When Phoenix Rising lose, social media is not a fun place for players or coaches. After a 2-1 defeat against Reno, some fans thrust the spotlight onto full-back Darnell King, who came under scrutiny for his forward position during both goals for the hosts.

“It wasn’t about positioning. It wasn’t about guys being out of place,” Schantz said of the two goals during his weekly press conference. Instead, he put the blame firmly on the team giving away possession in its own half.

King was not excessively far forward at the time that the ball was given away for either goal. However, he did come under fire for his slow tracking back as those goals were scored. This is especially evident on the second goal, where King is on the halfway line at the time his team is dispossessed, but doesn’t make it into the camera frame on the edge of the penalty area as the Reno players celebrate a full 12 seconds later.

While King may not bear fault for either goal, his attacks in the first half certainly drew attention. On multiple occasions, King pushed forward not just out wide, but up the middle of the pitch. In some cases, that even led to him being one-on-one with the goalkeeper.

According to Schantz, King moving further inside when on the attack from the left-back position is something fans should come to expect.

“He’s right-footed playing on the left side, so he comes inside naturally, and we have very good wingers,” he said. “So if you have an inverted full-back like that, you let him play in the pocket. Darnell is just very, very fast and at times can burst through the line and cause a lot of havoc.”

Schantz added that this type of play is something that Rising had practiced, usually with Junior Flemmings featuring on the left wing.

“Junior doesn’t come in so narrow and then Darnell does because then when we play behind Darnell to Junior, Junior is one-v-one,” Schantz explained. “When he comes in the pocket, he’s always two-v-one, or he’s got two defenders to deal with. That pocket of space we’re talking about is between the full-back and the center-back of the opposing team.”

Perhaps the biggest problem with this style of play is that it seemed to force Santi Moar to play deeper at times in the first half, covering the left-back position for King. When asked about how he wants to balance the attacking and defending in such cases, Schantz expects his players to pitch in on both fronts.

“Well, 11 people attack and 11 people defend here, so I don’t ever say that an attacker doesn’t have to defend or that a defender doesn’t have to attack,” Schantz said.

While he declined to comment on any specific instances when Moar seemed to stay further back, Schantz made clear what he expects to see from the defence as his full-backs push forward.

“Generally, we have what’s called a box,” Schantz said. “Whenever we’re attacking, our weak side full-back comes narrow. The six slides over to the ball side, so even if our full-back goes really high, we expect our centre-backs to go wide, or the number six.”

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE PRESS CONFERENCE

• Schantz provided updates on the following injured players:
  • Owusu-Ansah Kontoh missed Saturday’s game due to a groin injury, but is now in partial training. While he’s expected to return to full training tomorrow, he remains questionable for the weekend.
  • Corey Whelan also missed training early this week with a calf contusion, but is expected to return to practice tomorrow.
  • Sam Stanton’s knee was stepped on during Saturday’s game, but the team hasn’t noticed any swelling. He trained today, and didn’t report any issues.
• Rising’s coach felt that tactically the side was good on Saturday, but lacked in execution. “Right now it just seems like we give up too many of these goals where we make a mistake and we don’t correct it. We make it worse,” he said. “We’ve talked about it as a team, and the guys are pretty upset with themselves. They know that this isn’t good enough.” You can watch Schantz’s full answer on that question here.
• Schantz confirmed that he does check social media after games, even when the team loses: “It’s important for me to get brutal honesty from people, and their emotions and their feelings.” He wasn’t in the mood to make excuses for the performances (“I don’t want to pretend that we were good and we got beat by a better team, because I don’t believe there are a lot of teams that are better than us”), and that he welcomes the high expectations of the fans.
• Did Schantz open the door for a return to the lineup for Joey Farrell? When discussing the threat of Blake Frischknecht, who has been a frequent late substitute for Las Vegas Lights, Phoenix’s coach said: “We may have to consider a guy like Joey Farrell marking him, or having Kev [Lambert] be aware of where he’s at, and dropping into a back line of five if they’re in a lot of possession.”
• Schantz explained that assistant coach Blair Gavin has not been traveling away with the team in order to protect his pregnant wife from unnecessary risk of contracting COVID-19. Instead, Rising’s head of youth development Steve Cooke has been with the side, because “if Cookie didn’t come, it’d just be Cory [Robertson], myself and our new fitness coach and that would be hard to do a proper warmup and all the things needed for a road trip.” Cooke previously served as the head coach for OKC Energy, and was in charge at Colorado Rapids in late 2017 on an interim basis.
• Last year, when Collin Fernandez left for Saint Louis FC, Schantz said that he’d told the midfielder: “I’m not going to keep opportunities from players, so this is out there. It’s a chance for you to go somewhere and get a fresh start and possibly play.” When asked if he’d take a similar approach if an offer came in for José Aguinaga, who hasn’t made it onto the pitch in the last three matches, Schantz replied “If Messi was offered, I’d have to tell José that I’d have to consider it, but I love José, and I told him that I didn’t want him to leave. If there’s a player that’s unhappy that wants to leave, then we’d have that conversation, but we’re not in the business of selling players to other USL clubs or loaning them out. We try to sell or move players to higher levels than our own.”
• After seeing Rising’s lineup described in the pre-game as a 5-4-1 on two occasions during the last three matches, Schantz revealed that the mystery author of the teamsheet each week is team administrator Nate Pearlman. He added: “I have never seen a team actually write those Xs in the way that their team plays before, and we used to laugh at […] I want to say it was Chelis, while he was at Vegas, had one X for the goalkeeper and ten across the field. It’s kind of a joke that they expect us to write that down, and it’s not fun for you guys I bet. I love it when I see […] the media puts out our lineup and we have Corey Whelan as a left back, and everyone’s all over the place. It cracks me up. I’ve been pretty obvious about what we do.”