Men’s soccer’s high-ranked defense set to face Cal’s prolific offense
(Jose Ubeda/Daily Bruin staff)
By Matt Joye
Oct. 10, 2014 4:08 a.m.
The difference between the Cal football offense and the Cal men’s soccer offense seems, on paper, to be about as marginal as the difference between the spelling of football and fútbol.
Whereas Cal football’s air-raid offense has produced the second-highest points-per-game total in the FBS this year, the No. 22 Cal men’s soccer team enters Friday’s game against No. 2 UCLA as the highest-scoring team in Division I men’s college soccer.
Hence, both the Bruin soccer team this week and the football team next week will probably face the same question regarding the Bears.
How do you stop them?
“We want to dictate the flow of the game,” said junior defender Javan Torre. “We will try to turn the ball over in more attacking positions, so that we can get higher up the field, instead of letting them play and move the ball.”
Such an approach may be similar to the one UCLA football will employ against Cal’s explosive receivers – possibly using press coverage on the corners to prevent them from getting separation off the line.
But there is a marked difference when it comes to preparing for the Cal offenses’ playing styles.
The Cal football team’s method of attack is going deep and throwing passes all over the field. On the other hand, when Torre described the Cal men’s soccer offense, what he said was essentially the antithesis to that strategy.
“A team like this is gonna play against us by moving the ball – not just hitting long balls,” Torre said.
But when it comes to Cal’s defenses, the similarities between the two sports become apparent once again.
Cal football has allowed the seventh-most points in college football. Cal men’s soccer (6-3-0, 0-2 Pac-12) has surrendered the most goals in the Pac-12 and ranks No. 173 in the country with a 1.9 goals-against average.
In short: This might be the best opportunity for UCLA men’s soccer (6-2-2, 1-0 Pac-12) to break out of its season-long offensive slump.
“They’ll get the brunt of our frustration and our work and our desire to score goals,” said coach Jorge Salcedo, whose team ranks No. 134 in goals scored per game this season. “Someone very soon here is going to take three, four goals from our team.”
To prepare for the many goal-scoring chances they will likely get against the porous Bears defense, the Bruins practiced with a shortened field on Wednesday – so that goal-scoring opportunities were almost constantly present.
Salcedo said that the key to UCLA’s offense against Cal will not only be capitalizing on opportunities in the final third, but also taking advantage of Cal’s offensive turnovers, and turning them into counterattacks. Just like the Cal football team, the Cal men’s soccer squad has a propensity for taking risks with passes, leading to chances for points off turnovers.
“Their style of play opens them up a little bit,” Salcedo said. “They take chances going forward – and we feel like we have a lot of quality in our frontrunners.”
Though the stat sheets may suggest that a shootout will ensue on Friday in Berkeley, UCLA redshirt senior goalkeeper Earl Edwards Jr. and the UCLA defense has its own stat: 0.50 goals allowed per game – good for No. 11 in the nation. Edwards does not plan for that stat to change, regardless of the opponent.
“Our goal is obviously to get a shutout every game,” Edwards said.
