A frenetic start, Briggs' bold statement, Trejo's celebration and a late formation shift
My Birmingham Legion FC talking points after their 2-2 draw against Tampa Bay Rowdies in Saturday's USL Championship game
The Mark Briggs era officially began Saturday in Florida.
While fans were hopeful the “new head coach bounce” could lead to a win against a team they’ve enjoyed a lot of success against in the past two season, a late equalizer meant they had to settle for a draw. However, there were plenty of positives for Birmingham to take away from a game they came three minutes away from winning.
With 11 days between the Tampa encounter and the Three Sparks’ next outing, Briggs now has plenty of time to work on the good, kick out the bad and finally get Birmingham’s season going.
While Saturday was far from perfect, there is certainly hope to be taken back from St. Petersburg.
The opening salvo
Mark Briggs was not shy about his ambitions for the club in his introductory press conference. He wants to win, and he wants to do it by dominating the game.
The first 15 minutes of Saturday’s match showed exactly that.
Birmingham Legion raced out of the block firing on all cylinders and could easily have gone 3-0 up within the first 15 minutes. If not for a remarkable performance by Tampa goalkeeper Nicolás Campisi, they would have won the game before it ever truly began.
With a very direct, front-footed approach, the Three Sparks went straight at the home team time and again. This quick and vertical style sprung several players in behind the Tampa defense, starting with Danny Trejo in the 8th minute. Campisi pulled off two successive one-on-one saves to deny the Mexican forward, but it was just the beginning.
Not even a minute later, Ronaldo Damus went through on goal. His effort sailed wide of the far post, only for him to get another golden opportunity in the 13th minute. Presented with another one-on-one chance, the Haitian forward became the second victim of Campisi’s sparkling display.
A controversial penalty in the 25th minute, changed the momentum of the game, but for those opening exchanges, Legion looked like world-beaters. For a team that has struggled to be proactive — the Three Sparks have gone behind in all but one game this season — the approach was a clear shift.
There are caveats to the performance — Tampa Bay are a struggling team themselves — but there is no denying the mentality coming into the game looked starkly different from previous weeks. Even in games where Legion have dominated, there has too often been a reluctance to take risks and lack of cutting edge from the players.
Briggs is a manager who knows what he wants, and if that opening 15 minutes is anything to go by, he knows how to get his players to deliver.
No team is ever going to just attack for 90 minutes straight. But if Legion fans can see more periods like those first 15, there should be plenty excitement in store for the Magic City.
Briggs’ big statement
The frenetic start might have been the first statement of intent for the Legion’s new head coach, but it was not the biggest one.
He made that one later, and it was aimed at his players.
In the 69th minute, with the team down a goal and struggling to get back into the game, the Englishman made a triple substitution. More than just a bold choice, it was a message to the team about his expectations.
One player, Phanuel Kavita, might have been withdrawn as a pre-planned substitution to allow him to slowly regain his fitness, while another, first-year professional Sebastian Tregarthen, would not have raised too many eyebrows. The third was the important one.
Ronaldo Damus, a marquee offseason signing and the team’s current leading goalscorer, was subbed off for the first time since joining Birmingham Legion.
As the camera followed the forward to the bench, it was obvious he was frustrated with the decision. But for Briggs, it was following up on a promise he made to the team on day one.
As both Kavita and Enzo Martínez revealed on Thursday, Briggs has been clear that there will be no preferential treatment. If you do not do what he’s asking, you will not play.
“[He’s] keeping the level high,” Kavita said. “Regardless of if you're playing the most minutes or playing the least minutes, regardless of who you are, making sure the standards stay really, really high. […] There's always somebody else who's willing to take your spot, so you have to be ready to stay sharp each and every day.”
“It's really important for a coach to come in and not treat anyone any different, because that’s how you get a group to buy in to what you want to do,” Martínez added. “You create a very competitive environment, and we all benefit from that. And I think that's the mentality for everyone. The mentality for me is the same as the mentality from the guy that just came in. We have to prove to the coach that we deserve to be on the field”
On Saturday, Briggs showed he is a man of his word by replacing a player who could easily have been considered one of the team’s undroppables.
Apart for the heavily rotated Lamar US Open Cup team, where he came on for the final 30 minutes as Legion looked to salvage the game, Damus had played every single minute of Birmingham’s season to that point. He also leads the team with five goals in his eight starts, including one the previous week against Chattanooga Red Wolves, and had two great chances to open the scoring in the first half.
None of that mattered to Briggs in the second half. He saw a player not performing at the level he needed and promptly took him off.
The change was about more than player’s performance, it was about reinforcing a message. And it worked a treat, sending a shockwave through a Legion team struggling to reassert dominance in the second half.
Roughly 30 seconds after the triple substitution was made, Birmingham equalized. Just over five minutes later, they took the lead for the first time. And it was Preston Tabort Etaka, the man who came on for Damus, who delivered the all-important assist for the second goal.
“It’s very rewarding,” Briggs said in Legion’s post-game recap of seeing an immediate impact from his substitutes. “Sometimes it goes your way and sometimes it doesn’t, and tonight we made changes at a critical moment. I thought Preston was very good with his movement with the ball as soon as he came on and played a big part in us turning the match around.”
Whether Tabort Etaka’s cameo impacts future games and earns him a starting spot is unclear. What is certain is that the new head coach made a statement, and the players will have heard it loud and clear.
Danny Trejo gives credit
When Danny Trejo scored Birmingham Legion’s second goal Saturday, he knew exactly who to thank.
Seconds after the ball hit the back of the net, the Mexican forward did a 180 turn and beelined for the dugout. As he ran over, he pointed straight at the man responsible for the goal: Mark Briggs.
It might seem rude to Tabort Etaka, or Jake Rufe who’s excellent overlap created the chance in the first place, but the two would have known just as well as their teammate why he was headed for the head coach.
That play, almost to the exact detail, is what the team spent a considerable portion of Thursday’s session working on.
The media was invited to Thursday’s practice ahead of Briggs’ introductory press conference, and what anyone who attended observed for a good half hour was exactly what fans saw on Saturday. Pass the ball around the edge of the attacking third, and when the moment is right, get it to the holding midfielder (in this case Kobe Hernandez-Foster). He then springs the play with a driven pass to an overlapping player, who runs to the byline before cutting it back.
Tabort Etaka was technically an extra step in the process, as Thursday’s training would have seen Rufe cut it straight back to Trejo, but the idea was similar. And as Briggs told his players on Thursday, if the first pass is right, nobody is stopping it.
The goal wasn’t just a well executed play, it was a meticulously rehearsed one.
Briggs’ Sacramento Republic side were known for their wing play, and it’s obvious the Englishman is bringing some of that to his new job in Birmingham. Clubs will grow wise to this specific move and learn how to counter it, and Briggs will have to draw up new iterations to keep a step ahead. All of that is part and parcel of the game.
What is impressive is how quickly Briggs drilled this specific move into his players, and how potent it immediately turned out to be. If he can keep that same efficiency of communication moving forward, this team will start resembling his ideals in no time.
Defensive decisions
While the intensity and attacking intent will have caught the eye, Briggs made two notable defensive decisions in Florida as well.
The first came with the introduction of Tiago Suárez, the second that of Stephen Turnbull.
Suárez, as has been the case for the last four games, came on as a substitute in the second half. But whereas all his previous appearances have been at right-back, this time it was a like-for-like centerback swap with the man he was replacing, Kavita.
This was notable not because of the decision to use the young loanee in that position, he is a centerback by trade, but rather by the personnel around him.
In previous games, when Suárez and Rufe have shared the field, their roles have been reversed.
Even in cases, like last week, where Rufe started off at right-back, the switch still happened. Suárez replaced Kavita against the Red Wolves as well, but Rufe shifted inside to accommodate the youngster.
This move has been an interesting one as Suárez, standing 6’5”, seems far better suited to the centerback role than that of a fullback. And yet this preference has been shown by both Tom Soehn and Eric Avila in their respective games in charge this season, perhaps to balance the experience-levels across the backline.
Why Briggs went against his predecessors became clear with the introduction of Turnbull some 20 minutes later, when the team shifted to a back-five.
Suddenly, Suárez was the center-most of three central defenders, with Rufe occupying an RCB position opposite of Ramiz Hamouda at LCB.
The original positioning of Rufe and Suárez was no longer about their roles at that time, but rather preparing for the future. Briggs has been known to prefer a three- or five-man back line, and this was the first suggestion he might be looking to transition to one in Birmingham.
While the Three Sparks have almost exclusively played a back-four in their now seven-years of existence, they surprisingly already have defensive personnel well-suited to the shift. One of the biggest challenges for a defensive unit in adapting to a three-centerback backline is the role of the two wide centerbacks. With wingbacks pushed higher up the field, these players, usually accustomed to playing between the width of the penalty area, are asked to cover much more ground down their respective flanks.
The best centerbacks for the role, in that case, are those with experience in those positions already. In other words, centerbacks with the versatility to also play fullback. Birmingham have two such players on their roster: Rufe and Hamouda.
And they just so happen to play on opposite flanks of each other.
Left-footed Hamouda has started seven games so far this season, five at centerback and two at left-back. Right-footed Rufe has started eight, five at centerback and three at right-back. These two are therefore ideally suited to take on those wide centerback roles should a transition to a three-man partnership take place.
With the decision to keep Rufe out wide after Suárez’ introduction, Briggs may well have been hinting at such a future shift. He wanted the veteran defender to gain more experience playing in those wider areas ahead of a future role as the right-side of a three-man backline.
Suárez, on the other hand, would be much better suited to that central role despite his stints on the right side of the field. Three-man backlines often have an imposing physical presence in the middle, and while Kavita is the obvious top choice, Suárez seems like a more-than-viable alternative.
It remains to be seen if this late-game experimenting turns into anything more, but Briggs’ defensive decisions showed that it is definitely an option he is keeping in mind.