Major League Soccer has gotten to the point where just about every team you face you are going to go up against a world-class striker. While that is a good sign for the league, it is a difficult assignment for defenses.
As the Red Bulls enter the final month of the regular season, with the Eastern Conference title and the Supporters’ Shield in sight, the task hasn’t gotten any easier.
Last game it was Kai Kamara of the Columbus Crew. Next week it will be Sebastian Giovinco of Toronto FC. And plopped down right in the middle of the two players in the race for league MVP is Didier Drogba of the Montreal Impact, who the Red Bulls will face Wednesday night at Red Bull Arena.
“He’s obviously a handful, a world-class player,” Red Bulls captain Dax McCarty said. “He’s done it at the highest level for a really long time, so he’s made their team better, and he’s a guy that’s a difference-maker. We’ve seen a couple of highlights of him. We know what his capabilities are. We know what his strengths are, his weaknesses. He’s really changed the dynamic of that team.”
The Impact (12-12-6) signed Drogba to an 18-month contract on July 27, but he didn’t make his debut until Aug. 22, when he came on as a second-half substitute in a 1-0 home loss to the Philadelphia Union. Since he arrived, the Impact is 4-3-2 and has moved into the sixth and final playoff position in the Eastern Conference.
“I think Montreal looks at this game as their biggest game of the year to date,” Red Bulls coach Jesse Marsch said. “They’re going to come here, they rested Drogba, they are going to bring their absolute best team for us. They’re going to come after us. They want to make a statement. We’ll be ready for it and that’s all the focus is right now, taking care of Montreal.”
Drogba was expected to sign with MLS when he left Chelsea in 2012. Instead, he went for the payday MLS couldn’t offer and signed to play in China. Though he only played 11 games – and scored eight goals – that only lasted a year. But instead of coming to MLS then, he signed with Galatasaray in Turkey. That lasted a year as well, with 15 goals in 37 games, but he again bypassed MLS to return to Chelsea and be reunited with coach Jose Mourinho.
Drogba had his best years with Chelsea, scoring 164 goals and adding 88 assists in 381 games in two stints with the club, but his return lasted just one season. Finally, at the age of 37, he arrived in MLS, and in just seven games he already has seven goals.
So how do you stop him?
“He’s such a physical presence, and along with that he so smart and clever. It’s not a one-man job,” Marsch said. “It’s an emphasis as a team. One of the keys that’s important is that you keep him guessing defensively as to where you are and not let him know where defenders are because he likes to feel guys and hold them off. And then our ability to compress the field when he gets the ball and make sure that we’re doubling at times, closing the space down, and also knowing that he can slip a really clever ball.
“Around him he has a very dynamic team, a team that’s good on the counter, an explosive team, so it will be not just zeroing in on him, but also then runs that are happening off of him, and when the ball gets wide making sure we know where he is in the box.”
Though the Impact has built its attack around Drogba, they have other quality players, so the Red Bulls can’t just focus only on stopping Drogba.
“We understand that they’re still jockeying for position, but we’re in the same spot. It would be naïve for us to think that just because we’re at the top of the table now our work’s done,” goalkeeper Luis Robles said. “If anything, we’re still looking to improve. Just looking at film today, we know what we’re up against, a very fast team. They’ve got more than just Didier. Yeah, he’s coming. He’s changed almost the outlook or vantage point of that team, but they already had good players, and he might have been the missing piece to just help them get over the hump.
“We’ll look to play him the same way that we played against Kai (Kamara), understanding that there’s some battles that we may not win, but if we can pick the loose balls, if we can limit the damage of the other players, it puts us in a good position to win.”
Marsch agreed. Suspended and watching Saturday’s game against the Crew from a luxury box, he was proud of the way the team combined to limit Kamara’s effectiveness.
“I thought they did a very good job of that with Kamara,” Marsch said. “Kamara maybe got sort of on the end of one play in the first half in the box, but for the most part, with all the different crosses and runs and everything else, he hardly found any space. So it’s a version of that. Kamara’s a little bit more athletic than what Drogba is at this point, but it’s very similar to making sure that he doesn’t have space.
“He’s very good at working off the shoulders of defenders and putting himself in gaps so that he can gain space to now go up and compete for balls, which means when balls go wide our center backs and our entire back line need to really look over their shoulder and identify where he is.”
It will help that left back Kemar Lawrence returns after missing the Crew game due to personal reasons. That means Connor Lade will return to right back. Ironically, Lade had perhaps his best game of the season against the Crew and earned a spot on the MLS Team of the Week.
“They’re a confident team. They’re a very talented team,” McCarty said. “Individually, position by position, they’re one of the more talented teams in the league. Obviously the schedule has been a bit weird with them being in CONCACAF (Champions League), so they haven’t really been able to get much of a rhythm in MLS this year. Now their sole focus is making the playoffs and we’re in their way. They’re still fighting to make the playoff. It’s no guarantee that they get in.”
So it’s just another game against yet another desperate team. Hopefully the Red Bulls know how to handle those by now.
