What does RSL coach Pablo Mastroeni mean by "verticality"?
Mastroeni: "We want to really threaten back lines, pick up pieces, impose ourselves."
Real Salt Lake coach Pablo Mastroeni talks a lot about the importance of “verticality” in the way the team plays, but what exactly does he mean by that? I (sometimes somewhat derisively, I admit) talk about it as “route one” football, but is that what RSL has been doing under Mastroeni?
Some statistics from 2022 might be in order here. (Source: WhoScored)
RSL had the third-most accurate long balls per match, and they also had the second-most inaccurate long balls. At 65.4 total long balls per match, they were second to none.
RSL had more assists per game from crosses than any other team — 0.5 per game — but in the bottom half of the league for goals scored.
That aligns with their key passes — 3.2 per game from crosses.
Despite this, RSL is in 11th place in the league for total aerial duels, winning 12.2 per game and losing 13.1.
RSL was also caught offside fifth-most in the league, with 1.9 per game.
It all boils down to one statistic over the course of the season: Goals per game. RSL was among the worst in the league in this regard, sitting with 1.3 per game — 22nd in the league.
So, what’s verticality? Pablo Mastroeni described the team’s approach succinctly after Saturday’s preseason match (which, annoyingly, we didn’t get to watch. Dumb league.)
“I think we did a really good job of being more vertical. That’s something we’ve been stressing since the beginning of the year — not as much side to side. We want to really threaten back lines, pick up pieces, impose ourselves.”
I think what Mastroeni’s describing here is a fast, direct system that is not particularly concerned with carving out chances from possession, instead focusing directly on getting from back to front in short order, and often aiming to do so in the fewest passes possible.
In 2022, Real Salt Lake was one of the top teams in the league in terms of vertical length of passes, per American Soccer Analysis, with an average of 7.5 feet per pass.
What’s the flip side of this? Well, Real Salt Lake is a team other teams have good passing success against. They’re seventh and eighth in the league for allowing the most passes against and best pass accuracy against, respectively.
None of this is a prescriptive judgment — I certainly have my thoughts and feelings, and I try to make them clear from time to time — but rather an illustration of what Real Salt Lake means to do. A strongly vertical approach necessitates playing fast and playing long. MLS is one of those leagues where any approach can find just enough success to get you into the playoffs (especially moving forward, with more than half the teams in the league making it in), and finishing in the middle of the league and sneaking into the playoffs is about what I’d expect from this approach.
Preseason results
From Caleb Turner over at KSL.com: Prized winger Andres Gomez makes debut as RSL ties 1-1 with Sacramento. RSL gave up a late goal to former RSL man Douglas Martinez, and homegrown center back Delentz Pierre scored early on to give RSL the lead.
Pablo Mastroeni, post-game
“We want to get better at what we’re trying to do … the ideas, the concepts that we’ve been working are being seen on the field against different opponents.”
Last week on Wasatch Soccer Sentinel
The Salt: Is Real Salt Lake a development club?
Royal Roundup: Sounders falter in Club World Cup
A final note — thanks to RSL’s comms team for getting us some killer photos from preseason. One of the biggest hurdles we’re going to face in a post-Vox world will be around photos, and their help makes our lives considerably easier.