How can RSL solve the Kreilach problem?
Damir Kreilach is the team's captain and a designated player. Does Real Salt Lake really play better without him?
Popular wisdom suggests that Real Salt Lake is performing better with Damir Kreilach off the field than with him on, and it’s not hard to see the import of the idea. What we’ve seen from the team has generally trended toward better without him — though certainly, the results have not shown that. The team holds just one win with him and just one without him.
Of course, early-season statistics are not always particular interesting, and I think that’s one of them. The argument that Kreilach’s play isn’t conducive to how RSL optimally performs under this coaching regime is multi-faceted, and results are necessarily not the only thing we get to think about. In some sense, I agree with the hypothesis. RSL plays a fast-paced, vertically focused style, and Kreilach is not a particular fast player. He has often displaced concerns about a lack of speed by doing other things well, like executing late runs into the box.
We see that in Kreilach’s sole goal of the season, coming in a 2-1 win against Vancouver Whitecaps. He makes a late run, jogging up from the midfield stripe as Jefferson Savarino starts weaving something together much further up the field. By the time Kreilach reaches the box, he’s completely unmarked, having traversed from the midfield to the 18-yard box, and Savarino has delayed his pass just long enough for Kreilach to get a very nice shot on it for a game-winning goal.
So, I suppose you’re asking: Why doesn’t Real Salt Lake just do more of that? That’s where Kreilach excels, after all. Since that match, Kreilach has played in four games, taking just three shots. I don’t think we’ve seen those deep runs in the same way, and I think there’s a pretty simple explanation for all this: Kreilach is being asked to play the striker role differently than he has in the past.
Real Salt Lake coach Pablo Mastroeni, back in January, had this to say about how Kreilach is being asked to play:
We're asking Dami to stretch his abilities and what he's comfortable doing, running in behind (…) trying to be multifunctional, multidimensional in some of the roles we're asking guys to try to improve on.
It’s with that in mind that we’ve since heard Kreilach talk about playing as a second forward. Whatever your opinion on his ability to play that role, it is fairly indisputable that he is aging, and that he is coming directly off a season-ending injury that would easily cost others a chance at lengthening a career.
The demands described above by Mastroeni are physical demands, and while he doesn’t go into great depth, it gives us a little sense of why things just haven’t quite clicked. Whether that’s on the player, the coaching staff, or some combination of all parties is something for which I don’t have an answer. What’s more important to me is that we — we as fans, that is — recognize that something’s just not clicking, and we can see it in Kreilach’s mere three shots in the following four games.
So, what is the team to do? It cannot just be “don’t play him,” because I think that’s genuinely an untenable answer. If RSL cannot get the best (or enough) out of the team’s captain and a designated player, then I have a whole host of questions — not least of which is why his contract was extended for another year. (I suppose when I say it’s untenable, it’s more that I think the implications of that being the right decision would be very bad.)
That’s the big question of the first seven games. RSL needs to find a way to make Kreilach work in this team — and if they can’t, they need to improvise solutions. Should he be deeper in the midfield? Further forward, perhaps without a second forward alongside him? Playing in a hybrid 9-and-a-half sort of role? A free role?
There are no easy answers, of course. Every answer demands a ripple effect elsewhere in the team. Perhaps if the team was exceeding expectations and not failing them, we could find an easier answer together, but this is the reality in which we’re stuck.
Three early season statistics
Real Salt Lake leads the league in shots on target — 6.1 per game. They’re tied with LAFC.
RSL is 14th in the league in expected goals for, per American Soccer Analysis, who place the team with 9.35 xG. The team has scored a total of seven goals.
The statistic that ties the previous two together? Expected goals against, where RSL has the fourth-highest total in the league with 12.26 xG against. They’ve conceded 16.
Those three simple numbers paired together give us a pretty clear sense of where Real Salt Lake is struggling, and it’s not in chance creation — and it’s not even in chance denial. Yes, there are opportunities to score that Real Salt Lake should have taken but failed to. And yes, there are some freakishly good shots that exceed the expected goals against total (remember those screamers from outside the box?).
From my perspective, it feels like there’s a common cause here. RSL’s players are generally underperforming statistically. Only three players have outscored their expected goals: Justen Glad, Pablo Ruiz, and — wait for it — Damir Kreilach. What does it all mean, you ask? I actually think it’s far too early to say. My general rule of thumb is that about 10 games for an individual or team are enough to give us enough to read statistically, and we’re just not there yet.
My initial read, though, is that while we could focus on individuals, or we could focus on goalscoring as a unit, or we could focus on defending as a unit, we can see the team is underperforming statistically. Were it just one or two players, we could easily craft some thinking around that, but it’s simply not.
Anyway, let’s revisit this sort of thing later in the season, where the statistics will have greater meaning.