PHOTO: ISI Photos
Following a disheartening California Clasico loss to the Zlatan-less LA Galaxy, 1-0, on Friday night courtesy of an out-of-the-box strike from Romain Alessandrini and a stellar save amidst a less-than-stellar season from deposed goalkeeper David Bingham, last Sunday morning mlssoccer.com’s Bobby Warshaw (@bwarshaw14) and Matt Doyle (@MattDoyle76) gave the San Jose Earthquakes a public shaming for their issues with “Zone 14” defending.
Do the Quakes need to make a change in the center of the park? https://t.co/zRFUgzMH3Q
— Major League Soccer (@MLS) May 28, 2018
Alessandrini’s game-winning effort was the sixth goal against the Quakes in the Zone 14 area this season. But is this as big of a problem as Warshaw and Doyle made it out to be? Given the Quakes troubles out of left back, and the constant shuffling of the backline characters this season, is Zone 14 defending really the biggest concern facing the Quakes coming into the World Cup stretch? Since Panama’s announced their 23-man roster includes Anibal Godoy and Harold Cummings, fresh questions will be opening up about who will be operating defensively for the Quakes for the next 5 or so games in-and-around Zone 14.
What is Zone 14 anyway?
According to Sportskeedia, Zone 14 was discovered by Professor Tom Reilly at the Liverpool John Moores University Research Institute for Sports and Exercise Sciences around 1999, as the result of studying the differences between “successful” and “unsuccessful” teams in the 1998 World Cup with further confirmation coming in 2000 at the Euros. Reilly and his researchers divided the pitch into 18 equal-sized zones with six zones each in the defensive, middle and attacking thirds. Zone 14 was the number assigned to the zone in the central attacking area behind the 18-yard box. It would become known as the “golden square”. In the 1998 World Cup study, successful teams made an average of 25 passes from Zone 14 and unsuccessful teams made an average of 15 passes. The elite central midfielder on the French team who won those two tournaments? The same guy who just this past weekend won the UEFA Champions League as Real Madrid manager for the third straight year (and then promptly resigned) – Zinedine Zidane, who has been called the “master of Zone 14”.
Since that initial research, a lot has been made of the utilization of Zone 14 and much more research has been done. The popular use of the 4-3-3 formation in the last decade or so can be linked to teams wanting to have their best attacking player operating in Zone 14 right behind the striker or central forward. Not only has Real Madrid been hugely successful in this regard, their top rival Barcelona has as well. In the modern game, teams want players in this area who can be the triple threat: shooting, passing and dribbling to create the best opportunities.
Accordingly, defenses have needed to adjust to the offensive focus on this area of the pitch in front of the goal box. As with any game strategy, the specifics depend on the opposing players and their skills and tendencies, with a focus on neutralizing them. Many would argue, the team which has been the most successful in neutralizing Real Madrid and Barcelona in Zone 14 has been Atletico Madrid spearheaded by their manager, Diego Simone. A full analysis can be found here, but, utilizing primarily a 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1, Simone’s and Atleti’s focus is largely preventing passes and dribbling into Zone 14. Sometime this means giving up other, much less dangerous, spaces in the middle third and also space in Zones 13 and 15. There would be worse strategies than funneling teams into trying to get off crosses from outside the box in Zones 16 and 18, particularly if you have defenders who are competent at heading out crosses (which the 2018 Quakes do).
Okay, so Zone 14 is important – what does this have to do with the Quakes and their issues?
First, let’s come to grips with the situation here: it’s not good…at all. It’s been painfully obvious the Quakes had an issue long before it was proclaimed by Warshaw and Doyle. With all the focus on individual errors and the left back position – and not to say those issues aren’t important – but maybe the Quakes fan base has been distracted all along from where the most serious issues lie. But one only needs to reflect back on the goals scored against San Jose in the first two games of the season versus Minnesota United and Sporting KC to see this was already a problem.
Minnesota United: 1 goal, 1 assist, 1 key pass and 2 successful dribbles in Zone 14
Take out the goal, and you might even say it wasn’t too bad. After all, if protecting Zone 14 was easy, everyone would be doing it, but even the best defending teams will have some statistical data there almost every game. But the second Molino goal was concerning as it started with him standing right in the middle of the Zone 14 area, which apparently no one considered to be a problem.
Watch the full goal buildup here. Neither defensive midfielder, Godoy nor Jungwirth, is in a position to protect the back line from Molino, no one prevents him from turning knowing there will be passing options behind him, and no one steps quickly to him once he turns.
It would go from bad-to-worse two weeks later against Sporting KC, after Stahre claimed these defensive lapses against Minnesota United were corrected in training. To be fair, Sporting KC is among the best offensive teams in Zone 14 this season, perhaps the best, and they just dominated the golden square against the Quakes in a 2-3 away loss.
Sporting KC: 2 goals, 1 assist, 4 key passes, 3 successful dribbles and 3 missed shots in Zone 14
Remember the three actions offenses want to take in Zone 14: shots, passes and dribbles? San Jose didn’t prevent any of these. Add on 3 missed shots not shown here as well, and this qualifies as a defensive disaster.
LA Galaxy: 1 goal, 1 assist, 1 SOT, 3 missed shots, 3 successful dribbles and 2 key passes into Zone 14
The entire pitch is shown here so it is obvious the concentration of Galaxy offensive activity is in Zone 14. The chance Sigi Schmid and the Galaxy staff were unaware of the Quakes defensive issues here is slim-and-none. While the key passes were taken out here just to remove some of the noise from multiple corners which resulted in missed shots, you can see here even in a “boring” game without a shot on target until the last few minutes, the Quakes were yielding too many opportunities in the golden square.
So where do we stand now?
Since then, three more goals have been scored against the Quakes in Zone 14 including the Valeri free kick at Avaya Stadium, which took at least point from San Jose. As well as the Alessandrini goal last Friday, which also took away a mostly-deserved road point. Both heartbreaking goals have contributed to a now 17-game clean sheet-less streak for the Earthquakes extending back to September 2017. 17 games is half a season’s worth of games. The fewest clean sheets in a season in San Jose history is three in 1997, so the Quakes seem well on their way to breaking that mark. The MLS all-time low mark is two clean sheets in a season.
Thanks to raw data from the good folks at American Soccer Analytics (ASA) and a lot of spreadsheet magic, we can see where the Earthquakes stand, specifically in Zone 14 defensive categories across shooting, passing, dribbling and fouls committed. Fouls committed also matter in Zone 14, because they give dangerous free kicks like this.
Defending Zone 14 shooting
The Earthquakes sit dead last with 6 goals conceded in Zone 14 with Montreal, also not good team defending Zone 14, having 5 goals against. Making matters worse, the combined xGA of shots Zone 14 is only 2.48, so that means the Quakes are significantly under-performing almost a 2.5-to-1 ratio against the expected goals. This signifies either a major shot pressure issue exists or a goalkeeping issue exists, and, generally speaking, the problem isn’t Andrew Tarbell. In xGA alone, the Quakes are 18th in MLS, so even that is poor. San Jose is also 18th in shots against from within Zone 14.
Defending Zone 14 passing
The ASA raw data allows us to look at multiple passing categories for Zone 14: passes into the zone (dangerous), passes within the zone (very dangerous), passes out of the zone (extremely dangerous) along with key passes (passes leading to a goal, shot on goal or shot) and the somewhat-subjective “big chances” (passes leading to a clear goal scoring opportunity).
In terms of passes coming into the golden zone, the Quakes sit dead last with the highest number of pass attempts against (27.2 per game) and completions against (18.4 per game). For passes within the zone, San Jose is 19th (10.3 per game) in attempts against and 19th (8.0 per game) in completions against. And for passes going out of the zone (the most dangerous), the Quakes are 22nd in the league in both attempts against (17.6 per game) and 21st in completions against (13.1 per game). There is no silver lining in this data. Against the Earthquakes, talented players know they can get access to Zone 14, move the ball within it, and then move the ball out of it (or shoot) when a good opportunity presents itself. Even WhoScored’s algorithms have figured out the Quakes have a big issue against skilled players rating them “Very Weak”. Defensively, all this movement in and out of Zone 14 makes the Earthquakes feel like the most porous team in the league, but we’re just getting started with this analysis.
For key passes and big chances, the ones we are concerned with are the ones which are passed within Zone 14 or passed outside of Zone 14. The key passes coming into Zone 14 end in a shot, and we’ve already covered that in the shooting section. The Quakes are 20th overall in key passes within and coming from Zone 14 (2.58 per game). They are 14th in key passes against in all other zones, so this makes Zone 14 the most concerning place. Corner kicks have been excluded from the analysis as these show up in Zones 16 and 18 and would add noise to the numbers. For big chances, which are a bit subjective, San Jose sits 15th in the league inside Zone 14 (0.33 per game) and 8th in all other zones, again making Zone 14 the most concerning. In case you are wondering, the left back position generally covers Zones 15 and 18, and even combining both zones, the Quakes have given up eight fewer key passes than in Zone 14 and less than half of the big chances given up in Zone 14.
Defending Zone 14 dribbling
Statistically speaking, a dribble occurs when there is an attempt by a player to get away from an opposing player while maintaining possession of the ball. Dribbles can be successful or unsuccessful with unsuccessful dribbles usually ending in a dispossession. If you were looking for some good news here, you won’t find it. The Quakes are last in attempts against (3.0 per game) and 22nd in successful dribbles (1.83 per game) in Zone 14.
Fouls committed within Zone 14
Valeri game-winning free kicks aside, the one thing you can say for the Quakes is despite all this opponent movement in Zone 14, they aren’t fouling very much finding themselves 6th in the league with only six fouls committed. That said, this might be what Florian Jungwirth was referring to by “youth soccer”. Sometimes people moving through that area a bunch need to get knocked on their can – just not Diego Valeri or Sebastian Giovinco with the game on the line, thank you very much.
Conclusion
So not only is the picture as bleak as Doyle and Warshaw painted about the San Jose defending in Zone 14 – it’s probably worse. For all the pre-season talk of Stahre being a “defensive coach”, the Quakes just aren’t showing it. It may be the coaching; it may be the personnel. We can certainly talk about the current defensive midfielders and their propensity to wander, or the central defenders and their propensity to have attackers dribble by them, but if Mikael Stahre and his players alike don’t decide to channel their inner Diego Simone and Atleti in upcoming games against smooth golden square operators such as LAFC, Sporting KC, and Atlanta United, the new fewest-clean-sheets-in-MLS-history record will soon belong to these 2018 San Jose Earthquakes.
