Your still-to-be-beaten Indy Eleven travel to Ft. Lauderdale this weekend to take on a Strikers side that is coming off a thorough trouncing of the league leading Carolina Railhawks last weekend in Carolina. Ft. Lauderdale has under-performed this season, but there’s no reason the Strikers can’t build on last week’s win and aggressively ascend the league table. They are talented, showed good defensive organization last week, and will be brimming with confidence after waxing Carolina last weekend. It’s a tricky match-up made trickier by the fact that Ft. Lauderdale will be muggy and feel close to 90 degrees at kickoff Saturday. Here are a few things to watch for tomorrow night.

Broadcast Crew Upgrade

This has nothing to do with the action on the field, but it has everything to do with your ability to enjoy the action on the field as you watch the broadcast tomorrow evening. Last season, Ft. Lauderdale’s play-by-play commentator was clearly a hockey guy who had an annoying habit of saying things like, “PC dumps it in the zone for Pinho to chase.” He also decided the catch phrase that would characterize his conversational, shoot-from-the-hip style would come at the beginning of every match when he described which direction the teams were attacking. Instead of “Left to right,” or vice versa, he would say “From the airport to the beach,” or vice versa. This may not sound like that big of a deal, but when you scout three matches back-to-back-to-back it begins to grate on you. It was made that much more grating by the fact that the guy clearly thought this to be the most clever thing ever.

Enough about him. Long story short, Ft. Lauderdale now has Thomas Rongen and Bill Lamont calling the matches, and the change is welcome. Rongen’s insights and knowledge of the league and its players add quite a lot to a viewer’s enjoyment of the game and who doesn’t like bow ties? Lamont calls the action but also knows to stay out of the way. It’s a pretty good arrangement.

Defend and Counter

Ft. Lauderdale is a little like Indy Eleven in that they have experienced a tremendous amount of roster turnover from last season and have fiddled with personnel and formations in order to find something that works. In scouting a team, it’s often not that useful to watch an away match when you’ll be facing them at home, but in the case of the Strikers, I think there’s some utility in analyzing the Carolina match because it’s the first game in which they really fired on all cylinders, at least in the first half.

The strikers played that match in a 4-2-3-1, sat in compact defensive blocks, and then countered Carolina to devastating effect. I was particularly impressed with Jean-Marc Alexandre. He plays as one of the dual sixes in front of the back four, and was a machine winning the ball and springing the counter. He was 3/4 in tackles, 6/7 in duels won, and 22/28 passing. 42.9% of those passes were forward, meaning once he won the ball he was immediately looking for an outlet to take advantage of the transition moment.

In this system Ft. Lauderdale relies heavily on their outside backs, PC and Nana Attakora, to provide width and service from the flanks in the attack. Attakora in particular was able to get forward often against Carolina, providing an assist and a headed goal from a corner kick. The challenge for Indy will be to track those forward runs from the backs while also dealing with the three attacking midfielders in the 4-2-3-1. For Ft. Lauderdale, those three are very interchangeable and tend to pop up anywhere in the midfield and attacking third. Against Carolina, Jose Angulo, Geison Moura, and Ramón Núñez started in those positions. Once Maicon Santos was injured however, there was a bit of a reshuffle. Regardless, a tremendous amount of communication and discipline is required to maintain defensive shape and make sure the runs from deep flank positions are tracked, especially in transition moments following set pieces.

I would expect Ft. Lauderdale to defend and counter a little less at home, but why scrap what worked so well against the league leaders? In the Carolina match, a match that ended 3-1, Ft. Lauderdale had only 30.7% of the ball and completed only 249 passes to Carolina’s 554. They let Carolina play across the back as much as they wanted to, confronted them at midfield, compressed the field at the width of the eighteen yard box, and then broke out like the hammers of hell once they won the ball back.

Set Piece Service

Ft. Lauderdale is spoiled for choice when it comes to set pieces. PC will take all of the left-footed service and Núñez will likely take all of the right-footed service. With Jon Busch being one of the most diminutive goalkeepers in the league, look for PC and Núñez to send inswinging service from corner kicks for the likes of Dalton, Attakora, Alexandre, and Maicon (if he’s fit) to head home. Ditto wide set pieces. Anything within shooting distance is also a chance for either of these players to show his quality striking the ball.

Indy’s Attack?

We talked about it in the wake of the FC Edmonton match, and I’m sure Tim Hankinson and Tim Regan have spent a lot of time figuring it out this week: What will Indy’s attack look like against Ft. Lauderdale? Given the Strikers’ propensity to attack with their backs, I have a hard time believing Siniša Ubiparipović will start as a right or left midfielder. Maybe Lacroix finds his way back into the first XI for his ability to recover defensively with speed? Or maybe Jair Reinoso and Omar Gordon take over wide midfielder duties?

My guess would be, given Braun’s rough outing against FC Edmonton and Ubiparipović’s suspect utility as a wide player, that Hankinson moves Ubiparipović centrally to play as a withdrawn striker underneath Èamon Zayed. This would still leave Dylan Mares as an option for Ubiparipović; Lacroix, Reinoso, Gordon, and Smart as wide options; and Wojcik, Braun, and/or Reinoso as options for Zayed. Ubiparipović would get to play to his strengths as a creative, central playmaker and it would also mitigate his effect as a defensive vulnerability.

Conclusion

Watch this match. Ft. Lauderdale are finding their feet as a dynamic, talented team. Indy are still sputtering a bit in attack. If Ft. Lauderdale can build on last week’s performance and Indy can start clicking in the final third, this could be a goal fest.