—by Chris Rifer

Caleb Porter just can’t get this one right.

He starts Maxi Urruti against Seattle and Fanendo Adi registers a brace after coming on as a second half substitute.  So naturally the skipper starts Adi against Vancouver, but then it’s the substitute Urruti who kills the game off with his ninth goal of the year.

But believe it or not, there’s a reason for this—and it’s not that Caleb Porter doesn’t know how to select a striker for his eleven.  Rather, it’s that Adi and Urruti are very well matched as a striking platoon.

First, the topline statistics.  In 36 MLS appearances comprising 1,973 minutes in 2014, UrrAdi has 15 goals and four assists.  That’s elite.  Stunningly, those 15 goals have come on just 75 total shots between the pair.  By comparison, Robbie Keane—a fairly well reputed striker in his own right—has 14 goals on 100 shots in 2,010 minutes this year.

But the substitute portion of the platoon has scored at a much more efficient rate than the starting portion.  Of UrrAdi’s 1,973 total minutes, only 299 have been as a substitute.  Yet five of UrrAdi’s 15 tallies and three of the platoon’s four assists have come out of the bullpen.  The starting portion of the platoon, then, is scoring every 167.4 minutes while the substitute end is finding the net every 59.8 minutes.  The former is respectable.  The latter is dizzying.

So why is substitute-UrrAdi so much more productive than starter-UrrAdi?

Well, one reason is obvious.  More goals are scored at the end of the game than in the beginning and middle.  Of the 690 goals scored in MLS this year, 159 have been scored in the final fifteen minutes—a period of time roughly equivalent to the 18.69 minutes substitute-UrrAdi averages.  While that number is above the 115-goal average for 15-minute intervals in MLS, it clearly does not account for substitute-UrrAdi scoring at triple the rate at which starter-UrrAdi scores.  So, we must dig deeper to find another reason for substitute-UrrAdi’s prowess.

Another potential reason, however, can be eliminated.  Relative to each other, neither Urruti or Adi are especially prolific as a substitute.  Three of Urruti’s nine goals have come as a substitute, while two of Adi’s six have come in relief.

We’re left, then, with this:  The contrast between Urruti and Adi’s respective styles makes the substitute portion of the platoon especially effective.

When the ball is in and around the box, Adi is a true target man.  If a teammate has the ball in a position to cross, Adi’s singular goal is to get to a good position in front of goal.  In this respect, Adi’s goal is to press the backline as much as possible and get into a tangle to get on the end of the ball.  Adi’s first goal against Seattle is a perfect example; as soon as Rodney Wallace picked up the ball on the left wing, Adi made a beeline for the back stick.

Lacking Adi’s imposing stature, Urruti is a little bit different.  Instead of relying on his ability to tower or muscle on the end of crosses, Urruti is a little bit cleverer in looking for spaces in the box in which to receive the ball into his feet.

Which brings us to the sad case of Kendall Waston.  You see, on Saturday the new Whitecaps central defender put in an admirable 68-minute shift banging and bruising his way between Fanendo Adi and every ball that came the Nigerian striker’s way.  Adi put in a lot of work and earned a secondary assist for his troubles, but he was never seriously goal-dangerous.

But then Urruti came on.  And whereas Adi invited the physical challenge of beating Waston onto the end of the Timbers midfielders’ service, Urruti preferred to float around the box looking for his moment.

And that moment came for Urruti just eight minutes after entering the game.  After Michael Harrington picked up the ball on the right wing and went on a long run toward the byline, Maxi Urruti started running to the near post.  “Eureka,” Waston likely thought, “I’m going to beat him near post and clear away the service.”  That would have been—and for the first 68 minutes had been—exactly the right thing to do with Adi in the game.  But it wasn’t Adi.  It was Urruti.  And as the pair neared the six-yard box, Urruti cut back his run and received the ball between the lines where he turned in plenty of space and fired a top-shelf finish off the underside of the bar and into the net.  Waston, for his part, kept going and wound up on his stomach with David Ousted yelling at him.

Being a central defender against UrrAdi, then, is a little bit like a batter in baseball facing Tim Wakefield for three trips through the order before stepping in to face off against Randy Johnson in relief.[1]  The good habits the defender forms against the tendencies of the starter-UrrAdi can be the defender’s undoing against substitute-UrrAdi.

Thus, the work the starting end of UrrAdi puts in—even if somewhat thankless—can set up defenders to succumb to the strengths of his platoon partner.  It appears this phenomenon got the best of Kendall Waston, and, if UrrAdi’s efficiency as a substitute is any indication, the Costa Rican is not alone.

So maybe Porter has been getting this one right all along.

Onward, Rose City.