Hello, What the Heck (is going on with Chicago’s offense)

Courtesy of Chicago Red Stars/ISI Photos

It's one day before the Chicago Red Stars' semifinal against Sky Blue FC, and I feel the need to wade into the weeds a little bit here.

One caveat I feel the need to make on the onset of this piece is that we're working with an outrageously small sample size of games with which to analyze almost anything. Throughout a number of seasons, Chicago has always been a team scheduled on a controlled build, with the standings early in the season not expected to reflect the way the season ends. Chicago's also historically been a team that knows the dangers of peaking too soon, and plateauing when the games that matter roll around. The fact they've made it this far with the level of output they're getting from their front line is a testament to the teams consistency.

But it also seems fair in the spirit of a chance to try again to take a look at what is and is not working up top. More things are going well than it seems in real-time, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's all going to get pulled together in the next week.

I'm inclined to focus on Chicago's quarterfinal, since I believe this is going to be the Red Stars' necessary XI going forward in the face of their most recent injury report (identical to the quarterfinal, with the unfortunate addition of Ella Stevens to those watching from the stands). Some of the ongoing Challenge Cup attacking issues will influence roster decisions in the offseason, but today I'm more interested in figuring out what the Red Stars are going to be able to do right now.

We've all seen the chances that Watt in particular can create on her own, but I want to focus on attacking distribution, in the hope that the system can start working better in addition to strong individual efforts. I'd also like to say that I'm relatively new to deriving conclusions from pass and touch maps, so work with me here if you disagree with what I think these stats say. Let me know in the comments what you'd change!

So, first of all, let's look at the front line of Kealia Watt, Rachel Hill, and Katie Johnson:

As we discussed on the podcast this week..kind of a mess! Hill spent a lot of time on the right side of the pitch, looking for ways to get involved and turn the ball back centrally, where she might've been better utilized waiting for that service. What you see here seems to indicate that Watt, Hill, and Johnson all looked to feed back into the midfield, or to find ways to set themselves up outside. What unfortunately didn't follow were many touches in the box.

But let's back up into a little bit of a bigger picture, because there's a huge part of the attacking system missing if you're just focusing on the wingers. Casey Short and Bianca St. Georges pushed forward frequently against OL Reign, also..looking to get service into the box. Pushing the outside backs forward to support the attack relies a lot on the work of Julie Ertz and Sarah Gorden to hold things down in the back, and leaves them open to being split down the middle themselves, but that's the benefit of having a player like Ertz in your backline.

In the spirit of supporting how this can work going forward, let's look at what was successful from the attacking five:

Short pushed up further on the left than St. Georges did on the right, and overlapped with Watt well. St. Georges spent more energy cutting centrally to feed distribution in the middle of the pitch. And they were finding Vanessa DiBernardo and Savannah McCaskill throughout the match.

Now let's look at what did not:

End-line crosses! Not great! Passes into the box..ouch! This is indicative of sturdy defense, and probably still some rust, but also evidence that the Red Stars were struggling to come up with final runs to receive balls close to goal after Short (and central players like Hill) tried to free up crosses on the outside. It also maybe leads one to suspect that while the connectivity throughout the team isn't terrible at all, the front line simply are not finding *each other*, which cuts whole lanes of attack out of Chicago's arsenal.

So, what's to be done?

For this upcoming week, I think the cavalry has to come in the form of a shooting midfield. With Gautrat unavailable, McCaskill and DiBernardo's skillsets lend themselves to run more like duel No. 10's. Them pushing forward puts more pressure on Danny Colaprico (and the already strained center-back duo), but it gives the Red Stars the ability to establish a threat in the middle of the offense, in lieu of finding that in a center forward.

- Another solution, as presented to me by a Homie, would be to push Ertz back into the No. 6 role as support for a higher midfield line, and have one of Chicago's many capable backup center-backs hold down the defense with Gorden, but you didn't hear that from me -

McCaskill and DiBernardo successful passes:

Unsuccessful:

Against OL Reign, DiBernardo and McCaskill did a great job kicking the ball out wide, and providing a central outlet in front of the box, but instead of testing the Reign defense centrally, more often than not they'd kick the ball back out to the wings - and then wait as a top of the box outlet again. When they'd turn inward, the distribution became a lot less effective. Some of this is obviously a testament to the Reign defense, but if the motion isn't going to come from the central offense, the attacking midfield is going to have to start, for lack of a better term, taking some chances.

A lot has been made of the new attacking pieces in the Red Stars lineup needing time to get used to a new system, but an underrated part of that is that the Chicago midfield is also having to adjust to not having outlets they are accustomed to. Do I trust the team to get the striker position figured out in the offseason, absolutely. But instead of pushing a front-line still figuring itself out to produce in a high-intensity situation, I'd also hope the Red Stars midfield is ready to step up, in both a literal and figurative sense.

And if that doesn't work, I'd also take Julie Ertz gunning up the middle to do it herself. I trust her.