Five games, five wins, eighteen goals scored and only three conceded. It’s a very good start, but I’m not going to pretend the table means more than it does after five games. We have made a fast start, the players are confident and the supporters have every right to enjoy it, but the real test is whether we can keep improving when teams start adapting to us.
What I like most is that we have already shown different ways to win. We’ve scored two away at Brooklyn, six against Detroit, three at Loudoun, three against Tampa and four away at Rhode Island. That tells me we aren’t dependent on one type of game. But there are still things I don’t like. We’ve conceded sloppy goals, we have periods where our control disappears and I know there are moments where we can be much more aggressive with the ball.
The league is already starting to separate a little. Birmingham, Hartford and Indy are close enough that one bad weekend changes everything, while Louisville and Pittsburgh are sitting there with games in hand. So, calma. We have done our job so far, but nothing has been won.
The table is the headline, but it only tells me where we are, not why we are there. That is what I want to dig into now. Five wins are fantastic, but I want to know which players are driving them, where the performances are sustainable, and where the numbers are hiding problems that the results are currently covering up. Goals, assists, chance creation, progression, defensive actions, ball retention, even the players who are perhaps contributing without showing up in the obvious statistics.
If we are going to stay at the top of this league, the next step is understanding exactly what is producing these five wins, and which parts of it I can trust.
Jonathan Tomkinson — RCB: Tomkinson is giving me something I value enormously in a back three: security without cowardice. An 84th-percentile interception number tells me he is anticipating the action rather than simply reacting to it, while 63rd-percentile tackling and 63rd-percentile headers give us a defender who can compete physically. His 85% passing is useful, but the 36th-percentile progressive passing is where I want more. I don’t need my right centre-back to be a playmaker, but I do need him to recognise when the opponent has been moved and the next line is available. At the moment Tomkinson is a stabiliser, and that has value, but if Gielen is going to be our aggressor with the ball then Tomkinson has to understand that his security gives the others permission to gamble.
Miguel Pajaro — CCB: Pajaro gives me two excellent numbers and one problem. 93rd-percentile interceptions and 91st-percentile passing tell me he reads the game and generally gives the ball back to us rather than the opponent, but 43rd-percentile progressive passing says that his distribution is more about maintaining control than changing the geometry of the game, while 47th-percentile tackling is merely adequate. As the central defender I want him to recognise the moment immediately after we recover possession, because that is when the opponent is most vulnerable. His job cannot simply be to keep us safe. I want him to make the first pass that hurts them. Right now he gives me control, but not quite enough initiative.
Wout Gielen — LCB: This is the player who makes me smile. 68th-percentile progressive passing, 95th-percentile key passes, 87th-percentile interceptions and 80th-percentile headers, at twenty years old, is a profile that tells me he is already behaving like the defender I want in this system. The key-pass number is particularly interesting because it says he isn’t just progressing the ball into midfield and stopping there; he is finding actions that actually create something. His 81% passing isn’t spectacular, but I don’t care if some of the failed passes are the ambitious ones. I would rather have a centre-back who occasionally attempts the difficult pass than one who completes 95% of sideways passes. Gielen is already showing me the defender we are trying to build.
Nico Carrera — CCB: Thirty minutes tells us almost nothing, so I refuse to manufacture a conclusion from the data. The important thing with Carrera is that his role in this squad has to be judged against the players ahead of him and the specific behaviours we demand from the position, not against an empty statistical sample. I need to see him in meaningful minutes before I can say whether he is helping the structure or simply occupying a squad place. For now, the instruction is simple: earn the next thirty minutes, then earn the next thirty.
Francisco Javier Castillo — RWB: Castillo is ridiculous, frankly. 96th-percentile key passes, 99th-percentile dribbling and 99th-percentile distance covered at nineteen years old is an extraordinary combination because the numbers belong together: he isn’t dribbling for entertainment, he is carrying the ball over huge distances and then producing final-third actions. I don’t want to coach the aggression out of him. I want to improve the moments in which he chooses to attack, combine or hold. The raw tools are already there, and the most exciting thing is that he is producing these numbers while still learning the position and the demands of the system. He’s not a project because he lacks ability; he’s a project because he’s nineteen.
Josh Torquato — LWB: The sample is tiny, but 96th-percentile key passes and 95th-percentile dribbling immediately get my attention. However, these figures are virtually meaningless over 76 minutes, so I won’t pretend otherwise, but the creative numbers suggest that Torquato has the technical aggression to operate as the left wing-back in our structure. He is competing for a role where we ask the player to understand two very different worlds: defend the width without the ball, then become part of our attacking mechanism with it. I don’t need him to prove he is better than Cappis or Rocha; I need him to become tactically reliable enough that the system survives when we rotate. The talent is there. Now comes the education.
Isaiah Parente — RWB: There is nothing meaningful here because there are zero minutes, and that is actually the most important information. Parente is outside the current competitive picture, and with his age, wage and contract situation, I don’t see a reason to distort the squad structure to find minutes for him. If a player isn’t contributing to the model and isn’t developing into something we need, we have to be ruthless. Football is not a museum. We cannot keep players simply because we once decided they were useful.
Christian Cappis — LWB: Cappis is perhaps the most tactically revealing player in the entire dataset. 97th-percentile progressive passing and 87th-percentile key passes tell me that his movement inside from the left is creating the additional midfielder we designed it to create, but the 64% passing and 56th-percentile possession loss show the price of asking him to play aggressively in difficult areas. I don’t want him to become safer just to make the statistics prettier. His job is to step inside, help create the pivot and give Cremaschi the freedom to attack the box. What I need from Cappis is not less risk, but better judgement about which risks are worth taking. If he learns that distinction, the role becomes extremely powerful.
David Sibrian — DMRC: Sibrian is nineteen and already producing 77th-percentile progressive passing and 98th-percentile key passes, which is absurdly encouraging. His 72% passing is not perfect, but again I care enormously about what kind of passes he is attempting. If he is trying to break lines rather than simply circulate possession, I can tolerate some failure. His 49th-percentile possession loss is perfectly acceptable for somebody being asked to play forward, and what excites me is that he already seems willing to take responsibility for progression. I don’t want to turn him into a safe midfielder because we are frightened of mistakes. I want to make him brave enough to keep playing this way when the level gets harder.
Benja Cremaschi — DMLC / Box Crasher: Cremaschi’s profile only makes sense when you understand the mechanism. 57% passing, 54th-percentile tackling and 45th-percentile possession loss might look ordinary until you remember that Cappis is moving inside to create the pivot and Cremaschi is being released to attack the box. Then 91st-percentile distance covered and 94th-percentile shots become much more important. I want him arriving where goals happen. I want him making defenders turn towards their own goal. I want him crashing the box again and again. Of course the passing can improve, but I would much rather refine Cremaschi’s aggression than restrain it. His chaos is useful chaos.
John Ruvalcaba — Utility Midfielder There isn’t enough performance data here to judge Ruvalcaba properly, so I won’t invent one. What I can say is that he remains exactly the kind of player I want to have around this project: young, internally developed and capable of giving us another option without forcing us into another expensive external solution. His next step is minutes. I need to see whether the attributes that made us value him translate into the actual behaviours of the system, particularly when the game becomes physically and tactically difficult. At twenty, there is no urgency to decide his ceiling, but there is an urgency to give him a pathway towards it.
Jamir Johnson — Inside Forward: Johnson is giving me exactly what I wanted when we moved away from the Channel Forward. 98th-percentile shots, 93rd-percentile xG and 82nd-percentile goals tell me that he is consistently arriving in dangerous positions from the right, while 87th-percentile crossing gives us another solution when the inside lane is closed. His 68th-percentile dribbling is good without being the defining characteristic, which I actually like because I don’t need him to carry the ball endlessly. I need him to attack the spaces created by the False Nine and the movement around him. I don’t care if he touches the ball less than some other attackers if he keeps touching it in the places where goals happen.
Matías Robetto — Inside Forward: Sixty-seven minutes is nowhere near enough to make a serious statistical judgement, yet he has scored three times from his three cameo appearances so far – working against tired defences late in games. Robetto’s role right now is development rather than competition with Johnson. I need to give him enough minutes to understand the movements of the right side, enough training to develop his individual qualities and enough exposure to eventually become a genuine alternative rather than an emergency replacement. He doesn’t need to prove himself in sixty-seven minutes. He needs to be ready when his opportunity becomes 600 minutes, then 1,200.
Arney Rocha — AML: This is my favourite attacking profile in the data because almost everything points in the same direction: 92nd-percentile key passes, 90th dribbling, 94th distance covered, 98th shots, 95th goals and 91st xG. That is almost a statistical description of the role itself. He holds the left, waits for the moment, then attacks the box violently. He can carry, create and finish, and the 81% passing percentile tells me he can participate without becoming a possession problem. Most importantly, the physical number means he can repeat the behaviour. Rocha doesn’t simply fit the role; he is beginning to demonstrate why we created the role in the first place.
Dassler — AML: The sample is small, but Dassler’s numbers are fascinating because they look like a younger version of the behaviours we want from Rocha: 95th-percentile key passes, 94th dribbling, 89th shots and 81st passing. The missing piece is the end product, with zero goals and 58th-percentile xG, which tells me he is showing the actions without yet consistently turning them into decisive outcomes. That’s fine. I don’t need him to replace Rocha tomorrow. I need him to learn how Rocha manipulates the game, then gradually add his own qualities. If those numbers become repeatable over 1,000 or 1,500 minutes, suddenly we have genuine internal competition rather than simply succession planning.
Joel Soñora — False Nine: Soñora is simultaneously the easiest and hardest player to analyse. 99th-percentile goals, 99th-percentile xG and 96th-percentile shots are extraordinary, particularly for a player operating as our False Nine, but 50th-percentile key passes tells me he isn’t yet giving us the complete connective version of that role. He is functioning more like a devastating finisher than the ideal facilitator between the lines. I cannot criticise that when he’s producing 99th-percentile numbers in the things that decide matches. The question is therefore not whether Soñora is good enough; he clearly is. The question is whether we can eventually find a False Nine who gives us more connection and movement without sacrificing this level of goal threat. Soñora is solving today’s problem. We are looking for somebody who can solve tomorrow’s.
Luquinhas — False Nine: Twenty-two minutes is too little football to draw any tactical conclusion whatsoever. The 5th-percentile passing and zeroes across the attacking statistics are simply the consequence of an almost non-existent sample. What I can say is that if a player remains outside the rotation, we have to be honest about the opportunity cost. Every squad place should either contribute now, develop towards contribution later or provide a specific tactical solution we cannot get elsewhere. If Luquinhas cannot become one of those things, then his place becomes a financial and sporting question rather than a sentimental one.
Santiago Morales — False Nine: There is nothing to analyse from performance because Morales has played zero minutes. For me, this becomes a development and squad-planning question: if he isn’t currently trusted enough to enter the match model, we need to understand exactly what he is missing and whether that can be developed. Talent alone isn’t enough. The player has to eventually demonstrate the behaviours that allow him to exist inside our structure without weakening it.
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