Last time in the Soccer Den we examined what made Vanney-ball work against the Earthquakes. Nashville studied that game and pressured the Galaxy when they played out of the back through Riqui Puig, scoring two goals. A brilliant individual goal by Puig an elite feed and finish from Aude to Jovelic staved off defeat.
Fans expected a soccer game when they arrived at the Diggity. St. Louis City and the LA Galaxy treated them to an epic fifteen-round fight that ended in a 3-3 draw.
City coach Bradley Carnell trains his teams to condense the field side to side while moving up and back as a unit. They wait for predetermined triggers to rapidly close space as a group attacking quickly after winning the ball. Carnell knew that winning the middle of the park and containing the Galaxy offense generators would be the key to winning the fight.
In the first two minutes, St. Louis revealed their strategy: lockdown Mark Delgado and Riqui Puig in the center of the field to prevent them from unleashing the Galaxy arsenal of creative talent.
St. Louis intercepts a Mark Delgado pass when he plays through the middle.
Notice how quickly St. Louis closes space as a coordinated group, cutting off passes sideways and forward. Delgado has two open options but plays into pressure toward Puig, a strange choice from a player who typically takes what the defense gives him. Why did Puig demand the ball when playing through Julian Aude would have released him into open space?
St. Louis City close space, and Mark Delgado picks a bad pass.
Less than a minute later, Puig drops back next to Edwin Cerrillo to receive a pass facing his own goal. He ignores four passing options and dribbles in an arc past Cerrillo before passing to heavily marked Joseph Paintsil who manages to win a throw in.
Notice how quickly three City players closed on Puig, with three more poised to intercept or join the attack. Their position in the middle of the field exposed the Galaxy in front of goal. This sequence revealed to St. Louis what to expect from Puig when he receives the ball in that position. In the next sequence, Puig dribbles away from open passing lanes.
Riqui Puig drops deep and dribbles when he could pass.
That, in a nutshell, describes the Puig puzzle. From the perspective of Vanney-ball dribbling sideways past a teammate away from clear passing opportunities makes no sense. It disrupts the defensive shape, delays the passing and movement tempo, and ruins the positional spacing necessary to play a possession system.
The very next sequence illustrates how effective Vanney-ball can be. John McCarthy notices the congestion around Puig and loops a curling pass out wide to Aude. Puig moves forward into the midfield, and the Galaxy increase the passing tempo around the back. With City defenders struggling to maintain their shape, Puig drops back again. With time and space to maneuver, he angles a beautiful fifty-yard ball to Aude on the dead run.
Goalkeeper John McCarthy loops a pass to Aude.
Notice how every member of the City defense runs back towards their own goal. Each player can only cover the space in front of them as they run. Vanney-ball succeeds when the defense must move, reducing the space they can cover.
After the Galaxy stretch the City defense, Riqui Puig pings a perfect pass to Aude.
If the defense were stationary, they would easily cut out the Puig’s pass. But they cannot cover the space, so the ball reaches Aude. The entire play forced City defenders to move, first side to side, then backward toward their own goal. With the defense scrambling, Aude and Diego Fagundez combine to set up Dejan Jovelic for a sitter, 1-0 Galaxy.
Diego Fagundez and Julian Aude combine to feed Dejan Jovelic for a 1-0 lead.
In the twenty-seventh minute, Cerrillo receives the ball directly in front of the goal a few feet in front of Puig, who demands the ball from him. Rather than keeping up the tempo by passing back to Yoshida or Caceres, he plays a soft pass back to Puig. City midfielder Thomas Ostrak recognizes the pattern, jumps the play, and waltzes in on McCarthy, 1-1.
Riqui Puig exposes the Galaxy defense and gives the ball away.
Given the previous success of opening up space through ball movement and breaking the opponent’s defensive lines, the play makes no sense. The Cerrillo pass does not fit the Vanney-ball pattern of play, and Puig’s positioning gives him no opportunity to see the pressure coming.
Why does Puig, arguably the Galaxy’s best player and perhaps the best chance creator in MLS not named Messi, keep ignoring the obvious and attempt the difficult?
One explanation could be that Puig does not play soccer based on a system. Like a host of Barcelona players of yore, Puig is a pure relational player. He hunts relationships both on and off the ball that will open up the game for his team.
That explains why he dribbled right past Cerrillo hunting for Paintsil. Neither player responded to his movements so the play stalled. It explains why his attempt to combine in front of his own goal failed. Cerrillo gave him a soft pass but did not move to create space and provide an option. It also explains why he connected with Aude who caught Puig’s attention by waving and shouting as he took off up the flank to combine with Fagundez.
Puig wants to build attacking ideas through relationships with players. Systems and patterns only serve as a game board for collective creativity. He plays into pressure as often as not because he trusts in the relational understanding more than patterns in a system.
So far, early in the season, the Galaxy play better when they fall behind because the system gives way to relationships. On balance, relationships seem to be working better than the system.
Players develop relational understanding on the streets and in the parks, where referees, offside rules, and even boundary lines are optional. They learn to understand each other. The player with the ball dictates the movement off the ball. A relational coach observes the players without establishing a structure, sometimes allowing them to play for a week or more without positions, objectives, or patterns of play.
Players naturally fall into different patterns together as they develop a better understanding. Eventually, patterns of play emerge that look quite different from systems. Relational teams often stay together all over the pitch, playing toward their teammates rather than away from pressure. Movement off the ball and small gestures communicate, and defense earns them the right to relate. Nothing is scripted, but relational players often form a box that affords dozens of movements and passing combinations. Coaches help to point out what works and what doesn’t.
The Galaxy victory against Kansas City reveals how a collection of elite relational players can literally destroy a system, both their own and that of the opponent. For the first sixty minutes, nothing worked for the Galaxy. Puig struggled to develop productive relationships, while Delgado, who plays Vanney-ball instinctively, struggled to bring balance to the system. Two talented players played completely different games.
Meanwhile, Peter Vermes’s Kansas City team showed the Galaxy what Vermes-style possession-based soccer looks like. By the end of the first half, they built a 2-0 lead, walking all the way to the Galaxy penalty box without resistance after winning the ball.
First-half images show Puig struggling to combine with teammates who tried to maintain the spacing characteristic of a possession-based system.
Riqui Puig struggles to create relationships in the first half.
One player changed everything. Gaston Brugman instantly renewed the relationship he forged with Puig two years ago. Delgado began playing off Brugman, and the magic of relational soccer flickered to life.
Yamane, Delgado, Brugman, and Puig create a classic box relationship.
This Aude-Brugman-Jovelic-Puig box led to a goal called offside.
Notice how much closer together the players are and how the positioning of the defenders is basically irrelevant. The four players will improvise together because they know each other better than the defense knows them. The whole exceeds the sum of the parts.
With the set-piece goal to energize them, relational soccer began to flow. Jovelic improved his relationship with Puig over the past three games. Jovelic did not expect the ball played to him in the Nashville game. This time, he perfectly anticipated two precise passes in similar situations and finished off both goals, though one was called offside.
Relational soccer sets up Dejan Jovelic’s goal.
On the second sequence that led to the goal that counted, notice how Brugman pushes the ball toward Puig, who responds by checking back. The two understood that Riqui would be in a position to make a play. Jovelic sees the play develop the same way it did on the offside goal. The timing on this occasion is perfect, and the goal counts.
Aude, Fagundez, Yamane, and Pec naturally adapted to relational soccer after Brugman replaced Cerrillo, most likely because they experienced it on the streets and fields of their childhood. They may have played for development teams that promote and value relational soccer.
What does this mean for Cerrillo, Paintsil, and Delgado, who live and breathe system soccer? That question lies squarely on the head of head coach Greg Vanney and his staff. They need to provide enough structure for the team to defend together, but he also needs to promote and fine-tune the relational soccer that rescued three points in Kansas City.