An early substitution, central help wanted, Howell's mixed debut and Tregarthen's stellar performance

My Birmingham Legion FC talking points following their 3-3 draw with Phoenix Rising FC in Saturday's USL Championship game

Samuel Shashoua warming up prior to his Birmingham Legion debut. (TIMOTHY BELIN)

Playing in the Arizona heat, Birmingham Legion endured a wild and chaotic night last Saturday.

After going down two goals after 25 minutes, the team fought back to a 3-2 lead only to lose it minutes from the end.

With some much going on, there was plenty of good and bad to take away from the game.

Laszo’s early exit

One of the biggest talking points came in the 30th minute, when the referee held up his board with Edwin Laszo’s number on it.

Two goals down and with a yellow card to his name, the Colombian suffered the ignominy of a first half exit. Sam McIllhaton came on in his place and, coupled with a tactical tweak, helped the team overturn the two-goal deficit.

It was a show of ruthlessness from Mark Briggs, and exactly what the team needed.

Laszo is not a bad player, but it was clear something wasn’t working early on in the middle of the park. The team needed more control of the ball, and Laszo is not the man to provide that.

McIllhaton is better suited to a passer role, while Laszo is more of a destroyer.

In his 30 minutes, Laszo attempted just 17 passes, and only completed 13 — a 76.5% success rate. In the following hour, McIllhaton’s success rate stood at 95.5%, misplacing just one of his 22 attempts.

While the Australian had fewer passes into the final third than his Colombian counterpart, that safe passing was what the team needed. McIllhaton kept the ball moving, providing a tempo at the base of the midfield that allowed the team to take charge and more creative players to do their thing.

What now remains to be seen is whether Briggs gives McIllhaton a chance to start in Legion’s next game, or if he maintains Laszo’s place in the lineup. After all, this isn’t the first time the defensive midfielder got the hook early — he came off at halftime in the Indy Eleven loss — yet he has started every single game since his arrival.

If I have one criticism of Briggs’ time at Legion so far it’s that unwillingness to rotate certain positions. It will be interesting to see if that continues on Saturday.

The central midfield issue

That isn’t to say Briggs isn’t aware his midfield isn’t working.

While the players — Enzo Martínez and Edwin Laszo — have remained largely the same from game to game, the instructions have not. Saturday was another example of this.

The current issue in midfield revolves around ball retention and passing. Martínez and Laszo are both good players, even excellent ones on their day. They’re also two of the players with the lowest average pass accuracy on the team.

When played in a three man midfield, this was not a problem. A third player, often Kobe Hernández-Foster, took on the metronome role, spraying passes across the pitch while his two counterparts did what they do best. For Laszo, that’s focusing on the defensive side of things. For Martínez, that’s disruptive runs with the ball and providing an overload in offensive areas.

But when it’s just the two of them, the passing part becomes a glaring miss.

Against Phoenix, Briggs attempted to counter that in a new way. After finding success with traditional wingers against Forward Madison (ie. left-footed Tyler Pasher on the left and right-footed Samuel Shashoua on the right), he attempted the same thing in Arizona. But while the focus in the USL Jägermeister Cup had been to get both players down the flank to deliver crosses, this time it also involved them helping out in midfield.

Both wingers are versatile and can also play in attacking midfield roles, possessing a good range of passing. On Saturday, they were therefore tasked with dropping into the midfield to form a three whenever the ball was on the opposite flank.

While inverted wingers (left footers on the right wing/right footers on the left) usually start out wide and cut inside, this was the opposite. Shashoua and Pasher adopted very central positions, helping link up play, and then made runs towards the outside to go deliver crosses.

The goal was clearly to have an extra body in midfield that can get on the ball and keep it moving or attempt line-splitting passes, removing that burden from Martínez and Laszo.

When Laszo went off at the half-hour mark, that desire to add some help in the midfield became even more pronounced. Though McIllhaton was now in the deep lying playmaker role, the formation essentially shifted to a 3-5-2 at times, with Shashoua taking up a more permanent central role and Pasher linking up with Damus as a support striker.

The shift helped Legion regain control of the game and mount it’s three-goal comeback. Shashoua was crucial to these efforts, completing more final-third passes (11) than any of his teammates, and with a higher accuracy than anyone who attempted at least five (84.6%).

His overall passing accuracy (90.3%) trailed only McIllhaton, AJ Paterson and Maliek Howell. And he still found time to get down the wing on more time to deliver his second assist in as many games.

Whether this final hour prompts Briggs to rethink his midfield shape moving forward remains to be seen. What is clear is that things operated much more successfully with that added help, and finding ways to provide it will be crucial to any hopes of success this season.

Maliek Howell gets his start

Amongst all the chaos of Saturday’s game, it went perhaps a bit overlooked that Legion had yet another debutant making his first appearance for the team.

After making the bench the week before, Maliek Howell got his first appearance for the Three Sparks, starting in the center of the back-three.

It was perhaps harsh on Jake Rufe that he was the one to miss out. Though he rarely gets the recognition for it, Rufe has been one of the team’s most dependable and consistent performers all year long.

More often at RCB, the Alabama-native has seamlessly slotted into that center-most role in the absence of Phanuel Kavita due to injury. It was therefore a surprise that he, and not Tiago Suárez, moved to the bench to accommodate Howell.

When a new player comes in, you often want more experienced heads around them to ease that transition, and having Rufe on his right might have helped Howell’s nervous start.

The first goal resulted from poor communication between Howell and Suárez, with there being far too much space between the two for Phoenix’s Emil Cuello to exploit.

The second then came directly from a Howell slip. The Jamaican lost his footing while going to clear a pretty harmless chipped ball, which then made its way to the Rising instead for goal number two.

It was not a stellar start for Birmingham’s newest member.

Despite it, Howell played the full 90 minutes and showed what he can bring to the team as well. Briggs likes his centerbacks to play on the front foot — something Howell expressed an affinity for as well — and the Jamaican showed himself more than capable of doing so.

Howell led the team for touches, attempted passes and completed passes, ending the night with the highest passing accuracy (97.4%) among Birmingham players. Six of those passes included long diagonals — only Paterson can say better with eight — used to spring attacks down either flank.

Ironically, it’s the defender’s defensive stats that needed work. In addition to the two goal misshaps, Howell lost five of his seven duels, missed the only tackle he attempted and gave up a team-high three fouls, earning himself a debut yellow card in the process.

The issues on both goals will resolves themselves. Howell wasn’t the only one to repeatedly lose his footing on what appeared to be a questionable surface, and better communication and understanding takes time to develop. But while there was some good from Howell’s debut, he will quickly need to show improvement on the defensive side if he is to retain his starting spot.

Forward contributions are always appreciated from a defender, but if the defending isn’t there, it doesn’t count for much.

Tregarthen takes his chance

Against Forward Madison, Sebastian Tregarthen was not supposed to start. But in Phoenix, his inclusion was no mistake, and he showed exactly why.

With Ramiz Hamouda, a centerback by trade, occupying the opposite wing-back spot, Birmingham’s in-possession shape was almost more akin to a back-four at times. With the young USMNT youth international more conservative, it gave Tregarthen license to really burst forward down the right, to great effect.

The Uruguayan’s average position ended up the third-highest on the pitch among starters, with only Ronaldo Damus (the striker) and Shashoua playing further forward.

While he has shown himself a competent wing-back, there is little doubt a more traditional wing role is still Tregarthen’s best position. With the cover to bomb down that flank at will, the first-year professional showed exactly what he brings to the side.

Legion’s first goal came from a Tregarthen run into the box. His shot was parried out, but the ball made its way to Pasher to slot home. A second run into the box in the second half let to a sweet volley off Shashoua’s cross for the equalizer, and a third provided the assist for Martínez’ go-ahead goal.

But even without those contributions on all three goals, Tregarthen was a menace all night long. Yes, Phoenix was running a makeshift backline due to missing players, but every time the ball made its way to the Uruguayan, you knew the home team was in trouble.

Tregarthen had 50 touches of the ball, with only Tyler Pasher (51) and the team’s three centerbacks getting more. With that possession, he attempted four dribbles (twice as many as anyone else), completing two of them, put in three crosses (only Pasher had as many) and won a team-high three fouls.

“I was really proud of Sebastian’s performance,” Briggs said. “In the first half, he got into some good areas for us and then continued that in the second half but was able to play more quality balls once he got into those areas. Really pleased with him because I thought he had the right mindset and you could see that in his performance.”

And even though the focus was on his attacking efforts, he did not shirk the defensive responsibilities either. He regained possession on five occasions, competed in a team-high 14 duels (nobody else was in double digits), completed two interceptions and won both his tackle attempts.

It was a clear Man of the Match performance for a player who, we must remember, was making just his eighth start this season, his first as a fully-fledged professional.

In a season where a lot has gone wrong for the Three Sparks, Tregarthen has been one of the rare shining lights. His breakthrough took another big step on Saturday and should have fans excited for the young Uruguayan’s future at the club.

Bonus: Rik Tozzi on Sebastián Saucedo

I was watching this game on CBS Sports Golazo, but for anyone watching on the My68 broadcast, there was some interesting insight to be found.

Rik Tozzi, one of Birmingham Legion’s investors, served as the color commentator for the game. When discussing Sebastián Saucedo, he provided some valuable insight into the forward’s situation.

Kaylor Hodges on Twitter.

After last week’s emotional post-game press conference, there were some questions as to what exactly Saucedo had endured during his year away from soccer. While Tozzi did not give all the answers, he shed some light on what has undoubtedly been an incredibly challenging experience for the Legion forward.

Given this context, it makes Saucedo’s return to the game all the more meaningful. We can only hope he keeps getting better to fully put that year from hell behind him.