ADAPT ON THE RUN
Crew had to alter its style without injured leaders Zelarayan, Nagbe
To its credit, the Crew has not used the injuries to creative midfielders Lucas Zelarayan and Darlington Nagbe as an excuse for a poor run of form that at least temporarily ended Sunday night with a 3-1 win against New York City FC.
After surprising losses to Montreal and FC Cincinnati, Crew coach Caleb Porter acknowledged the injuries having a role in the defeats, but he unequivocally stated that everyone on the team — starting with himself — had to take a hard look at why suddenly the effort wasn’t cutting it.
It’s worth considering, however, why losing these two players, or even one of them for an extended period of time, had such as drastic impact.
Porter said the Crew will get Nagbe (knee) and Zelarayan (hamstring) back from their injuries in some capacity for the next game, against Houston on Saturday.
Without them, the simple fact is the Crew couldn’t be at its best because the team’s style of play revolves around the two midfielders.
“We still have a good team without those guys,” Porter said before the NYCFC game. “But definitely it’s not going to look exactly like it looks with those guys in, nor can we have a plan to keep the ball, to control games as much, so we don’t try to.”
The game plan against New York City was a perfect example of how much the Crew had to change its preferred style to get the most out of the players on the field.
In a deeper analysis of the past four games following the loss to FC Cincinnati, Porter and the coaching staff realized that controlling the game without the ball was what gave the Crew the best chance of winning without Nagbe and Zelarayan on the field.
Case in point, the Crew had 41% possession — its lowest of the season — in the win against NYCFC.
“It’s not what we really want to do every game, but I think with the group we have now they really bought into that and that was the right thing to do,” Porter said.
Since the season restart after the MLS is Back tournament, the Crew has played just two games with both Nagbe and Zelarayan in the starting lineup, posting a 1-0-1 record with an average 58.4% possession.
The difference between having Nagbe in the lineup, in terms of record and possession numbers since the midseason tournament, has been stark.
Without him, the Crew is 3-3-2 with an average of 50.8% possession. With him performing as perhaps the best midfielder in Major League Soccer, the Crew is 3-1-1 with 55.4% possession.
The absence of Nagbe or Zelarayan has an outsized impact because just about every attack runs through both of them.
There’s no one else on the team, and very few players around the league, who has the passing accuracy or is as good as Nagbe at getting out of pressure with the ball. And per minute, there are few players who have been as efficient at Zelarayan. In 712 minutes, Zelarayan is averaging a goal or assist every 79.1 minutes.
The Crew changes its game plan to fit what works best against that week’s opponent. Not having Nagbe or Zelarayan in the lineup doesn’t change that process.
But without the two players who were specifically acquired to lift this team to a top spot in MLS, there are a lot of other elements to consider.
“If we’re not going to control games, how do we control games without the ball and what does a goal look like without those two?” Porter said. “What does our shape look like without those two? How much do we give possession, how much do we control possession, how much do we press, how much do we drop?”
Other teams in MLS have experienced similar runs of form without their star players, notably Los Angeles FC and Atlanta Untied without the past two league MVPS for the majority of the season.
On the other side, Portland has posted a 5-2-2 record since losing star midfielder Sebastian Blanco for the season.
The Crew showed against NYCFC that it still has enough talent without Nagbe and Zelarayan to get a good result. But to execute the Crew’s preferred style of play and compete for trophies, those two mean everything. jmyers@dispatch.com
@_ jcmyers