seek to do the same thing.
Is this team good enough?
It’s all well and good to have a vision, but executing it is another thing entirely. One of the biggest tensions in roster building - whether with expansion teams or when established teams hire foreign talent in the front office - is properly valuing foreign and domestic players in context.
LAFC, a team that had a similar game model on the surface, scoured the domestic game for talent. While they hit on their DPs in Rossi and Vela, they found value in the expansion draft, USL, and free agency. Charlotte traded two of their five expansion picks, and enters the season with just three American players. They have added some depth from the free agency pool but none of those players have played major roles on their teams in years. At the time preseason started, just one DP was on the roster, 17 senior slots were filled, and there were no clear starting strikers on the team. There are some exciting names on the roster, but many questions remain about the depth and quality of the team as a whole.
The Big Names
With the game model Ramirez plans to implement, the 10 may be the most important position on the field. He again opted for familiarity, signing an underperforming Cristian “Titi” Ortiz from Club Tijuana. Ortiz had previously played for Ramirez at Independiente del Valle. Ramirez has called him the “perfect 10” for his game model, which means that a great deal of the team’s success will depend on him. It’s not unreasonable to expect high usage from Ortiz, but can he be an elite game changer at this level? Here’s a look at how high usage players have fared in MLS over the last few years:
Interestingly enough, Ortiz is not a designated player. That distinction belongs to Jordy Alcivar, Karol Swiderski, and Darw- oh wait never mind. Darwin Machis, who was recently in Charlotte to sign his contract, apparently had legal issues stemming from a bar fight he hadn’t resolved. Whoops. Or did Charlotte dodge a bullet?
Swiderski is a young Polish striker most recently at PAOK Thessaloniki. Ramirez has stated that he views Swiderski as the kind of striker who can drop back and help build possession. Hopefully he’s right, because the video below of all his goals with PAOK doesn’t show an ability to create his own shot or add value on the dribble. Swiderski’s production will be heavily reliant on his ability to get into good spaces, and his teammates’ ability to find him there. There’s nothing wrong with that; after all, getting into good positions is the majority of the value of a striker can bring. It’s just important for Charlotte FC fans to temper their expectations of a young DP striker.
Alcivar, a young DP, anchors what appears to be on paper a solid midfield. Alan Franco is a Colombian international while Sergio Ruiz was the target of multiple larger teams while on loan at Las Palmas. These are players who should be able to control the game the way Ramirez wants, but often more possession oriented midfielders can struggle to find effective ways to move the ball forward and create danger (see Atlanta United’s first half of 2021).
Christian Fuchs is one of the most decorated defenders in MLS. The defensive line was set early, and has both MLS experienced depth as well as some exciting young players as well. The team building emphasis was on the spine, and it shows in the quality along the back line.
Big dreams that take time
When asked about the roster with just under three weeks before Matchday 1, Ramirez was more than willing to let Charlotte FC fans know “we’re screwed.” They are up against teams with more depth, quality, and a great deal more MLS experience. There’s a little room for optimism, but with the strength of the Eastern Conference it may be a bumpy road to start.
Internacional did not have the patience to see out Ramirez’ vision; if Charlotte struggles early, will the leadership there be willing to wait? We’ve seen entire expansion approaches scrapped and started over in Cincinnati and Miami; will Charlotte be next? The ambition is refreshing, but hopefully patience comes along with it.