As if this could get any more wild, here is the final standings of the season for Elo. We’ll do a full recap after the final!
| Team | Week 15 | Weekly Change | Season Change |
| North Texas | 1616 | 23 | 41 |
| Greenville Triumph | 1613 | 13 | 82 |
| Union Omaha | 1551 | 7 | 51 |
| Forward Madison | 1529 | -8 | 1 |
| Chattanooga Red Wolves | 1517 | 19 | 15 |
| FC Tucson | 1499 | 0 | 22 |
| Richmond Kickers | 1479 | 0 | 4 |
| South Georgia Tormenta | 1477 | 18 | -11 |
| New England II | 1473 | -34 | -27 |
| Fort Lauderdale CDF | 1426 | -7 | -74 |
| Orlando City B | 1303 | -33 | -106 |
Ahhhhhhhh yes, the final home game of the season. According to this excellent article I read on Friday, we’ll know what exactly we are playing for around the 30th minute of first half. My throat gets dry just thinking about the drama. I was tempted to just ask one question, but this game is going to be a little more complicated than: “do we win?” so here are the usual three questions:
1) Do we come out tight or loose?
One of the things I’ve been most impressed with about this team this season is that it gives consistent effort in any situation. Check out their reaction in Statesboro, GA after going down two goals. But, if they were ever going to get flustered and try too hard, this would be that game. Staying true to our identity will be critical to any success.
2) Can we keep a clean sheet?
In our 3-2 win in Fort Lauderdale, we were unfortunate to give up two goals. Given this is our field, and we have a generally good defense, I’d think we could. Some additional reasons: a) it is our only shot of tying Forward Madison for second most clean sheets in the league b) our guys deserve it, they have had a lot of rotation throughout the year, but they have been consistently great, and c) it would help our goal differential. Now I realize that goal difference will not come into play at all, but if we are on the outside looking in, I’d like our goal differential be as high possible for off season moral high ground purposes.
3) If the stakes change, does the game change?
The crowd is gonna know if we’ve got a shot at the final or not around the 30th minute. The adrenaline flows just thinking about it. If we have a shot, does the crowd perk up? If we don’t have a shot, does interest drift elsewhere? Do the players know? Does Jay tell them? Does the stadium announcer make an announcement about it? Only if we have a shot? Is there a murmur as the other game goes final? So many questions in this vein, but the most important one in my mind is “do we all fully appreciate how great this ride has been?” I’ll be there tomorrow night appreciating at the top of my lungs.
Hello Union Omaha fans!
We’re at the most fun and heart-wrench inducing point in the season. Our final home game, decision day, potentially the end of our historic 2020 season. Going into Saturday against Ft Lauderdale CF we have a huge opportunity to give the season the ending we deserve, but to do so, we need some help.
Richmond (Home) vs Chattanooga (Away)
The biggest help would come at the hands of the bone breaking Chattanooga Red Wolves. Our loss there earlier in the season was a gut punch, literally, and caused Dami to be sidelined for our next few games. Will CRW gives us the hand we need? Playing at home at City Stadium gives Richmond a solid advantage, as I’m sure the Red Army will be out in socially distanced force, but not one that Greg Hurst and Alex Mangels won’t be able to handle. A tie or a CRW win here leaves the door open for Union Omaha. Looking for a CRW win puts us in the best position and here’s how I believe they can do it.
You get the gist. Both keepers are strong but with 2 leaders in the golden boot race up against each other, that’s where I see the fight coming.
North Texas (Home) vs South Georgia (Away)
Now had you asked me 3 weeks ago how I’d have thought this game would have gone, I’d have been very pessimistic. Tormenta had looked rough all season, particularly ravaged by COVID, and ultimately missing something to get the needed results. North Texas on the other hand had recalled some key players and fought their way back into contention, even while some other podcasters had crossed them off.
Provided we win, this game doesn’t matter, however, I’d love to see the Tormenta who ravaged NE2 4-0(a score line NE2 is very used to this season) bring that late season fire and force NTSC to drop some points. A tie or loss here is enough for UO to advance with a tie, if NTSC wins, Union Omaha will need to secure 3pts against Fort Lauderdale.
Union Omaha (Home) vs Fort Lauderdale (Away)
This is the game we need to win. Without a win here, our season is done, finished, kaput. Going into this game our fate is still up in the air due to the kick time of Richmond and a result for that game will not be announced until roughly the first hydration break at Werner Park. Did I say we needed to win? I did? Good, we definitely need a win here, that rules out any chance of North Texas getting into the final, regardless of the Richmond score. The lads have looked in fine form lately, newcomer Toby Otieno has provided the spine in the midfield we didn’t know we needed, with Dami back in fighting shape and our defense looking as solid as ever, I’ve got very high hopes.
The area that concerned me the most this season had been our ability to finish. Mr. Cabbage Patch himself, Evan Conway, has changed my tune by breaking away from the 1 goal per player trend and giving us a team leading 5 goals on the season. That being said Ethan Vanacore-Decker sneaking up there at 3 goals on the season and 6 assists is nothing to laugh at. With all of our lines shored up, I think we’ll be seeing an explosive team ready to show Omaha what they deserve.
Now for the bad guys… Ft Lauderdale CF. Helmed by Omaha native and US U-23 coach Jason Kreis, being led in scoring by golden boot contender and Creighton alum Ricky Espin-Lopez, this is a bit of a homecoming for some big names. They’re young, they are pros, and they are dangerous. Hopefully they don’t acclimate to the Nebraska cold quickly.
As welcoming as Omaha is as a metro, this is the time to be complete bastards. Kick them out! Send them packing with a big “L” on the record and 3,000 fans cheering a 6-0 Omaha win(Conway wins golden boot with 6 goals and Terzaghi with none). This game has the makings of a do or die, and as Parliament will tell you, “Búhos Never Say Die”.
One last thing to leave you with today, my wife has adapted the words of this video for every big Union Omaha game so far this season. I don’t think there’s a better time to listen to it than now.
Vamos Búhos!
Well, we did it. We beat the previously undefeated-at-home regular season champions, at their place. Not at the start of the season but 13 days before the Triumph will host the USL League One Championship game. In winning the game we ended the season of our bitterest League One rivals (Chattanooga, New England, Wauwautosa). And while we won’t be headed into the last game of the season controlling our own destiny, this isn’t 3 Questions, so that isn’t really relevant to this column. Let’s dive in.
1) Who keeps the shots out? Nu, Nu, Nuhu!
One of the greatest pleasures that I have experienced from Union Omaha is getting to know a ton of new awesome people and share my passions with them. I’d like to introduce one of them now: Data Dump’s Anonymous Goalkeeping Consultant. (DDAGC for short). DDAGC and I text about games pretty regularly and I always enjoy the goalkeeping report. DDAGC points out is times when Rashid isn’t living up to his potential mixed in between healthy doses of praise and routine admiration of his clinical distribution skills. I thought this was by far Rashid’s best game of the season, and since making a season-saving-save eight minutes into stoppage time can distort one’s feelings, I wanted a take from DDAGC and this is what I got.
“Nuhu proved why he is one of the best in league one last night for sure. My thoughts on Nuhu: His two clutch saves to keep Omaha on top (one in the first and the last minutes of the second). Nuhu’s ability to manage his box and manage the game in general is always a key attribute Nuhu adds to the defense of UO. The difference today was that he made two big saves keeping his team on top. Putting this all together saw UO’s ability to defend be unbreakable. The score easily could have been 5-3 GVT but Nuhu made every save he could possibly make only allowing Pilato’s banger that was not possible to save.”
First of all, Rashid made four saves on the night, now if I was a more reputable or competent journalist, I would be able to figure out if that was the most saves he had all season. But I do know he was averaging less than two saves per game, going into this match. So let’s figure this was at or near the top of his saves per game this season.
Second, FotMob said Greenville had FIVE Big Chances in the match. Opta defines a Big Chance as: “A situation where a player should reasonably be expected to score, usually in a one on one scenario or from very close range when the ball has a clear path to goal and there is low to moderate pressure on the shooter.” So Rashid needs some credit for the fact Greenville only got a single goal on Sunday.
2) Who is Union Omaha’s Mr. Clutch?
Obviously, this is the home of #EVD4MVP, and next week expect the full case as a special edition Data Dump. But, after I got done screaming at my television as Evan Conway’s shot beautifully curled into the back of the net and got over the 20-30 minutes of anxiety that followed, I started to wonder who had the most game winners for Omaha.
Fun fact: we’ve won seven games, SIX of them were by a one goal margin. I went through all seven games and figured out the goal scorer and the person who assisted. Here is that chart:
| Home | Away | Game Winning Goal | Game Winning Assist |
| Union Omaha | North Texas | Conway | EVD |
| FC Tucson | Union Omaha | EVD | unassisted |
| Union Omaha | FC Tucson | Molina | EVD |
| Union Omaha | Orlando City B | Conway | Boyce |
| Lauderdale | Union Omaha | EVD | Molina |
| Union Omaha | Tormenta | Conway | Otieno |
| Greenville | Union Omaha | Conway | EVD |
Three names appear on that list more than once. We’ll honorable mention Christian Molina and remind you to vote Christian for goal of the week. That leaves us with two players: Evan Conway and Ethan Vanacore-Decker.
Evan’s case: Four of his team leading five goals have been game winners. He has no game winning assists, although his two assists both came in games he scored in.
Ethan’s case: two of his three goals were game winners. One of those was unassisted. He has three game winning assists and they were on the game winners for arguably the three most memorable wins of the season.
I’m glad they are both Owls. Who do you think is Mr. Clutch for us?
3) Possession and shots.
Real talk, that was probably the most enjoyable game to watch all year. It was a couple of great defensive teams throwing offensive haymakers at each other. And it cemented (at least in my mind) our skill as a counter attacking team. So let’s just check in on a couple of Data Dump favorites before we wrap up here.
Did we lose the possession battle handily? Oh yeah we did.
Did we take a ton of shots? Yeah we did. And they were on target at a rate right in line with our season average? Yes! (37.5 in this game to 38.6% on the season). Did we win?
Heck yeah we did. Hope you’re still savoring it as much as I am.
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.
Who Gives A Hoot?