BEHIND THE PLAY #29

Yeah, this is going to be one of the longer BTP newsletters. Get comfortable.

So much to unpack from this Olympics for the women’s national team and a lot of it can be used to inform future decisions around team staff, team rosters, team culture which in turn will inform team results. There’s a lot of layers and they will hopefully be peeled with care and attention in the coming months. Some of it will be painful to those involved and some will likely be vindicated.

For now though, I’m going to focus on future team composition with an emphasis on attacking play and what needs to be addressed in terms of goal-scoring. There will be graphics which were clearly not made with fancy software.

Let’s do this by position starting with the keepers.

Goalkeepers

I have no concerns here. Kailen Sheridan is a top keeper who makes very few mistakes and is improving in regards to distribution with her feet. She is a top five keeper on a top ten team. Expect to see her pushed by Sabrina D’Angelo but the ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ maxim generally holds firm for keepers so the starting job is likely Sheridan’s until she gives reason that it shouldn’t be.

Defenders

Finally got what I wanted in terms of a back three with Ashley Lawrence pushed into midfield where she can have more influence.

I’d been banging the ‘Lawrence in midfield’ drum since 2016. For me, she is our best all-round player and a needed presence in parts of the field where players can have more impact.

Jade Rose is not new to the women’s national team with 25 caps heading into the Olympics but the 21 year old had a break through tournament and has cemented her place ahead of Zadorsky for the time being. Yes, she got caught wrong side against Germany a couple of times but overall she showed that a back three with herself, Vanessa Gilles and Kadeisha Buchanan can work well and we should be comfortable with this arrangement going forward. We may not have scored many goals but keep in mind that we only conceded two in our four games.

Factor in that Rose is still a youngster, Gilles is 28 and Buchanan 29 and you have another cycle with these three likely to cement starting positions through to the next Olympics as they show no sign of diminishing returns. Zadorsky at 32 is still very capable but may find herself in a supporting role.

Midfielders

There’s several questions here. Several players who have hinted at being game breaker types have peaked a bit short of that. Are they good players? Yes. Fleming, Quinn, Grosso, all good. The problem is that after you add 20 year old Simi Awujo and 37 year old Desiree Scott that’s it for midfielders (plus Lawrence who the CSA still list as a defender on their website). Awujo, with seven starts needs more time but Lawrence is really the only one of the group that you could argue is still in her ascendancy and improving in terms of being an elite level player. Supporters don’t like hearing it but Fleming, though an excellent passer who can get forward into the box, has not turned into the world class player that many expected. Quinn has stalled and Grosso is in a weird phase of her career where she did very well at Juventus scoring six goals this past season in 21 games but hasn’t scored for Canada since 2022 when she had two against Trinidad and another against Panama three days later; her only goals for Canada. The long gap between her last game at Juventus and these Olympics certainly didn’t help and she saw limited time in Canada’s four games.

What’s positive is that the midfielders are relatively young. Lawrence (29), Awujo (20), Grosso (23), Fleming (26) and Quinn (29 next week) will likely all be in the frame for the next World Cup and Olympics. Only Scott, an alternate at these Olympics, at 37 is unlikely to play a part.

What’s a concern is that unlike the starting defenders only Lawrence can make the claim to still be improving. I accept that some will say Fleming is also improving but it’s a tenuous argument. The others though have plateaued, stalled or are in decline.

Forwards

I’ve gone to town on this one as it’s easily and clearly the team’s biggest issue.

The reality is that we have too many forwards on the roster and too few who can score, particularly against quality opposition. This is not a team that should be content beating up on El Salvador and other CONCACAF minnows. We need players who can score when it’s really needed. To that end, I’ve looked closely at our current forwards and come up with a rubric that measures output with an emphasis on currency and relevancy. If you scored five goals in a game against Guatemala six years ago, it’s not helpful when looking at the next four years. Goals scored recently and in big games are the measuring stick. Cross-reference that with age as with the other positions and you can start to make some hard (and some easy) decisions that will move us forward in this next cycle.

Let’s start with a lay of the land. Here’s everyone in the current squad or periphery that has scored a goal at some point for the national team:

Two positives worth noting off the top. The average of the group is 26.7 years. If you add in Jade Rose, the only one in the squad without a goal, so not included in this list, it drops to 26.4. Those are optimal numbers for today but keep in mind the next two competitions of consequence, the 2027 World Cup and the 2028 Olympics, are three and four years from now. There are five players 30 or older on the current team: Beckie (30), D’Angelo and Lascasse (31), Zadorsky and Leon (32). For the purposes of looking at the forwards and who can contribute to goal production in the next four years, Beckie, Lacasse and Leon should arguably be in the conversation around age.

You will undoubtedly have noticed that Olivia Smith is highlighted in green. She was not picked for the Olympic team. Briefly:

• She’s played a total of 285 minutes over ten appearances (two starts). She has two goals in that time. She had 13 goal in 18 games at Sporting in Portugal last year and Liverpool just paid a club record to sign her for this coming season.

• She had 13 goals in 18 league appearances for Sporting last year.

• Her birthday is today. She just turned 21.

My over-simplified goals per game stat places her as fourth best among the current squad but it doesn’t take much digging to see how much better she actually is when you factor in actual minutes played in those ten games

 So never mind the next Olympics, how the hell was she not in this Olympic squad?

Let’s go in another level and look at what I’m calling “Goal Relevance.” Probably self-evident but some goals are more valuable than others. Some people (cough - Rapinoe) get really excited about the 12th of 14 goals in a rout over Dominican Republic. Stat padding makes you look good on paper but most coaches want the player that scores gritty late winners (louder cough - Vanessa Gilles).

The chart below look at goals through the lens of currency (recently scored) and relevancy (against top teams and in Olympic and World Cup games). It shows all the goals current players scored since 2021 against the (current) top 20 teams as well as the other non-Top 20 teams they faced in the Olympics in 2021 and 2024 and the World Cup in 2023. 

If we are looking to the future, I don’t think there’s any relevancy in going any further back to ascertain the likelihood of future goal production from these players.

You may be familiar with the term “Top Right Messi” as it relates to plotted graphs showing desirable stats on the x and y axis that usually have Messi highest and furthest to the top right of the chart. This is similar. Darker gold shows players scoring goals more recently and against the (current) FIFA top 20 team ranked teams. Lighter gold shows goals against top teams but in 2021 and 2022. Silver…you get it.

Faded out countries indicate we never played them between 2021-2024.

If they are in bold, the goal was scored in an Olympic or World Cup game. Plain text is goals scored in another competition (eg Gold Cup or World Cup qualifiers) and italics indicates it was scored in a friendly.

So visually you get an idea of which players have scored in important games and/or against top opponents that you would be likely to meet in the knockout stages of major competitions. And that’s what we’re looking for. Who is scoring the goals that matter.

You might ask who gets to decide which goals matter most and by what margin? Well, for the purposes of this newsletter, me. Some will disagree with the methodology. Especially this next part where a fair degree of subjectivity is introduced to refine this further.

Before that though, some facts.

In the four games we just played in these Olympics, Vanessa Gilles, a centreback, scored the same number of goals as Leon, Prince, Huitema, Lacasse, Viens and Beckie combined. Those six players played the equivalent of 12.5 games when you add their minutes played together. That’s a problem. They scored two goals in 1131 minutes of play (not even counting injury time). That’s a goal every 565 minutes for six players combined. Gilles scored two goals, both game winners, in 355 minutes or a goal every 177 minutes.

The two players of the forwards above who did score, Viens and Lacasse, played the fewest minutes of the six. The remaining four scored no goals in a total of 889 minutes. That’s just a shade short of ten games worth of playing time.

Now back to subjectivity.

I’ve taken the goals scored in the chart above and weighted them. Goals scored this year were given a 30% bonus. So were goals scored in World Cup and Olympic games. Goals scored in 2023 were diminished by 20%, 2022 goals by 40% and 2021 goals by 60%. Goals in friendlies were also reduced by 20%. Goals in other competitions (WC qualifiers, Gold Cup, etc) were kept the same because I can only manage so much math in one sitting.

You can argue, credibly, that the percentages added or subtracted are not enough or too much but they’ve been applied equally to all the players.

In case it’s not clear, if your score drops after weighting it means the goals scored were not as relevant as others. Relevancy being measured by how recently they were scored, the quality of the opposition and the importance of the game.

Leon’s tally dropped 16.5% after the weighting. Huitema 16.7% and Prince 20%. Viens, who I’ve been saying should be getting more playing time for three years now, dropped 9.3% after the percentages were applied.

Gilles, Fleming and Lacasse had insignificant movement.

Beckie, interestingly, was the only big mover upwards, improving by 16.7%. Great to see after she missed pretty much a full year in 2023 to an ACL injury.

Summary

The summary is really what I opened with in the Forwards section. We took 18 players to the Olympics. A full third of them were forwards. Only two of the six scored a goal and they were the ones who played the least. Several of the players had a clear history of struggling to score against the sort of top tier opponents you will come across at competitions like the Olympics.

This is a clear license for substantial change in who plays up front.

The staff opted to go with them ahead of a young up and coming player that had just scored a bushel of goals in the top division in Portugal before going to Liverpool FC in a record setting deal. This is a problem in itself but points to a bigger problem of a bias that favours the familiar over the new that may be entrenched in the team culture.

I don’t know a lot about Olivia Smith beyond highlights I’ve seen online. I don’t know her maturity level, how she fits in with teammates or how well she follows tactical instruction. There could have been good reasons why she wasn’t included but when a club like Liverpool breaks their women’s transfer record to get Smith you have to figure it’s unlikely there’s serious concerns along those lines. She should have been at the Olympics. Maybe Clarissa Larisey as well.

The four strikers above that went and didn’t score have between 85 and 118 caps each; 413 in total. I’ve laid out their output in recent years, cross-referenced with whether goals were in major competitions or not. When you go to the Olympics with six forwards and the only two that score are the ones you’ve played the least while a centreback scores the same amount as all six, you have to accept there’s a problem that needs addressing. What would be really helpful would be xG stats for women’s internationals but they seem very hard to locate if they exist at all.

Keep in mind this is not a new problem. We scored one goal in our three games at the 2023 World Cup (our second in the game against Ireland was an own goal). Even when we won the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics we beat Brazil on penalties in the quarter-finals, beat the USA 1-0 on a penalty in the semis and won the final against Sweden on penalties after that game, like the Brazil quarter final finished 0-0 after extra time.

To the crux. Leon and Beckie get a pass. While they didn’t have a great Olympics, they have been scoring recently and in big games. Viens needs to be given the opportunity to start and play more minutes to show whether or not she can deliver on the promise that I saw in her a few years ago. Lacasse is different. It’s almost unfair to put her in the same category as the others as she is more of a wide player than an out and out striker. Still she scored here and stacks up well when the weighted scoring system is applied. Huitema and Prince are really the ones that either need to show improvement in the next year or make way for others, most clearly, Smith.

There will be a new coach brought in for this team. If I’m hiring for that position, I want to make sure the successful candidate is very comfortable with change management and recognizes that this team is not far from the best teams in the world. But to beat them you have to be able to score and we are clearly at the point where some are not able to do that and we can’t continue to count on a centreback who started playing the game when she was 16 to get all the goals that matter on the biggest stages.

Who should the CSA pick to be the next coach? I don’t know but I’d be very hesitant to pick a former national team player. This group is really not that far off competing and beating the very best teams in the world. They are sound right up until you get to the forwards. What they need is a revised team culture that is prepared to introduce more competition for spots on the team and playing time once they’re there.

It is not healthy to have multiple players on your team with over 100 caps. It indicates either a lack of young talent coming through or players being picked out of habit. This leads to complacency in teams. It’s the national team. It should be a pure meritocracy ideally where players are made to feel they were picked because they are best choice in that window and for the games ahead rather than because its safe to pick them because they’ve always been picked in the past. On the men’s side neither of the Euro finalists, England or Spain, had a single player with 100 or more caps on their rosters. Eight of the 18 on this Olympic roster have 100+ caps.

I’d like to see someone with the background and confidence of an Emma Hayes. Someone who is used to working at a big, professional club that has expectations of its players and staff and is used to winning.

The standard of women’s football continues to grow. We need to keep pace. It’s worth noting that in the Guardian’s annual Top 100 Female Footballers poll for 2023, based on input from 112 judges from around the world who are close to the game (including Canada’s own Amy Walsh), Canada has only three players on the list: Ashley Lawrence at #75 (was 57 in 2022), Kailen Sheriden at #91 (was 77) and Jesse Fleming at #94 (was 63). Spain has six in the top 20. Australia and the Netherlands each have eight despite both being ranked behind Canada in the current FIFA rankings. We are not faring well in these comparisons.

We need someone who can identify the best players and get the best out of them individually and as a group while others nurture younger talent coming through. While I’d like to see a Canadian as head coach, where the coach is from doesn’t matter at this point. It’s time for a change though and we will hopefully be brave enough, as we were on the men’s side, to pick a coach that re-ignites this program.