AROUND THE LEAGUE: Week 6

by Joseph Reina

What a weekend for one-score games! Welcome back to Around The League, your home for numbers and nuance from the past week of action in the Major Arena Soccer League. We’ve put away the champagne and sparklers after the New Year festivities, but the MASL kept the fireworks out, with an incredible slate of action-packed indoor soccer!

Tacoma Gets Revenge at Home

It’s a commonly held belief that averaging two points from each game of a soccer season will put you near the top of the table when the campaign comes to a close. Now, as we enter the second month of the season, only Tacoma can boast that record. After five games, the Tacoma Stars are sitting third in the MASL with 12 points, and they’ve looked mightily impressive despite supposedly losing their two best players.

MASL analyst Phil Levanco has attributed Tacoma’s resurgence and best start since 2019 to the “Ewing Theory,” inspired by former NBA star Patrick Ewing, after his New York Knicks advanced to the NBA Finals while he was out injured. The thought is that losing a star or focal point allows teams to play a more balanced or fundamental style, and as a result, win more games.

For Tacoma, the parallels are certainly there, but rather than adopting a more balanced style of play, it seems they’ve thrown caution to the wind and gone all in on the one thing that’s made them so successful: speed. For so long, we’ve seen this team use its blistering pace in transition to great effect, but they’ve never been able to lean into it as heavily, likely because it didn’t suit their team with Perera leading the line. 

Now, those tethers appear to be shed as the Stars employ their rapid and dangerous transition, much to the chagrin of their opponents, and especially anyone who played a game the night before. Empire fell victim to the road trip in December, and now the Sockers, who thoroughly dismantled and even shut out the Stars last week, suffered the same fate.

            Outside the league’s smaller fields, I’m not sure we’ve ever seen a team as willing and able to turn the game into a track meet in MASL history. Possession is an afterthought; the Stars focus primarily on breaking forward in transition to create dangerous chances, and so far, it’s working. But the interesting thing is, it could likely be working even better.

            When we look at a match and break it down by game state, it opens up a level of insight we’ve never had access to before. Game state refers to the score or advantage of either team at a given moment when a particular event occurs. Here, we’re looking at the game state when every shot takes place. A 0-0 game state means the score was tied when the shot occurred, while a game state of +1 implies that one of the teams was trailing and the other was leading. 

           Looking at the game state data from Tacoma’s win over San Diego, it’s clear the Stars were dominant when the score was tied. They took six more shots than the Sockers and controlled the tempo, but strangely, when the Stars take the lead, that shooting advantage is completely surrendered and, in fact, reversed.

This was amplified when the hosts scored their 5th goal, giving themselves a two-goal lead or a game state of +2. During that time, the Sockers outshot Tacoma 4-0, and after Luiz Morales halved the deficit with a screamer, that trend continued. The Stars took just two shots in the final eight minutes of the game, conceding an astonishing 10 as the Sockers desperately tried to force overtime.

This intuitively makes sense. When you’re leading, you want to protect that lead, right? Well, yes, but there are more ways to do it than hunkering down and hoping your full-field shots find the net. When a team is leading, especially late, their opponent is forced to commit numbers forward in the hopes of leveling the score. In doing this, the trailing side leaves itself more vulnerable defensively. As a result, the chances these teams concede are, on average, significantly more dangerous, leading to more big chances and goals, especially with a potent transitional offense.

In a game as chaotic and rapid as indoor soccer, this effect is amplified. The Stars, who found such apparent success on the counterattack when the score was tied, should have kept driving forward with pace after winning possession, because there's a very good chance they could have found a sixth goal, rather than conceding a fourth. Admittedly, the presence of the sixth attacker complicates this slightly, especially given how early the Sockers went to it. However, with the proper preparation and situational awareness, the goal should still be to push forward and force their defense to stop you, rather than accepting the opposite as gospel. 

For the Sockers, this weekend should set off some alarm bells before their road trip to Baltimore and Utica next weekend. As much as we consider the effect of back-to-back games, they still count towards the standings, and ultimately, some teams are better suited to play two games in a weekend than others. When the Sockers go from shutting out the Stars on Tuesday and beating Empire on Saturday to losing on Sunday, it tells me that they are not set up for those doubleheaders.

That’s not a knock on quality; it just means they don’t seem to have the legs to be as competitive in game two or especially a game three. For this East Coast trip, neither game is straightforward, and this loss to Tacoma could be the start of a skid if the Sockers aren’t careful or lucky. Don’t miss San Diego’s first visit to Baltimore since 2022 and a rematch of last season’s Ron Newman Cup Semifinal when the Blast host the Sockers on Saturday, Jan. 10, at 6:00 PM EST.

For Tacoma, this week will be huge as they travel south to take on the struggling Empire Strykers. The Stars' only road game so far ended with no goals scored and eight conceded, while Empire has yet to reach the same highs they experienced on opening night when they beat the Sockers in San Diego. Don’t miss the second meeting between these two sides on Thursday, Jan. 8, at 9:35 PM EST.

The Ambush Finish I-70 Series Strong

The I-70 Series is one of my favorite rivalries in the MASL, largely due to games like the one we saw this weekend. Though the Comets hold a significant advantage over their western Missouri counterparts, the Ambush have earned a reputation for making the later games in this series extremely difficult. Last week, they managed to win game five at home against a slightly rotated Comets lineup, but on the road for game six, they put together one of their best performances of the season so far.

            The Ambush started strong and put pressure on the Comets early. Two early goals put the hosts on the back foot and forced them to push for an answer, which they found through early MVP candidate Zach Reget. From there, both teams exchanged goals before ultimately taking a 3-3 draw into the halftime break. 

          The Comets took their first lead of the night in the third quarter before the game turned on its head in the fourth. The Ambush, down by one, pushed heavily for an equalizer and eventually found it. Immediately, Kansas City responded by retaking the lead. Once again, Ambush controlled play as they pushed forward, with John Gates’ first MASL goal leveling the score at five. Less than a minute later, Lesia Thetsane found the net to restore Kansas City’s advantage, but for the final eight minutes, the Ambush dictated play. They outshot the Comets 6-2, capped off by Robert Kristo’s rebound goal, taking the game to overtime. 

Neither team found a breakthrough in the extra ten-minute period, but in the shootout, it was Kristo again who calmly dispatched the Comets with an emphatic finish into the top right-hand corner. In total, the Ambush took five points from the six-game series, but they’ll feel better knowing that if there were to be another meeting between these two sides in the playoffs, St. Louis has beaten Kansas City both at home and on the road.

            Another reason for positivity is the overall performance. The Comets took an astonishing 45 shots in the game, but the Ambush finished with 17 blocks, nearly triple their single-game average so far this season. They cut down on mistakes and put pressure on the hosts when it mattered, especially when leading or trailing by one goal. My only gripe? They probably could have pushed forward a bit harder when leading by two goals. Not great that the Comets outshot them 10-4 during those extended stretches of the game. 

   I’d also like to recognize their young talent, especially in attack. After losing veteran target presence Duduca Carvalho to a season-ending knee injury, Mario Falsone’s play has been spectacular. He’s scored three goals this year, all against the Comets, and he looks entirely ready to improve that record during the rest of the season.

Alongside him, Daniel Torrealba and the aforementioned Gates look mighty, and teams around the league should be very worried, especially as the Ambush prepare to hit the road for a trip to Tacoma on Sunday, Jan. 11, at 8:05 PM EST. Of all teams in the league, the Ambush seem to be one of the best prepared to match the Stars’ speed and intensity, so expect an exciting tactical and individual battle when these two sides meet.

For Kansas City, the positives are straightforward enough: 13 points from six games against any opponent is a good return, but dropping the last two games in the manner they did will haunt the players and staff. They still sit five points clear of the next best team in the standings, but that will change this weekend. The Milwaukee Wave, which holds second place, visits Cable Dahmer Arena on Sunday, Jan. 11, at 5:05 PM EST, knowing a regulation win would put them within striking distance of the league leaders, while a regulation loss would widen the gulf to eight points.