Zardes must make most of scoring chances
Playing center forward for Crew SC is an exercise in patience and precision.
Opportunities and touches don’t come along all that often, but when they do, they’re likely to be highpercentage chances. Converting them into goals could mean the difference between a win and a loss. No pressure. Gyasi Zardes is in his first season as the Crew’s forward, taking the reins from Ola Kamara after an offseason trade between the Crew and Los Angeles Galaxy. So far, he’s adapted well in the make-or-break role, scoring 11 goals in 21 games. But he has only three goals in nine games since scoring two against Chicago on May 12.
Playing forward for the Crew can be isolating, as both Zardes and Kamara before him have experienced. With a lack of numbers in the Crew SC forward Gyasi Zardes, left, has a team-leading 11 goals this season. offensive end, as has happened to the Crew quite a bit on the road this season, Zardes is on
an island, left to fight for chances among an army of defenders.
“I think when you
go into any game, the object is to not let the forward touch the ball in the penalty box,” coach Gregg Berhalter said. “There’s always a concerted effort to prevent that. What I would say is that if we don’t get other guys in the penalty box, then (Zardes is) the easy target and it’s easy to pick him up. We need to get other guys in the penalty box.”
The Crew’s effort to get numbers forward in a 2-0 loss to New York City FC on Saturday was an improvement over the previous Saturday, a 4-0 defeat at the Galaxy. And while he was set up with two highpercentage chances — a 37th-minute scoring opportunity from the left side that he skied well off target and a 63rd-minute header over the crossbar on a ball in from Pedro Santos — Zardes didn’t have many opportunities to work into a groove.
According to soccer statistics website American Soccer Analysis, Zardes’ touch percentage, or the percentage of his team’s touches while in the game, was 7.7 percent in 2016 with the Galaxy. In 2017, it was 6.9 percent. In his first season with the Crew, Zardes’ touch percentage is 3.9 percent, one of the lowest totals for a forward in the league. Kamara wasn’t far off at 4.5 and 4.3 percent with the Crew in 2017 and 2016, respectively.
Staying vigilant even when touches are few and far between is part of the job, Zardes said.
Amid the Crew’s worst scoring stretch of 2018 — two goals in the last five games — Berhalter reiterated Monday what he has said many times this season: Crew SC must continue to find ways to look for Zardes in the final third.
“We’ve got to keep playing our game and something will open up,” Zardes said. “A team can’t defend us the whole game. Things will start to open up as they start to fatigue.”