Photo credit: mlssoccer.com team at the MLS is Back tournament
Last night, I might have scared a few people with the prospect that, in the event of a healthy and fit Judson, Magnus Eriksson might start ahead of Jackson Yueill in central midfield tomorrow against Toronto FC.
As I elaborated in my follow-up tweet, there may be many reasons for Almeyda to do this, and he may have been planning for it all spring:
- Jackson is expected to be gone for Olympic qualifying starting March 10. Time to consider what the midfield will need to look like then.
- Jackson also missed the start of preseason with the team, and so Magnus has been playing at the “8” (mostly box-to-box midfield) all spring with Jackson playing the “6” (defensive midfield) given the Judson injury. Jackson became a mainstay at the 8 last season.
- Almeyda always starts Magnus. When was the last time he didn’t in a league game? However, he didn’t always play Yueill. Yueill had to win his spot.
This tells me that although Yueill has improved the most in El Pelado’s system (per Almeyda’s comments on Wednesday), Eriksson has always been a fixture in the system. Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. The Quakes will need to get by without Yueill for a bit, might as well start getting used to it. If the U-23s qualify for the Olympics, it will happen again. And then probably again during World Cup qualifying. Magnus isn’t going anywhere in 2020. Here’s what Magnus does that Jackson does not:
- He takes corners (in-swingers from the right side)
- He takes set pieces
- With Wondo on the bench, he takes penalties
In addition he had the most key passes on the team in 2019. Maybe you think, “yeah, but look at Jackson’s passing. Jackson hits those through balls. Jackson sprays the balls to the wings.” Sure thing, but I want to show you something called “progressive passing”. Progressive passes are passes that happen in the final 60% of the field and end up 25% closer to the goal than when they started.
Here are Jackson Yueill’s 2019 progressive passes:
And here are Magnus Eriksson’s 2019 progressive passes:
Not much different, huh?
If you overlay trend lines on both players, it gets even more spooky: they both complete much better to the right than the left, and they both tend to go more right than left, even though Magnus is left-footed.
Magnus is even a bit better at slipping the ball in behind to Cristian Esponiza for those hard cutback passes across the box and low-driven crosses.
That’s where our feature graph comes in today:
When you look at top progressive passers in the league, Magnus Eriksson is pretty gosh darn good. This graph highlights players from San Jose, LAFC, LA Galaxy and Seattle, just so it didn’t get too crowded. Interestingly, Yueill isn’t one of the superior progressive passers. Even Nick Lima is a bit ahead of him. Jackson’s strength comes from deeper balls, but often those balls don’t result in high-value outcomes. The size of the dot here shows the value of the progressive pass in xG gained.
Also, there’s this comparison from a new tool created within American Soccer Analysis:
Even though they played different positions, there are a lot of similarities between the two players. Magnus has more defensive characteristics. Jackson is a bit better at carrying the ball and progressing it.
So perhaps Jackson Yueill will start against Toronto FC but perhaps not. Just know that Matias Almeyda has already been thinking about this — and maybe he even has his own version of this “progressive pass” chart — and he’s telling himself (in Spanish, I’m sure) he’s in pretty good shape if he can bring in Andy Rios to score goals in Eriksson’s 10 role and keep Magnus on the field as an 8 while Yueill is off winning a gold medal.
Enjoy the game.
