St. Patrick’s Day may be next week, but today’s signing from Union Omaha seems to show the club is harvesting four-leaf clovers. Earlier today, the club announced the addition of American centerback Alex Touche to the 2022 roster.
The 6’3” defender played three seasons at the University of Pennsylvania. While with the Quakers, Touche started in 43 of his 44 appearances, scored 8 goals, and helped his team earn 14 shutouts. He was also named the team captain as a Junior in 2019. Due to the COVID outbreak, he was unable to finish his collegiate career in 2020, but that didn’t stop him from racking up numerous awards before leaving the team.
As a Freshman, Touche was named to the Second-team All-Ivy in 2017. During his Sophomore and Junior seasons, he was mentioned in the First-team All-Ivy, Third-team United Soccer Coaches, and All-Region in the Northeast. His biggest award came in 2019, earning All-ECAC and Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year.
In between collegiate soccer seasons, Touche played three seasons with USL League Two-side, and hometown club, Albuquerque Sol, appearing in 23 matches and scoring three goals. Last year, he spent time with USL Championship-side New Mexico United, playing three matches.
Union Omaha’s press release included a generous quote from coach Jay Mims about Touche’s mettle:
“Alex is a tough, hard-working, honest player who has fit in extremely well with our group. He will be an important part of our defending group as he defends with purpose and can pass out of the back.”
Alex Touche returned high praise for the club in the same press release, stating, “I am incredibly excited to get started here in Omaha. The club has a well-established winning culture and I look forward to building on everything the players and coaches accomplished last year.”
The highlight reel for Touche is exciting to watch because he brings a lot of quality to the Union Omaha defense. He is very confident in the air, winning many of his aerial duels, and uses his arms well to battle for space and protect himself. In the clips, you can see him often lined up directly behind an opposing player, cleanly jumping straight up, and still managing to get his head in a good position to win the 50/50 ball.
When he’s not winning in the air, he’s winning on the ground. He shows a lot of intelligence with his slide tackles. His fierce and punishing slides are equally balanced with technique to extinguish threats. Another quality to notice is the immediacy of his transition from backtracking to initiating a challenge. His movement is highly calculated, waiting for the precise moment to jump in and steal the ball. Once he wins the ball, he does a great job of scanning the field for open players and feeding the ball to the right players. An aspect of his passing that will benefit Union Omaha greatly is his ability to sense and anticipate his teammates while playing out of the back. He cuts out the middle man, streamlines the distribution, and quickly puts the other team on their heels. Whether his passes are by ground or by air, he seems to have very accurate passing to contribute to the Owls.
If you aren’t psyched-up for the coming 2022 USL League One regular season, Who Gives A Hoot can helped you. We have routine articles getting posted on the website and frequent episodes of the Who Gives A Hoot podcast. In fact, an episode was just released this morning. Go check out the latest episode on your favorite podcast-streaming service and subscribe to our articles so they can be sent directly to your inbox. As always…¡Viva Búhos!
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