Welcome back. This is my second attempt at grading player performance with this +/- rating system. If you missed the first version you can read it here. This one wasn’t as fun to grade as the Nigeria game, but weirdly once you sort of take the fandom out of it, it becomes more of an academic exercise and not as frustrating to watch as it was live.

Tweaks

Based on feedback from the first evaluation I added a third (+3/-3) column for characterizing plays. It helps in the sense that events can be rewarded or punished to a greater degree, but it also takes a rather subjective grading system and makes it even more so. I’m going to try to do these for the remainder of the U20 World Cup and hopefully each upcoming Gold Cup game (I’m a science teacher so I have some extra time atm🤓), so we’ll see how this evolves (please feel free to hit me up on Twitter @blharreld with suggestions) over time.

The Grades (highest to lowest)

Name HT Grade Total Grade Ochoa +5 +9 Mendez +2 +9 Richards +4 +6 McKenzie +3 +6 Llanez *SUB* NA +6 Soto +2 +5 Weah +3 +4 Gloster +5 +4 Ledezma *SUB* NA +3 Servania -4 0 de la Fuente 0 -1 Durkin 0 -2 Keita -3 -5

If you are looking to interpret this the letters indicate the event and the numbers are the minute the event occurred

MOTM – Ochoa & Mendez

These two came out with identical grades. Ochoa arguably wrestled the starting GK job away from Brady Scott with this performance. He exuded confidence the whole game, didn’t put a foot wrong (I didn’t give him a single negative) and came up with a big save on Qatar’s best chance of the game. Well done.

Mendez came out with a higher grade this game (+9) than last game (+7), but I thought he actually played better last game. That’s due to the change in the rating scale. I still don’t think he would’ve beat out Pomykal, but he would have been at +10 or +11 if I’d used the same system. It’s a credit to the kid that he feels like he didn’t play well, but was still one of the best performers. I bet he’s crushed that he didn’t score one of those free kicks. When he’s standing over it I always feel like it’s going in. The pass to Weah was a thing of beauty.

+3’s were added for passes like this

DOTM (Defender of the Match)

I’m adding this because I feel like the rating system penalizes defenders. Maybe penalizes is the wrong word, but unless the team is under siege, they don’t have as many opportunities to earn points as attacking players.

In any case, it’s Richards. I’m developing quite the man crush here. He is so good. I actually gave him a +2 on an aerial duel in the 7th minute. Qatar put in a really dangerous cross, he accelerated quickly, and got way up to head it out of danger.

☝️ the commentator

He reacts quickly to put out fires and he’s so athletic that he’s going to get there first. BTW – did you know that he plays at Bayern and is under contract until 2023? Also, Qatar’s captain was suspended. Have you heard? (The announcer was brutal yesterday – I think he had one fact written for each player.) All that aside, Richards needs to get first team minutes somewhere. I hope Bayern loans him out, because they sure aren’t going to play him.

Other Notable Performances

Llanez – Uly freaking Llanez. He came on in the 63rd minute and was dangerous immediately.

After listening to the most recent Scuffed podcast I’m slightly more okay with Llanez not starting due to lack of club playing time/fitness, but you’ll never convince me that he shouldn’t be the first attacking sub around the 60′ mark every game. Anyway, he piled up a +6 in 30 minutes of playing time. He dibbled guys, put in dangerous crosses, and drew fouls in dangerous areas (including a pen). He was excellent.

Keita – Aboubacar had a rough game. Qatar’s plan seemed to be to keep the ball away from Durkin/Mendez as much as possible and let the CBs have it. Keita didn’t look great when that happened. He lost the ball for Qatar’s most dangerous chance of the game and misplaced passes frequently. He was much better in the first two games.

Durkin – In the Nigeria game Durkin had lots of space to get on the ball, sprayed passes, and was even pretty good defensively. He was a ghost in this game. He had a couple nice passes, but did almost nothing defensively, and didn’t really help keep possession. Throw in a couple bad passes and losing his composure for the yellow card and you end up with the -2 grade.

I wasn’t exactly sure how to score the yellow card (I asked for some opinions on Twitter), but eventually settled on a -2 because he lost his cool and gave the Qatari player a pretty good shove. I don’t think he (or Mendez) should have even been in the game at this point, but that’s an entirely different discussion…

de la Fuente – His grade feels a little harsh too, but looking back on the notes I stand by it. He didn’t do a ton offensively and had two pretty big negatives. He lost his man in the 36th minute and if the guy’s touch had been better it should have been a good scoring chance. Also, he had a pretty bad turnover in the 52nd minute. The starting job is still his, but I’d be perfectly okay to see Llanez starting next game.

Servania – I don’t have a lot to say about Servania. He just didn’t do much. He played a little better in the 2nd half than the first, but he was fairly anonymous.

Possible Discrepancies

I’m pretty happy with the way the grades came out. They mostly match my eye test. As I mentioned before I feel like Richards should have come out a little higher. I also think that maybe McKenzie should have come out a little lower, but that could be me being influenced by hearing/reading takes from elsewhere. It’s certainly possible that his positioning was off as a right back and I missed that off ball stuff (that’s a weakness in the system I addressed last time), but he was solid defensively and played a couple really nice line-breaking passes.

This is a center back pass, not a right back pass…but it’s a good one.

Implications Going Forward

With Durkin and Mendez both suspended there’s going to have to be some rotation for the next game (likely France – although they are tied with Mali rn). On the bright side, Ledezma (Mendez’ likely replacement – I hope) looked pretty good and there’s an argument to be made that a destroyer like Cerillo or Servania would be better against France than Durkin. That being said, I feel like some rotation (or earlier subs) could have prevented those cards.

Pomykal will be back and that should help offensively and defensively. He is really good and I’m looking forward to him fighting with Weston McKennie for one of those 8/10 roles in the next year or two. Dest will be back at right back and it looks like we’ll finally see the Richards/McKenzie pairing.

As long as Tab doesn’t go too conservative and play Servania and Cerillo or something…I think we’re in pretty good shape. There’s still every chance we could lose to France (or Mali they’re looking pretty good as I type this), but if we go out being aggressive that’s okay. Looking forward to Tuesday.

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