At the time of Cristian Espinoza’s joined the San Jose Earthquakes on loan from Villarreal, questions abounded: Is he a winger or a striker? Why was he getting so few minutes for Boca Juniors? Why had Villarreal sent him out on loan for multiple years while he never once played for Villarreal? What did Villarreal see in him when they signed him?
In his fourth season as a professional, one thing is certain: Cristian Espinoza has not had the type of opportunity he is currently getting with the San Jose Earthquakes. In his three previous years covering four seasons, Espinoza only started 16 games, making a mere 41 appearances. That is not the playing time a young 24-year-old professional needs. The Earthquakes have welcomed him with open arms, and, it’s safe to say in this young season, he is thriving for Matías Almeyda so far. He has clearly been the most potent offensive player for the Quakes, although given they have scored six goals in six games, that seems to not be saying much at all.
However, for a new MLS player, Espinoza is showing that he is adapting very quickly to the league. After his first official appearance, a 1-2 loss to the visiting Montreal Impact, Espinoza said via an interpreter, “It’s a high-level, physical league. It’s going to be a challenge for me.” Since that game, Espinoza has shown he is someone MLS teams have to factor into their game plans.
One way to measure Espinoza’s effectiveness as an attacker is to look at his Expected Goals + Expected Assists. Expected Goals (xG) measure the quality of a player’s shot and its chance to result in a goal. Expected Assists (xA) measure the quality of a player’s pass that results in a shot, given the shot’s chance to result in a goal. Both can be predictive about a team’s or player’s performance over longer periods of time and can often predict over- or under-performance. Both metrics tend to work best after about 10 games. After six weeks, these metrics are just starting to take shape and give us an idea of how a player may perform. The combination of the two metrics is xG+xA.
That’s pretty good company Espinoza is sitting in after seven weeks of games in MLS 2019. Of course, some players can get high xA numbers because they feed the ball to other players who create their own shots. One way to check if a player’s key pass numbers are a red herring is to look at “intentional” key passes versus “unintentional”.
We can see Espinoza is in this list for having 10 open play key passes through six games. Six of these key passes were deemed to be intentional. While that pales in comparison to Carlos Vela’s 14 and Victor Rodriguez’s 12 intentional key passes in open play, not all key passes are created equal – some create higher chances than the others. This is where Expected Assists comes into play: By adding up the xA for each of these key passes, and separating the key passes into “intentional” from “unintentional” buckets, we can make the metric more meaningful in terms of a player’s direct contribution to shot creation.
By looking at xA, we can see that Espinoza actually has the third-highest xA from intentional key passes in the league from open play. With data provided by American Soccer Analysis, we can look at where these passes are coming from and where the ball is being received prior to each shot.
From this it is obvious where Espinoza is most effective. It’s also clear why he didn’t get “intentional” credit for four key passes which completed away from goal. Only one of these key passes turned into an assist, meaning that at the moment, Espinoza is underperforming his xA by 0.9 in open play. This means he perhaps should have had an additional assist based on the quality of his passes, and that’s a good indicator of his effectiveness.
But xG+xA only tells part of the story.
Espinoza is not only involved in the final product for the Quakes. He’s also been effective in other areas of the pitch, and there are other metrics we can look at to understand Espinoza’s interaction. The only players besides Espinoza to log the maximum number of minutes (584) this season are Anibal Godoy and goalkeeper Daniel Vega. Espinoza, a winger, is involved in 16% of the team’s possessions at this point, while Godoy, a central midfielder, is involved in 19%. Those are not surprising numbers. What is interesting is when you consider 30% of the possessions Espinoza is involved in result in a shot, while only 16% of the possessions Godoy is in do. That’s a staggering difference, and, of San Jose players with at least 300 minutes, only Danny Hoesen is higher. Espinoza also has a big lead within the team in Expected Goal Chains (xGC) which indicates the effectiveness of the shots his possession chains produce whether he takes the final shot or not.
Espinoza recently commented that he wants to play in the United States for as long as possible. Given the one win on top of five losses for San Jose, he may not have the strongest supporting cast. Despite this, so far Espinoza is proving he has what it takes to play at a high level in MLS, and, finally, is getting the playing time his career desperately needs on a team who desperately needs him. Welcome to San Jose, Cristian Espinoza.
