Photo credit: Aaron Morgan / Quakes Epicenter
Way back in the heady days of a week ago, San Jose was able to get two vintage Chris Wondolowski goals to get past Real Salt Lake. The tight away victory belied how well RSL played: the Earthquakes had only one shot on target through 60’ and just couldn’t get through the Salt Lake defense.
Freddy Juarez had a new trick that neutralized San Jose’s attacking strengths while poking at their biggest weaknesses. The Seattle Sounders used it a bit too, and Matías Almeyda is going to have to figure out a way around it if he’s going to get the season back on track. Meet the Accordion Press.
What’s a Press, and Why is this Different?
Through their first three games, San Jose’s back line was pressed in every match. This means that opponents’ attackers would try and force a turnover in the Earthquakes’ side of the field, in order to win the ball in a good position and strike quickly. San Jose’s man-to-man defense and stubbornness at playing out of the back made this an attractive proposition: win the ball close to goal when nobody’s set to defend you, and you can practically dribble it in.
You may recognize this as Exactly How Seattle And Portland Got Their Firsts. It starts by putting three men on the two San Jose centerbacks and the goalkeeper, and forcing passes either long across the field (which allows the defense to reset) or to the nearside fullback (who can be trapped against the touchline)
San Jose was able to defeat the press against Dallas and DC United by basically calling the bet: you might make it tough to pass to Eric Remedi, but we like the odds of Cristian Espinoza and Cade Cowell running right at your centerbacks (at 1:26 of the video below)
So Freddy Juarez did something different: the forwards pressed like in a traditional press, but the entire back line was pulled back to deal with Espinoza, Cowell, and Carlos Fierro. Pablo Ruiz stayed with La Chofis Lopez and Yueill, hoping to slow them down enough to get the Salt Lake defense back.
Thus, the accordion: two banks of four, with the first trying to pry a turnover and the second stopping San Jose from capitalizing. The two center midfielders just try to keep the game in front of them if the Earthquakes break the press.
There were a few times when San Jose worked the ball quickly to free Jackson Yueill into space, only for La Joya to see that anyone he wanted to pass to was double-covered.
Sure, San Jose could hold the ball by having Espinoza or Cowell check to the center stripe, but if you’re the opponent, you gladly let those two run away from your goal. That’s the opposite of what they’re best at.
Against a team like San Jose that wants nothing else more than to turn the hips of the centerbacks, this essentially turns the entire backline into sweepers. They keep a low line, which doesn’t allow the forwards into space. It turns Yueill into someone like Vako, carrying the ball up the field rather than spraying diagonals. And it keeps pressure on San Jose’s back line, where they are still liable to give up soft goals.
How to Destroy an Accordion
One thing I’ve come to enjoy about watching Almeyda’s teams is that he cares less about specific game states than getting his team to a point where these weird wrinkles they practice end up being deployed to his advantage. So you don’t have something like Velko Paunovic, relying on One Weird Trick to make up points in an April away match to the point where there’s no week-to-week repetition. It’s instead like wearing the right pair of shoes to the beach.
We’ve seen a lot over the past few years of Almeyda replacing a centerback with a striker, and dropping the defensive anchor into the backline. Against Salt Lake, Wondo and Andy Rios came in for La Chofis and Tanner Beason in the 72nd minute:
A four-man backline behind three forwards is pretty good odds for the defenders. The same backline against five forwards is, well, not. With Rios and Wondo, two decent aerial targets — especially against the 5’7” Pablo Ruiz — San Jose was less interested in playing through the press and could just drop it over everyone’s head. So RSL had to fall back.
This didn’t really help them, though, because their wingers didn’t really want to defend. So once San Jose had possession, they just overloaded the defense’s blind side and made weird diagonal runs — cheers to you, Carlos Fierro — to open up space (5:23 of the video below):
I’m not sure that “play five forwards” is a 90-minute strategy, even for Matías Almeyda. But the fact that the five-forward strategy is so familiar to the players meant that they could put it to good use against Real Salt Lake.
Conclusions: The Accordion is Here To Stay
So much of soccer in 2021 is people saying ruefully “soccer is a game of transitions” after a team concedes a dumb-looking goal. The accordion press forces the issue near the opponent’s goal in the hopes of hitting a transition, but then does something of a magic trick: it doesn’t allow the opposing attack to hit a transition on them.
A lone midfielder dribbling into a bank of four while three forwards figure out their runs isn’t a dangerous opportunity, it’s just a practice session drill. The accordion press neutralizes an opponent’s speed while capitalizing on the threat of a traditional press. So long as teams want to set their attacking structure and not just boot the ball up like some Premier League minnow, the accordion press is going to serve as a useful defense that frustrates the heck out of speedy dudes.
So for a team as full of speedy dudes as San Jose, they’re going to need to find a way to defeat it without just hoping for Goonie Time heroics. Hope isn’t a strategy, and Wondo isn’t a strategy. Next article, I’ll look at some actual methods that might work.
