To move on to the final, Phoenix Rising is going to have to derail the Locomotive playoff hopes this evening.
To Rising’s coach, it isn’t a surpise to see the team that topped Group C.
“I said it back [when we last played them] that we would see them again in the playoffs, and I knew that they were one of the best teams in the league,” Rick Schantz said this week. “We cherish these challenges and this opportunity. They’re very, very good. They were in the Western Conference final last year. They deserve to be here. You know, we’re just happy that we get an opportunity to play.”
That last meeting wasn’t too long again. Back in August, El Paso visited Phoenix, but despite taking the lead inside 15 minutes and having the lion’s share of chances, the hosts left empty handed following a 3-1 loss.
That game was described by El Paso head coach Mark Lowry as the best performance his team has ever put in, but what can we expect his team to do tonight?
PLAYING STYLE
According to the visitor’s coach, there’s one surefire way to come out of Casino Arizona Field with the result.
“We need to keep a clean sheet,” Lowry laughed. “We need to score three goals. That’s what we need to do. They’re obviously a really strong team and have been now for a while. We respect them a lot but we’re also very familiar with them, with their threats they have going forward, the way they play.”
Lowry is a footballing coach, and won’t be looking to play smash and grab. Described by his Rising counterpart as “one of, if not the best, coaches in the league”, his twitter bio makes clear what he values: possession.
That’s something Locomotive has done well. They’re averaging 54% of the ball this season, have the joint-second-highest passing accuracy in the West (81%), and trail only Louisville for total passes completed in the Championship this year.
Those who have watched El Paso over the last two years will already be aware, but Lowry reiterated to reporters this week that he isn’t just looking for wins from his team.
“I want to do it playing beautiful soccer,” he said. “That’s kind of my objective.”
So is his team prepared to face Rising?
“We know what we need to do to stop [the Rising counter attack],” Lowry said. “We have the plan. It’s easier said than done, sometimes, because they are very talented at what they do.”
Despite their dominance on the ground, there is an area of the game that Locomotive finds itself struggling in.
“[Rising is] a big team,” Lowry said. “They’re a big, strong team, which doesn’t really suit us well at the moment with how small we are. With some of the guys that we have out, we’ve become a little bit of a smaller team.”
PUSHING THROUGH PENALTIES
Both of El Paso’s playoff games this year have been decided from the spot. That means the spotlight has been well and truly on goalkeeper Logan Ketterer. But what has been his key for performing so well in the shootouts?
“He spends a lot of time on the Friday after training in front of a laptop, going through archives, going through tons and tons of games to see when these guys have taken penalties before,” Lowry said. “He has a familiarity with some of them like obviously Sandoval has had a few penalties against him in the past so there’s an idea there. I know Asante has stepped up and had a couple against Logan, and just in general, he takes a lot. Bakero’s taken a couple. So the clues are out there. It just takes time to go through all that footage, all those games, kind of do the search.”
Not only has the keeper come up big in their last two games, but he also saved a penalty during the regular season. To his coach, the effort Ketterer puts into stopping penalties is proof of his value to the squad.
“It takes a lot of thought,” Lowry said. “Logan enjoys that, […] that’s why he’s been so successful on penalties in the past, not just this past couple of weeks but just in general. We always feel like when the opposition gets a penalty, Logan has a good chance because he’s put in the work prior, and has a good idea of what direction the guy will go in.”
Ketterer has been with El Paso since the club’s inaugural season. For the first time in his career, he’s become a regular starter.
GETTING UP TO SPEED
It hasn’t been the easiest of seasons for Haitian center-back Mechack Jérôme, but to his coach, he is the player who has improved the most over the course of the year.
“Mechack was 15 pounds overweight when we came back from the suspension,” Lowry said. “He started those first couple of games too heavy and that played a massive part in [him being] half a second too late to certain things. He was heavy. It was a byproduct of last season not playing, being injured and sitting, not being able to move for 6, 7, 8 months, not really having the opportunity to get going this year because he didn’t do a full preseason. He joined in probably the last two, three weeks of the preseason because he still wasn’t ready yet. And then we stopped right after the first game of the season, so he probably had like three weeks of football in him before the suspension, then we’re back not going out doing anything again for two months.”
Jérôme’s injury woes last season stemmed from a ripped achilles tendon just minutes into his national team’s Gold Cup opener against Bermuda.
Now, back to full fitness, he could cause issues for Rising’s attack. As it stands, Jérôme boasts a 63.8% duel success rate, and wins more than two-thirds of balls in the air.
“He’s always big, strong and solid, but he was too heavy, and I think that is what affected him the first couple of games,” Lowry said. “Since he got back playing and we put him on a good plan, he lost 10, 15 pounds and now you’ll see the Mechack that we all know.”
LEADING THE LINE
El Paso has scored 19 goals less than Phoenix in 2020. Nevertheless, Rising’s defence does not expect an easy game.
“They’ve kind of switched into a 4-3-3 with a bit of a false nine,” Schantz said. “I think [Aarón] Gómez, [Dylan] Mares and [Leandro] Carrijó up front are very, very good, very dangerous.”
Between them, they’ve scored a total of 12 goals. That’s less than Junior Flemmings’ golden boot winning total.
When it comes down to it, it’s likely that Mares will be the most impactful of the three. With 44 key passes this season, he has more than double the second placed player on his team, and more than triple the third place total.
From the Ashes Prediction: Neither side seem to be able to make things easy for themselves this postseason. I’ll take Rising to win it 2-0, with the second one coming in injury time.