Earlier this week, American Soccer Now’s Brian Sciaretta said something about Jurgen Klinsmann. I want you to read it.

Klinsmann has come under fire from multiple angles this year, but none has more gravitas than this. Klinsmann is a poor game day tactician, and for all his bluster his actual in-game coaching, his roster decisions have been a bizarre amalgam of prescience and blind favoritism. And more of the latter.

Anyway, that isn’t the point today. Or at least it’s not all of the point. The point is that Darlington Nagbe’s citizenship is official. He’s an American.

Congrats to @darlingtonnagbe on officially becoming a United States citizen today. — Merritt Paulson (@MerrittPaulson) September 11, 2015

Congrats indeed. And so the USMNT fan base rejoiced. Nagbe may well be the most skilled player in the entire pool, and he’s yet to even pull on a USMNT jersey.

Nagbe is being dropped into Klinsmann’s lap, but what is he getting, exactly? A left winger? A right midfielder? A shadow striker? A left back? (Oh God). The question is harder to answer than you might imagine.

Today, I want to look at Nagbe as a positional player. I watched every MLS league game Nagbe’s played as a professional, from the beginning of the 2011 season to now, and analyzed his position in every game relative the team as a whole. And it’s clear from watching the tape (as it has been, no doubt, for Timbers fans who’ve shadowed his career) that Nagbe’s been ragdolled between positions throughout the breadth of his professional career. And that’s robbed him of a vital, core piece of his development. There is a growing chorus for positional freedom in youth players, but that stops in the latter teenage years. If Pique got his foot skills from playing in the attacking midfield when he was 10, he was a full-time center back by the time he was 17.

Nagbe’s never had the luxury of settling on a position, or even a specific side of the field. Since entering the league, he’s played significant minutes at eight different positions in three different formations under as many managers. He was whipsawed between flanks (and as a second striker under Kenny Cooper) under the shaky guiding hand of John Spencer, who tried feebly – twice – to implement a 4-3-3 he didn’t know how to coach. Under caretaker Gavin Wilkinson, Nagbe was shoehorned in a 4-2-3-1 as the primary central creator beneath Kris Boyd, who was a walking block of cement as a target. Finally, he’s played extensively on both wings in mostly a 4-3-3 and, now, a 4-2-3-1 under Caleb Porter, who’s changed both formations and styles since joining the club in 2013. Nagbe’s played almost equal time on the left, right and center this year.

Before we go anywhere, I want to head you off at one particular pass. There can often be too much emphasis put on the formations themselves – the numbers, the dots, what they mean in a mechanical sense – without any flesh and blood implementation. All formations are fluid. But I watched enough of each of these games to get a sense of the flow and tenor of the formation in how it was being implemented, and a right midfielder in a 4-2-3-1 has different responsibilities than a right winger in a 4-3-3, for instance. They may be subtle to a layman, but the coach knows this better than anyone. This is a measure of how the team plays as much as it is what the static lineup sheet looked like on a slip of paper.

First, here’s the breakdown of where Nagbe’s played over the past four-plus seasons in each of his 143 starts through Sept. 9, 2015. I took the liberty of simplifying some formations (4-1-4-1, for example, into a 4-2-3-1) where appropriate based on how they settled over the course of the match.

4-3-3

– RW: 34 games

– LW: 11 games

– CM: 1 game

4-2-3-1

– RM: 24 games

– LM: 14 games

– CAM: 19 games

4-4-2

– RM: 16 games

– LM: 10 games

– CAM: 1 (diamond)

– FW: 13 games

What is this player if not someone who has been meticulously developed over the last four years as a jack of many trades and a master of none?

If we could define the three men who coached Nagbe, Spencer was governed by his tactical naivete, Wilkinson by his desire to keep the status quo and Porter by his shift from an idealist to a pragmatist. Nagbe has flowed like water over these uneven cobbles, and it hasn’t been without its dams. Let’s go year by year and break out how this looks in the scope.

2011

Coach: John Spencer

Formations: 4-4-2 empty bucket, 4-3-3

Nagbe’s usage

4-4-2

– RM: 7 games

– LM: 8 games

– FW (second striker): 4 games

4-3-3

– RW: 1 game

– CM (right sided): 1 game

Nagbe began his pro career where it’s largely been most heavily utilized: in the right midfield. Spencer gave Nagbe his first seven starts there before, for the first time, switching him to the left flank on July 2, 2011 for Sporting KC. In that game, Nagbe hit his famous juggling volley (it later became the MLS Goal of the Year, and probably gets votes as the best goal in MLS history) for his first professional goal. Nagbe didn’t have a great day positionally, but perhaps off the back of the goal Spencer started Nagbe there for the next five games.

Spencer meandered between formations for much of the summer, deviating from the 4-4-2 when it failed and then going back to it when his alterations didn’t fare any better. He arrayed Nagbe on the right in a 4-3-3 after the team had won just one game in its last nine before going back to the 4-4-2. He played deeper in a 4-3-3 in a 2-1 loss to Houston late in the summer for the only time in his life, a defensive gambit that ultimately failed. He shuffled from second striker under Cooper to left mid and back to second striker and then back to right mid again.

Nagbe’s quality shone through anyway, through the static of his position changes and the noise of Portland’s sagging form. That became a theme.

2012

Coach: John Spencer (March-July 9)

Formations: 4-4-2 empty bucket/diamond, 4-3-3

Nagbe’s usage

4-4-2

– FW (second striker): 8 games

– RM: 3 games

– CAM: 3 games

4-3-3

– LW: 1 game

Coach: Gavin Wilkinson (July 9-end of season)

Formations: 4-2-3-1, 4-4-2

Nagbe’s usage

4-2-3-1

– CAM: 13 games

4-4-2

– RM: 1 game

– LM: 2 games

Nagbe started the 2012 season, Spencer’s last in Portland, underneath new signing Kris Boyd in Spencer’s familiar 4-4-2 with the bottom dropped out. Then he moved to the right midfield, where he scored his first career brace against Real Salt Lake. He moved back to forward against Chivas USA the next game. Then he moved back to right mid against Sporting KC the next game. And then back to forward against the Crew. All told, he swapped positions five times in Portland’s first six games of 2012. That pace hardly slackened as the season progressed.

Before he was fired, Spencer became enamored with the idea of Nagbe as a second striker. But he was always too much of a dancer to be ideally positioned that high and that central to start. He’s got far more undomesticated stallion in him than barn-bred riding horse, and how Spencer didn’t see that by his second season with him is beyond the pale.

In Spencer’s last game, he ran out a 4-3-3 seemingly at random and stuck Nagbe on the left wing, where he hadn’t played since 2011. Portland was trounced 3-0 and Spencer was fired two days later following an uneven run of four losses in six games. When Gavin Wilkinson took command of the team, things hardly improved. Portland went win-less in Wilkinson’s first seven games, and Nagbe was given ever new assignments.

Wilkinson introduced the 4-2-3-1 from the jump, implementing it in his first match in charge against LA Galaxy. Nagbe had played the central creative striker role three times already in 2012, but he’d hardly looked outwardly comfortable there with the pieces around him. Wilkinson put him there anyway, in a new formation to boot. The only times Wilkinson deviated was to pack the midfield in a 4-1-4-1, which dropped Nagbe deeper against the Whitecaps on Aug. 25.

But Wilkinson was at least consistent. Nagbe played under Boyd and then Bright Dike for most all of the interim manager’s tenure, which should tell at least part of the story of why he was relatively ineffective as a creator. But that consistency also paved the way for three goals in three straight games that August with the matter of his position settled. Then, for whatever reason, Wilkinson moved back to the 4-4-1-1 for the final two games of the season and stuck Nagbe on the left. A final parting shot.

2013

Coach: Caleb Porter

Formations: 4-3-3, 4-4-2, 4-2-3-1

Nagbe’s usage

4-3-3

– LW: 8 games

– RW: 23 games

4-4-2

– RM: 1 game

– FW: 1 game

4-2-3-1

– LM: 3 games

– RM: 1 game

Nagbe’s first four games reunited under Porter were on the left flank in a 4-3-3 he hadn’t really run since their Akron days together. Spencer’s meat-and-potatoes 4-3-3 can hardly be classified as the technical definition of what a real 4-3-3 encompasses, and it certainly looked nothing like Porter’s. But it didn’t take long for Porter to begin his experimentation. Nagbe was moved to the right wing five games into the season, where he played over some combination of Kalif Alhassan and Diego Chara for the next two months unabated. It was this Nagbe – the 4-3-3 right-sided Nagbe of 2013 – that truly captured our imaginations. It was his best season by miles. It was, unsurprisingly, his most consistent positionally as well. Go. Figure.

Porter began experimenting with the 4-4-2 on the road a few months in, and while Nagbe’s role shifted a bit, his positioning didn’t. At least not at first. Porter then began experimenting with a nominal 4-2-3-1, with Diego Valeri central between Alhassan on the right and Nagbe on the left (beginning June 16 against FC Dallas). When it failed to produce a goal a game later, it was back to the 4-3-3.

The wheels came off the consistency train in the middle of the summer. In the course of five games in July, Nagbe played on the left wing in the 4-3-3, at left mid in a 4-2-3-1, at forward in a 4-4-2, as a central attacking midfielder in a 4-2-3-1 with Valeri on the left, and then back on the right wing in a 4-3-3 against San Jose on July 27. Five games, five different positions, three different formations. Mercifully, that San Jose game broke Porter’s wandering eye, and Nagbe settled there for most of the rest of the season (with, of course, some deviation).

It’s important to note that 2013 was essentially undistilled Porter. He was at his loftiest and his least neurotic this season, opting to roll with positions through rough patches regardless of the result if he believed in the performance. As we came to see, 2014 was not like that at all.

2014

Coach: Caleb Porter

Formations: 4-3-3, 4-2-3-1, 4-4-2

Nagbe’s usage

4-3-3

– RW: 10 games

– LW: 2 games

4-2-3-1

– LM: 5 games

– RM: 12 games

4-4-2

– RM: 1 game

By the start of 2014, just a few months removed from a magical postseason run, Porter’s Timbers had settled into a tactical groove: Chara and Johnson folding underneath Valeri, with Nagbe (right) and Fernandez (left) pinching in off the wings to support the striker in a 4-3-3. It was by and large the Porter we’d come to expect, and it was that formation that laid the pavers for their successful run in 2013. It also led to the best form of Nagbe’s life. His 2013 was one long moment of revelry. The beginning of 2014, however, was a different matter. Porter flailed from a 4-3-3 to a 4-2-3-1 and began experimenting with Nagbe on the left. It didn’t work.

MLS is a fickle beast, and good play often goes unrewarded by the league’s mercurial higher being, who pulls the rug from deserving teams on the regular. Portland was that team over the first two months of 2014. Results didn’t fall for Portland, and Porter panicked, at least tactically. The team’s inability to claw out of the draw zone saw Nagbe flip flanks continually, going from the right in a 4-3-3 to the left in a 4-2-3-1 back to the right in a 4-2-3-1. The 4-3-3 had lost its shine, and Nagbe’s 23 games on the right wing from the year before suddenly looked like a mirage.

Porter gradually began pulling away from a 4-3-3 and going to a 4-2-3-1, which provides more dedicated cover and peels the wingers back a bit from more dedicated attacking duties. It isn’t a defensive formation, per se, but it’s certainly more methodical if your name isn’t Barcelona. Nagbe, who by now had been pulled in every positional direction on an almost weekly basis for three years, was now basically turned from a winger to a midfielder with more defensive duties. This did not suit him nearly as well. At the very least, he hadn’t been given long to find the formation.

For good measure, Porter threw in a 4-4-1-1 at FC Dallas on the final day of the regular season with Valeri underneath Adi and Nagbe at right mid, because what the hey. Why not at this point.

2015

Coach: Caleb Porter

Formations: 4-2-3-1, 4-4-2

Nagbe’s usage

4-2-3-1

– CAM: 6 games

– RM: 12 games

– LM: 6 games

4-4-2

– RM: 3 games

The 4-3-3 is dead. Long live the 4-3-3.

If 2014 was the birth of Porter the Pragmatist, he’d reached full maturity by the start of the 2015 season. Fresh of an offseason trip to Chelsea to learn at the feet of His Pragmatic Highness Jose Mourinho for a week, Porter began with Nagbe in a spot he hadn’t started him in once in 2014, and a place he hadn’t started in a league game since Gavin Wilkinson rode out of town two and a half years earlier: central attacking midfielder in a 4-2-3-1. Porter’s Oscar in Mourinho’s beloved 4-2-3-1.

Flanked by Asprilla and Wallace with Valeri on the shelf early, Nagbe was asked to provide for Adi, who’s more talented but just as direct and desirous of a steady diet of long balls as Boyd and Dike were three years earlier. The two have not had an easy partnership in this setup. That precipitated a brief three-game move to the 4-4-2 with Urruti dropping under Adi and Nagbe running channels on the right. Suddenly, Portland was one of the most direct teams in the league (this normalized after the first couple months, but Portland in March and April was an appalling watch without Valeri).

Valeri’s return to the starting lineup on May pushed Nagbe wide right and then left – where he still is now – but the team’s style had changed as violently as Nagbe’s assignments had over the years. Suddenly it was raining knock-down balls over the top to Adi, with Valeri running in behind to clean up whatever mess was left over. Nagbe, in the absence of much time on the ball, suddenly tried pressing his fleeting possessions into Hero Ball: pinch in frantically to look for a highlight reel pass or a world class golazo. As we know, that method is set up to fail.

And this is where we find ourselves now: Nagbe producing moments of brilliance that seem, somehow, too few to fully unchain our excitement as a populace. A portion of, that, to be certain, is born of his lack of consistent playing time at a single position as a professional. Nagbe is an American citizen now, and he’ll get his run with Klinsmann, who is 10 times the positional tinkerer of any of his club coaches.

This is not all to say Nagbe is absolved of criticism, or that Klinsmann will definitely waste him. As we’ve noted, Nagbe is not always adapted well to having a smaller slice of time on the ball, and Klinsmann, for all his odd position switches, has made a few good ones since arriving. One just hopes Klinsmann won’t make some of the same mistakes, and that he finds a consistent home for Nagbe. Somewhere. Because the U.S. needs Darlington Nagbe to be the key that picks open the lock perhaps more than it even realizes.