Legion Walk Away in a 2-1 Defeat, but Let’s Talk About the Victories

Birmingham Legion FC may have lost 2-1, but there were major upsides in the match against MLS opposition Atlanta United. For a team that has only trained together for a week, the chemistry between players looked far ahead of what Atlanta United had with nearly three times the amount of training in 2024.

Birmingham came out in this 3-4-3/3-4-2-1 shape with new signing AJ Paterson as the Left Center Back. Enzo Martinez and Matthew Corcoran as the two central midfielders, Tabort Etaka Preston as the right midfielder, Dawson McCartney (Trialist) on the left midfield side. Up top had Tyler Pasher and Prosper Kasim playing the supporting forwards to Mohammed Buya Turay. Who is Buya Turay? Let’s chat.

The Sierra Leone international is a journeyman who has gone all across Europe and Asia, with stops in the Swedish, Danish, and Belgian first divisions. The start of his career was as meteoric as you could ever ask for in a player, but was never able to truly recapture his magic start to his career.

When looking at some underlying numbers, the first view isn’t great. He’s underperforming an already low expected goal number (xG), he provides little-to-zero assist opportunities, and despite being a primarily center forward who can go out wide, he’s not a great crosser of the ball. So, where does his value come from? Why did Jay Heaps and Tommy Soehn even consider this guy?

What he does off of the ball is really creative. Part of the reason Tabort Etaka Preston had such an impactful match on Saturday was thanks to the off-the-ball runs Buya Turay was making. His speed and creative movement to get into space was causing absolute nightmares for Atlanta United. While he whiffed on both of his scoring opportunities, he was getting those opportunities thanks to some crafty movement.

I cannot guarantee that he’ll be a goal scoring threat or that Tommy and Jay can get him back to his original self. I did not see that on display on Saturday. What I did see is an absolute line disruptor, which is a need this team needs. For him to make that impact, there’s no question that Buya Turay needs to start contributing with goals, but being useful off-the-ball is a way to keep a spot on the bench at the very least.

How Did the 3-4-3 Play?

Honestly, I loved it. There were moments of defensive lapse, but the attack looks fluid and Atlanta United did not really create any clear cut chances after the second goal. The fluidity in the attack is what could make this group special. I want to talk about the goals just a little bit, though.

Both goals suffer from not having the all-view, but it looks like the initial cross looks like it was misplayed by Tyler Pasher and AJ Paterson. Tommy Soehn said after the match, “I think early our press wasn’t good enough, and we allowed them to play too much.” I believe that’s exactly what happened here.

The first cross saw Tyler Pasher standing too far off of the crosser. It looked like he was tracking the right winger for Atlanta United rather than the ball carrier, but this is where he needs to trust #25 (trialist) to cover that ball, rather than the impending cross coming into the box.

The second mistake here is that AJ Paterson looks to anticipate the run of his man, #3, rather than playing what he saw. He was expecting a cross for an immediate shot, but rather gave their player time to flick the ball on for the goal scorer.

I did see conversation that Alex Crognale was in the wrong position for the ball and should have been in-front of the eventual goal scorer. While it’s probably true that you want Alex to be in-front of him, it looks like Alex was protecting the far post run and trying to push the eventual goal scorer closer to Phanuel Kavita. Instead, a perfectly places flick on by Atlanta completely cut apart the 3 man backline. In the end, I put more blame on Pasher and Paterson for giving two open chances in a row without much pressure. These are also two mistakes that can, and will be rectified with more time together in training and game situations.

This second goal is byproduct of a new formation and figuring out how far to push the limits of the system.

In these 3 back systems, there’s almost always a “Ball Playing Center Back.” This means there’s a Center Back who loves to go up and be aggressive, carry the ball out of the defense, and is allows to move forward into the midfield. This center back is now call a “Libero.” If you have watched Legion for a while now, that is clearly Alex Crognale. He has been known to get forward, play balls through the middle, and is truly a line breaking center back.

You also have a midfielder dropping back to fill in the hole that was left by the Libero, in this case it was Matthew Corcoran filling in the space left behind by Alex Crognale.

Unfortunately for Crognale in this case, he was beaten by a good turn and was seen as “out of position”, despite him doing what his role asks of him, he just happened to fail on that particular play. From there, Corcoran is taking on the Atlanta United striker and honestly does a great job at defending him. He played the play perfectly outside of an unfortunate deflect that caused keeper Matt VanOekel to go the wrong way. Without the deflection, I believe that MVO has the ball covered and saved easily. It was several SMALL mistakes that Atlanta United took full advantage of.

What Else Stood Out?

Miguel Perez came in for Prosper Kasim and was playing MUCH higher up that I originally expected. If you want to know how he played, our friend John Fuller from the Football Forge predicted it nearly perfectly in his article. While Miguel was floating between the CM and Right Attacking Midfielder role, his ability to get into the attack was impressive. While he did not get his chances on target, it was clear that he is going to be a monster in the press.

Dibe Nwegbo came in and had some fun attacking play. Comparing Nwegbo to his Huntsville City friendly self from almost exactly a year ago is night and day. Against Huntsville City FC, he missed a sitter with nearly all of the goal WIDE OEPN for him to shoot at. This year, against MLS opposition, he put in an incredible free kick at the end of the match that came a mere inches from going in. The confidence is already at full display.

Moses Mensah was impressive. I know that many saw he was “out of position” A LOT, but I completely disagree. It was VERY apparent that he was being told to play as a wingback. He was playing exactly where you would expect a Wingback to play in a 3-4-3. This was evident when he was “out of position” in a 4 back system, but nobody said a word to him. It was clearly a gameplan. I loved seeing Mensah and Nwegbo link up. That is a real partnership I could see flourish this year.

Stefano Pihno was “Trialist 29” who had the fantastic clearance in the second half. Since he has a name on the back of the kit, he will be a Legion player barring any outside factors. I wasn’t too incredibly impressed with his play, but the biggest thing he brought to the table with the group of trialists is maturity and calmness.

“Trialist 14”, also known as Emmanuel Johnson by his mother, was an absolute gamechanger. The 20 year old is an absolute electric factory on the pitch. The Sacramento Republic academy product was beyond impressive. After he left Sacramento, he was signed by Hibernian in the Scottish Premiership, which shows the level of talent Europe thought he would be. After some decent loan spells to the Charleston Battery in 2022, FC Edinburgh (third tier in Scotland) in 2023, and then the Austin FC II later in 2023, he finds himself without a home.

Sure, he missed two chances with a wide open goal thanks to a Westberg mistake and a near open header, those chances missed would have never happened if he was there to create them in the first place. He was on “Golden Retriever” duty, which means, “See ball, get ball.” When Coach Soehn mentioned the press not being good enough in the first half, Johnson is the primary reason it was exquisite in the second half. The winger/forward is a pacy, technical player who can press for hours. Sounds like a match made in Heaven.

Trialist 4 (who I don’t have a positive ID on) had a great match. The defender did enough to impress me against the 2nd and 3rd strings of Atlanta United. The defender was getting absolutely stuck in and wasn’t afraid of a single challenge. I was impressed. He had a few passes that were impressive and looked decent with the ball at his feet.

Trialist 0 (GK), Owen Jack, looked like a great talent. He was perfectly fine in his couple of balls played, but looked like a natural shot stopper with zero fear of making mistakes. There were a couple of balls that he came out for to block off of his line (including the ball that was eventually saved by Pihno). He doesn’t look like he’s GK1 ready, but he looks like he absolutely could be.

Jake Rufe came in as a CB, and I was impressed. I liked what I saw out of him and cleaned up A LOT of scraps. He looked confident in defense and on the ball. I’m interested if he and AJ Paterson are going to be the swing men who are constantly rotated for each other as Fullback/Center Back players.

Overall Thoughts

I liked what I saw. Friendlies are friendlies and mean absolutely nothing, but the first glance of Birmingham Legion FC 2024 was exciting and fluid. Once the chemistry is full ironed out, this is going to be a well-oiled machine. Defense still looked shaky at times, but we also saw Matt VanOekel with several great stops and looked good with the ball at his feet.

If you would like to hear more about the match, hear from Legion General Manager Jay Heaps, Atlanta United play-by-play guy Jason Longshore, Tyler Pilgram from Soccer Down Here, and yours truly.

MASSIVE thank you to u/dangleicious13 for posting most of the trialists names. Truly doing the Lord’s work.