One to go!
| Team | Week 14 | Weekly Change | Season Change |
| Greenville Triumph | 1600 | -22 | 69 |
| North Texas | 1593 | -1 | 18 |
| Union Omaha | 1544 | 23 | 44 |
| Forward Madison | 1537 | 3 | 9 |
| New England II | 1507 | 0 | 7 |
| FC Tucson | 1499 | 9 | 22 |
| Chattanooga Red Wolves | 1498 | -3 | -4 |
| Richmond Kickers | 1479 | -21 | 4 |
| South Georgia Tormenta | 1459 | 21 | -29 |
| Fort Lauderdale CDF | 1433 | 0 | -67 |
| Orlando City B | 1336 | -9 | -73 |
Are you beyond excited for Sunday? After months of dancing around each other, a showdown at last between two titans on one of the biggest days of the year? A date that has been circled for months as the one everyone is waiting for? A monumental challenge for all involved playing out on hallowed ground? By now, I’m sure you realize I’m talking about Mathieu van der Poel vs Wout van Aert at Ronde van Vlaanderen! Nobody?
Okay, let’s talk about this massive soccer game then! I have three very simple questions for this game.
1) Can we hang with them?
Greenville is the best team in the league by a good margin. Not that it means anything, but they are on track for the best ever finish in league history. (Side note: Greenville’s 16 game results should end up about the same as most of the group winners in USL-C.)
For all of the frustrating finishing and at times inconsistent results that has been the difference between the level we are at and the level Greenville is at, I can’t think of a single game where we were played off the field.
But this is the best opponent we’ve faced all year. Will we look like belong or will we look like we are a step behind?
2) Can we score?
Since Toby started playing for us we played our two best games and let Madison choke the life out of the game last Sunday. The bad news is there is one team better in the league defensively than Madison, and we are playing them on Sunday.
Relatedly, our #EVD4MVP campaign needs a big day out. Two goals that Ethan is involved in (I think he needs to score at least one himself), plus a win, and it’s hard to ignore his candidacy. Anything less, and we’re on the long list for the award, but maybe not the short list.
I’ve been writing two columns a game about this team since the third game of the season, and I can’t say I understand the ins and outs of when they score. But as Jay Mims likes to say: “Scoring goals is the hardest thing to do in score.”
3) Can we win?
But we need to score goals because we need to win. Richmond has been MORE than cooperative in finding a terrible time for a cold streak. We sit level on points, behind on wins. We could win out and still be on the outside looking in, but if we go out tomorrow and win, we put a lot of pressure on Richmond.
So is Early College Stadium an easy place to play, *checks notes* no it is not. Greenville has earned 21 of a possible 21 points there this season. Looks like we have our task cut out for us.
I’ll close out with a rare prediction: Julian Alaphilippe will win the Tour of Flanders…and Union Omaha will win 2-0. It’s been a fairy tale run so far, let’s have a fairy tale ending. Can’t wait to watch it!
Let me start off by saying if I never watch Forward Madison play at Hart Park again, that might be too soon. It is the perfect combination for a headache, a team that chokes the life out of the beautiful game and a field that is the sports field equivalent of a participation trophy. To quote some data I heard during the broadcast: there have been five 0-0 draws in League One this season and THREE of them have been at Hart Park. Watching a Madison team be “completely unable to create chances while being very good at defending” at Hart Park once this season was more than enough for me. I can’t imagine having to drive an hour to watch that dreck in person.
Before we dive in, I do want to praise this Union Omaha team though. We’ve played 14 games, earned 23 points and are 6-5-3. A normal season will have 28 games. Last year, Lansing finished 2nd on 46 points with a record of 12-10-6. So right now, we are on the same pace as the 2nd team in the league last season.
Not to transition to the Greenville game yet, but they are on pace for 64 points in a 28 game season. That is 8 points more than North Texas last year. If you take their points per game and translate it to Bundesliga or Premier League, that’s good enough for 2nd place in both leagues last year. They are a very, very, very good team.
I know other voices in this media empire have argued we are a team that hasn’t risen to the challenge when needed. I love you guys, but I disagree. The rules are the rules and this year only two teams make it to the final. But one team has run away with the league, in a league outside of the States, we’re fighting for almost nothing. In our league we are one of several teams competing for the second spot. No one, including us, have run away with second place because it is a relatively competitive league, and we are not head and shoulders above any other team. The pressure other teams have put us on is incredible, we’ve been playing must win games for weeks and we’ve bent, but not broken. It’s perfectly fair to expect results, but a bit unreasonable to expect us to be a Bayern or Liverpool or even a Greenville. (Greenville wasn’t even Greenville last year, we’re on track to do better than they did). Think about what a mitzvah it is that we’ve had literally weeks of games that matter a ton for the post-season and while we haven’t grabbed it by the scruff of the neck, we’ve shown up and shone out each and every week. I’d challenge anyone to point to a time where our team hung its head, quit trying, or sulked their way through a game or even a sequence.
If we end up on the outside looking in at the end of the season, and do a post-mortem, this game is not going to even make a “top three games we should regret” article. We kept a clean sheet and were shut out on the road by the second best defense in the league. Besides, the same thing happened to Greenville, so we are in good company. NOW, let’s dive in.
1) Madison is unbearable to watch, but very good defensively.
I think I made my feelings clear in the intro to the column, but I’m not sure my grudging respect for their defensive abilities came through. Probably because I was heavy on the grudge and light on the respect. I do think that Madison is a pretty solid defensive team. Let’s see what we can see about that.
Look at all those touches in our box. Hahaha just kidding, that huge spot of red on the right side of the chart is their goalkeeper. That’s not really evidence of anything other than their dour style of play and spoiler alert for #2: we’re good defensively.
But last week I talked about how we perform when we have more than 50% of the possession. Surprise, surprise we had 53.6% of the possession. A reasonable strategy on their part to have us take the game to them.
That is a lot of defensive action going their way. FotMob also has Forward winning the following defensive categories: duels won, tackles attempted, tackles succeeded, aerials won, interceptions, and accurate long balls because they play boring soccer. But…
2) We aren’t too bad at defending either!
My single favorite stat from this game is that we held them to one successful cross out of the nineteen they attempted. Let’s look at the Opta map for that:
So, this is the actual chart and reflects my original notes that they had zero successful crosses, but somewhere between Monday AM and now the stats changed to have one successful cross. Hard to say if a vigilant observer noticed the discrepancy and reported it or if there is a formal review process but, I’m certainly not going to rewatch that game just to find out when the cross took place. Let’s look at the unsuccessful actions:
You just love to see it from our guys. I’ve tried to show their actions in stopping these crosses.
I think I did better than Madison did at successfully crossing the ball, but that’s a low bar and that chart is only OK.
3) Who said we should try Dami as left mid?
In the last 3 Questions I pointed out that Jay had a huge decision to make where to start Dami. I think he made the right call trying him out at left mid and made an even better decision to put Sebas on for the 2nd half at left mid. I think we just functioned better as a team in the second half.
Here is Dami’s first half chart:
This is your “Data Dump Wince Chart of the Week” (trademark pending). Less than a third of his passes were on the left side, he is left footed after all. So many of those passes are backwards or unsuccessful. Let’s look at the second half:
Ahhhhh doesn’t that feel better. That’s what Dami’s chart’s should look like! This column has gone on long enough and I’d like to end on a positive note, so we’re done! On to Greenville!
Rankings do not include games played Wednesday, October 14th. Also, Easter Egg alert, there may have been a mistake in last week’s calculations, on my part, not Jon’s.
| Team | Week 13 | Weekly Change | Season Change |
| Greenville Triumph | 1622 | -2 | 91 |
| North Texas | 1594 | 37 | 19 |
| Forward Madison | 1534 | -5 | 6 |
| Union Omaha | 1521 | 5 | 21 |
| New England II | 1507 | 16 | 7 |
| Chattanooga Red Wolves | 1501 | -27 | -1 |
| Richmond Kickers | 1500 | -3 | 25 |
| FC Tucson | 1490 | 20 | 13 |
| South Georgia Tormenta | 1438 | -18 | -50 |
| Fort Lauderdale CDF | 1433 | -16 | -67 |
| Orlando City B | 1345 | -5 | -64 |
If you haven’t been waiting for this game since the schedule came out, I’m honestly not sure why you are here reading this, maybe you’re new. In case you are new here, welcome, this is Union Omaha fan blog, we play in USL League One and our closest competitor in the league is a team that normally plays in Madison, Wisconsin, Forward Madison. They don’t play in Madison right now, they play at the home of the Milwaukee Torrent, but that’s another thing entirely. I am incredibly excited for this game.
1) Does Madison view this as a playoff game?
By the time we kick off, we’ll know if we got the help we are looking for from our friends North Texas who are playing the Kickers at the official home of League One chaos, Globe Life Park.
Even if Richmond drops 3 points, we’re still one point behind them. But we’re getting ahead of the task at hand. I have full faith Jay will have fully prepared the team for the task at hand, going to Wauwautosa, not getting COVID, and coming home with three points. After all, that is all we can control.
For Madison’s sake they have five games left and a chance to double their points on the season by winning out. But they also have to play five games in two weeks. Does the size of the mountain distract them. Do they try and manage the work load for the midweek games? Or do they realize the other four games don’t matter if they can’t win this one?
My guess is this has the feel of a playoff game. There is no love lost between the fanbases. There was no love lost on the field in August. I believe the presence of Parliament will add some extra spice as Backwards Madison, Conquer, and Creeper Keeper ring out around Hart Park, home of the five(six?) sports line spectacular.
2) Where on the field does Dami play?
The reintroduction of Dami Viader to the side paid dividends. An imperious appearance at left wing delivered Dami’s first goal and then first assist in short order. Concurrently, the backline of Crull, Knutson, Osumanu, Sousa has fully gelled. Knutson’s inclusion has brought a few extra options around the field and we earned another clean sheet last time out.
At the same time, our rearranged front six has been extremely effective. (Six goals in two games since Devin moved up top). BUT, two of those were thanks to Dami playing up the field. Count me among those that are super happy that I don’t have to decide where to play everybody at the moment.
That said, I predict the following lineup:
FWD: Boyce, Conway
MID: Sebas, TD, Toby, EVD
DEF: Dami, Crull, Illal, Sousa
GK: Nuhu
3) Do we get a player of the week performance from Evan Conway?
Some facts: Evan Conway is en fuego at the moment, Evan Conway is from a town 10 miles away from Hart Park, when Evan got substituted against Forward in August Jay mentioned he thought Forward had marked him out of the game and speculated that Evan maybe wanted it too badly.
Evan has a lot more games under his belt and his move up top has been fruitful. I think he’ll find the balance between doing too much and reminding Forward fans what they missed. And if he scores, it will be the celebration of the year. I, for one, can’t wait to watch.
IT HAPPENED! It all came together for Los Buhos on Saturday night and it was as satisfying as you could hope for, and then some. The result itself would have been immensely satisfying but was improved by results from around the league. We need a few more weeks just like this one and we’ll see where we are on the 24th. But enough with the niceties, let’s dive in.
1) Who keeps the shots out?
It seemed to me that Rashid Nuhu had a lot to do on Saturday night. Let’s see if that is right?
Wait, WHAT?! That was my reaction to this, so I dug a little deeper and turns out that what I was seeing was Rashid making “recoveries” where he “wins back the ball when it has gone loose or where the ball has been played directly to him.” And he had a lot of them.
In particular, the recoveries did seem to be concentrated in the first half. Look at the same stat versus FtLCF.
So Rashid was really working harder than he was midweek. Did it have something to do with our possession?
2) Possession and results.
I’ll freely admit I’m not the most sophisticated watcher of soccer. It’s part of the reason I spend a lot of time looking at stats trying to gain a better understand of what I just watched. But I was STUNNED to learn we only had 38% of the possession in this game. Which made me wonder: do we do better the less we have the ball?
| Game Number | UO Possession | Result | Points Earned |
| Game 1: | 43.8% | Draw | 1 |
| Game 2: | 38.2% | Win | 3 |
| Game 3: | 44.2% | Win | 3 |
| Game 4: | 64.2% | Draw | 1 |
| Game 5: | 43.2% | Draw | 1 |
| Game 6: | 42.4% | Win | 3 |
| Game 7: | 48.3% | Win | 3 |
| Game 8: | 51.9% | Draw | 1 |
| Game 9: | 45.4% | Loss | 0 |
| Game 10: | 55.0% | Loss | 0 |
| Game 11: | 59.5% | Loss | 0 |
| Game 12: | 29.6% | Win | 3 |
| Game 13: | 38.0% | Win | 3 |
It kind of looks like we do better when we posses the ball less. Let’s look at average possession by results.
| Win: | 40.1% |
| Draw: | 50.8% |
| Loss: | 53.3% |
That seems pretty significant, but can we come up with a definitive chart here?
| UO Possession | Points | Points per game |
| Under 50%: | 20 | 2.22 |
| Over 50%: | 2 | 0.5 |
Oh yeah, that’s a definitive chart. We’ve played 13 games and earned 22 points. In the 9 games where we’ve have less than 50% of the possession, we earned 20 points and lost once. In the 4 games where we’ve had more than 50% of the possession, we’ve earned two points through two draws and two losses. (Note this would be even MORE extreme if you used 52% as the cut off, but I feel this is saying enough while being balanced.) So, we still haven’t figured out how to win AND dominate possession.
Quick Toby Check:
Still looking great.
3) What about Dami?
Welcome back Dami! I’ve spent a lot of time talking about regressing to the mean lately. Dami definitely reverted to the mean in the first 12 minutes he was on the pitch on Saturday. Dami is currently sixth in League One for Chances Created tied with the only other defender in the top 10 in that category, Elivelton. Dami has created his 19 chances in 215 less minutes on the pitch than the FC Tucson defender. Also until he came on as our left midfielder in the 72′ he had nothing but a handful of well deserved Team of the Week appearances to show for his efforts. So to watch him get a goal AND an assist was joyous and long overdue. Here is to seeing more of that in the future
So check out just how far forward Dami was playing in this touch map.
And to close out this week’s column, just rewatch the highlights and enjoy every second.
The one where Richmond feels the Elo sting of losing to Revs II.
| Team | Week 12 | Weekly Change | Season Change |
| Greenville Triumph | 1624 | 14 | 93 |
| North Texas | 1557 | 5 | -18 |
| Forward Madison | 1539 | -10 | 11 |
| Chattanooga Red Wolves | 1528 | -10 | 26 |
| Union Omaha | 1516 | 18 | 16 |
| Richmond Kickers | 1503 | -15 | 28 |
| New England II | 1491 | 59 | -9 |
| FC Tucson | 1470 | 1 | -7 |
| South Georgia Tormenta | 1456 | -18 | -32 |
| Fort Lauderdale CDF | 1449 | -22 | -51 |
| Orlando City B | 1350 | -22 | -59 |
A lot of optimism and a little wistful is how I’d describe myself going into the second to last home game of the season. Sure a longer season would be great because we’d have a better shot of making the playoffs, but I’d take more games just to watch this team continue to reach its full potential. Not much we can do about it now besides enjoy it. Enjoying it doesn’t rule out questions that I’m looking to get answered though!
1) Who are we rooting for?
If you regularly read my columns (thank you), you know I can’t resist even the cheesiest gimmick. So the new gimmick is: “Who are we rooting for?” We need help to make the final (a lot of it), and this section aims to focus on who we are asking for help today.
The answer today is: New England Revolutions II. Probably the second hardest team in the the league for a fan of Los Buhos to root for after Madison, of course. After taking five of six points off of us, it is a jagged little pill for us to be begging them to beat the Kickers, but honestly, if anyone can do it is the Revs II. They have three wins this season having beaten OCB, us and the Triumph.
If you are rooting for us to finish above the ‘Mingos of Greater Milwaukee, you’ll be rooting for Tucson. Easy to do since we took all six points off of them this season (and Shak Adams is awesome).
2) Will be get a second heaping serving of Tobias Otieno?
Sweet mercy, I hope so. More sophisticated soccer minds around here loved what they saw on tape, but I was sold when I saw the data. Now I want to see how far this can take us. Toby’s performance deserves an encore. He’s been off for almost 10 months, so he probably can handle two 90 minute games in a week. That said, I’d love for him to get the chance to soak in the applause and adoration of a grateful fanbase as a 89′ substitute.
3) Can we keep the momentum going?
We looked like we’ve been on to something the last two games. Having broken through can we break through again? We gave up two very soft early goals to Tormenta and had that game gone another 5 minutes we would have won. I’d like to think we roll out the current best lineup and give the people the romp we’ve all been waiting for. What lineup might do that?
FWD: Devin Boyce, Evan Conway
MID: Sebas, Toby, TD, EVD
DEF: Crull, Illal, Knutson, Sousa
GK: Nuhu
Where I am mostly likely to be wrong? Miracle recovery from Dami would be nice. I’ll be there on Saturday night to find out. Hope to see you out there!
Hey-oooooooooo! We won! Not only did we beat FtLCF but we beat the ref. I still can’t get over how bad the missed call was on their first goal.
They scored off of this beautifully handled build up. pic.twitter.com/DaI3qVSO4z
— Ben Turner (@Union_Omaha_Ben) October 1, 2020
My favorite part is that all three FtLCF players start walking away since they saw the handball as well. Ok, #refrant completed let’s dive in!
1) Toby in midfield
Gotta love it when Jay calls his shots. On the post game pod after the Richmond game he said that Toby would “feature” on Wednesday. Certain pundits thought this might be 15 to 30 minutes. Instead, ten days after leaving Kenya, Toby made his debut, started for us and went the full 90′ with a yellow card. He picked that card up in the 1st half and Jay made all five subs anyway. I can only imagine how impressive this young man has been in his time with the team. His stats were really impressive too.
Those are eye popping, to be honest. I didn’t include offensive stats since they were all zeros, but in terms of defensive effort, wow. Let’s compare Toby to our three fantastic midfielders.
Another effort like that and Toby could lead the team in tackles won and interceptions. I’m sold. For fun, check out this heatmap.
Maybe the most impressive heat map I’ve seen from a midfielder all year.
2) Devin in Elma’s role
Count me among those who thought adding Toby to the team was adding strength to an area we don’t need strength, our midfield. But the MOST interesting thing that came out of the addition of Toby was putting Devin up top.
I talked to Devin for 70 minutes about his career and he never mentioned if he had ever played forward. But watching him play all, he is honestly the player most similar in style to Elma. Indefatigable, all energy, all action, relentless on the press, the Elma of our midfield. With a legit midfield star on our hands in Toby (see point #1) and a slide that felt endless, Wednesday night was the perfect time to try something crazy.
Except it wasn’t that crazy, in fact, it made so much sense I was mad I didn’t think of it. Not a great sign to be starting two midfielders as your forwards, but hard to argue with the results, amiright? Evan Conway had a goal and an assist and EVD came on to score the game winner (duh, EVD4MVP). Let’s see if Devin looked on paper like Elma.
3) Passing stats
Oh man, I do love a game where we have 30% possession, but it feels like we dominated and only didn’t win in a blowout because of bad refereeing. Look at these numbers.
An all around great performance for us. It’s a lot easy to see our refusal to quit when we score goals and win, but this time has ice in their veins. Can’t wait for Saturday!
“Do you ever feel like a plastic bag, floating in the wind, wanting to start again?” Ms. Katy Perry inadvertently summed up where Union Omaha is going into game 12 of a 16 game season. We are floating in the wind, in need of a fresh start.
1) Do we score a goal?
It’s been close to 300 minutes without scoring for Union Omaha. We’ve seen our Halloween plans reduced to trick or treating. But it would be great to close out the season strong. It would be cathartic to watch the ball arrive in the back of the opponents net. I’d like to see Jay roll out the same attacking lineup as Saturday, but…
2) Do we play like it is a midweek game?
We’ve had a two midweek games, but we’ve released lineups for three. (Remember the Lights.) Each one has been slightly different and each one has featured rotation in a few spots. I think Jay makes some changes, but for the most part is going to ride the best available folks. Something like this:
FWD: Elma, Evan
MID: Sebas, TD, Devin, EVD
DEF: Jake, Illal, Aune, Ferrety
GK: Howard
I think we’ll see some rotation in a few spots, but we’ll put out our best offensive lineup in our most successful formation. The bench is another question…
3) Does Toby make his debut?
Jay basically said he would on the pod on Saturday night. So the question is how much do we see him? Given where we are at right now, nothing would surprise me, but I’d think on between the 60th and 75th minute for TD. Can’t wait to see it tonight!
Who Gives A Hoot?