CCSG Player Ratings: Matchday 18 @ Forge FC
For the second time in three weeks I come to you with these player Ratings from the back of a bus headed down the 401 back to TD Place. This one will (mostly) not be as manic as my previous effort, but it will certainly have the same critical edge that we have seen for the last three weeks. A 3-0 defeat away at Forge marks the third loss in a row for this side, the second time this has happened under Carlos González, with the first being the string of three losses to late winners against Halifax, Valour, and York that eliminated ATO from the playoffs last season. This streak is objectively worse, as the team has been outscored 9-2 in this stretch, but I've already become numb because we've never really been in any of these games. A change is desperately needed, because none of these players seem to be able to kick-start the rest of the lineup, and the manager has shown he isn't the motivator required to change the mentality of this team. Here's hoping the change comes soon, but for now, a recap of an unchanging quagmire of a football team.
#19 Rubén Del Campo
(6.5): There were too many times in which Rubén Del Campo received a ball at the halfway line to try and start a counter attack only to be immediately surrounded by four Forge players while no one on Atlético Ottawa was within 20 yards of him. In the rare moments he did get service, he was the only player for ATO that posed even a remote threat to Chris Kalongo’s goal. His only shot on target was directly at the Forge keeper, and when he was put through on goal, his touch let him down and he was forced to try and draw contact, which resulted in Forge handling him easily and winning a free kick in their defensive third. Given his ability to score has been clearly demonstrated this year, I'm not going to blame this run of form on him. He's working back defensively on set pieces and he isn't getting enough opportunities to even be considered wasteful. Hopefully, the ball can find his feet in a dangerous area at some point in the near future so he can get back on the scoresheet.
#13 Ballou Tabla
(4.6): He’s done. Or, more accurately, we’re done with him. It’s undoubtedly harsh to say this about a player who’s only entering his age 25 season, but the opinion is essentially ubiquitous within the fan base. He isolates himself on the pitch so frequently that to suggest the team is playing 10 v 11 is closer to reality than it has any right to be. What I thought would be the partnership that would drive Atlético Ottawa forward through most of the season has turned completely non-existent, as Matteo de Brienne is left to make dummy runs for Ballou to try and take on two defenders and fail or just simply recycle the ball back to the defense as Matteo has to jog back into position. All this would be forgivable if Ballou found his way onto the scoresheet with any regularity, but with only one goal and one assist in the ten game stretch that has seen only two wins, he needs to ride the bench to see if this team can actually generate anything in the current system - f only to maybe restore some confidence if this form continues and he sees that the problem isn’t him, it’s that the system isn’t designed to score goals.
#10 Ollie Bassett
(5): Watching Ollie Bassett try to play defense is like trying to watch a toddler try and solve a quadratic equation. Fortunately for society, the most complex thing a toddler is asked to do is put a block in the right shaped hole. Unfortunately for Atlético Ottawa, defending is a part of Ollie Bassett's job. Him running to fill Amer Didic's position hoping his centre back would bail him out for letting Ampomah take that much space left me baffled.
That our team only looked like it could generate anything offensively once he stepped off the pitch speaks volumes. The actions where he drops into the defensive line, and plays a couple one twos with a centre back to stall for time as he figures out which full back he'll lay the ball off to is so tired. If he can't generate anything going forward, I question what his presence even serves at this stage. The most frustrating part is that I know he CAN generate offense. The intricate little move he made with Aparicio and Sissoko at the end of the first half to get Del Campo his shot is the prime example. He tries things like that once every few games instead of consistently operating in those spaces. That’s how you succeed, not doing what he normally does. He doesn't want to be here, but if he keeps playing like this, the move he's so desperately wanted for the last two years is not going to manifest and he might not be left with any better options.
#9 Sam Salter
(6.5): There was a hint of the old Sam Salter in his 15 minute cameo at the end of this match. That moment was his extremely heavy touch on the counter attack that forced him to recycle the ball back to the defense, as happened essentially every other time this team tried to counter. Otherwise, it's unclear to me why he isn't starting on the wing. He appears to operate in the correct spaces, whether on the right or left, which is the biggest problem down the wing right now. If it's broken, you should probably try to fix it.
#8 Dani Morer
(6.6): More and more, I'm beginning to see the little things that have prevented Dani Morer from making the full leap that someone with his technical prowess should be able to. His first step isn't quite quick enough for him to be an elite winger, and when you're chasing a game with your changes being to a winger, you want someone to get in behind and play dangerous balls across the face of goal while your team is in possession. Dani can do the latter, among many other things, but he needs a little more work to get the ball in those places to do so. Ultimately, he was fine, and the sub role probably still suits him better than starting, as much as we're looking for solutions.
#34 Manny Aparicio
(5.8): To call this an unceremonious return to the lineup would be generous. Most of the fault for the porous midfield play should not fall on him, but some of it has to. He was doing his best to cut out Forge attacks at their onset, but did so without regard for the shape of the team, and left acres of space for players to run into behind him and collect rebounds when shots were saved by Yesli. The successful tackles and the 50% duel success rate, the 4 successful dribbles and the 4 successful long balls, none of these matter when you see someone that's everywhere and yet nowhere at the same time. It's been a LONG TIME since we've seen Manny at his best, and he needs to come back for us to have a remote chance of returning to the form we had at the beginning of the season.
#33 Abou Sissoko
(5.7): There's an argument to be made that Manny Aparicio should have the license to operate more chaotically in the midfield. I don't think the same leeway should be extended to Abou Sissoko, particularly against a Forge side with such dangerous players behind Kwasi Poku. Sissoko’s roaming made it much easier for Forge to operate in the space between midfield and defense, as Alberto Zapater was essentially left to his own devices to cover 30 yards of space at all times: it's frankly a miracle we didn't concede more often in the first half. I can't be happy about the three free kicks he won, the four of five ground duels he won, or the 90%+ pass accuracy, when his defensive work provides players the caliber Forge have with the amount of space they were given.
#21 Alberto Zapater
(6.7): Every week I vacillate between whom I feel the worst for on this team. This week that falls to the veteran midfielder that was frankly left out to dry for most of this affair, Alberto Zapater. In his quest to finally claim a trophy to cap off a fruitful career, aside from the 2004 Spanish Super Cup, one can only imagine how he was feeling when this team started the season unbeaten in their first nine games. As such, one can imagine the emotional whiplash that the past nine have inflicted. His 60 minutes on the pitch Saturday saw him do what he's done every week for this team regardless of circumstance. Effectively managing the ball, winning duels in midfield, and making crucial tackles to stop attacks. The sheer number of attacks he had to stop made it impossible to keep Forge away, but to place the fault at his feet with the rest of the players on the pitch performing how they did would be a disservice to a serviceable performance amongst a sea of shambles.
#11 Gabi Antinoro
(6.5): In 15 minutes, Gabi Antinoro managed to contest as many ground duels as Abou Sissoko did in a full 90. To take that positively, you would say he was fighting back in an attempt to generate any kind of pressure towards the Forge goal. On the other hand, you could say that losing possession seven times necessitated him entering into those duels and he only ended up winning one of them. After not seeing any minutes against Cavalry last week, he tried to make the most of a limited opportunity but couldn't quite put it all together. The kid clearly wants to be on the pitch, it's just the execution isn't quite as sharp as it needs to be, even if the effort is there and the frustration is being channeled in a somewhat positive way.
#22 Matteo De Brienne
(7): The only enjoyable moment of this game was Matteo's tackle in the 75th minute to save what could've been a third Forge goal, which they eventually got anyway, specially considering Forge managed to get through the rest of the defense individually before being snuffed out at the last second by a left winger tracking all the way back from the opposing penalty area. Matteo channels his frustration with whatever is going on with this team better than anyone else on the pitch, and it manifests in making him work harder and react in more lively ways to try and overcome the funk this team is in. With everyone else, the funk consumes them and they shrug their shoulders, they take their time getting up, and they throw their head back when it takes too long for something to happen. Matteo not getting the ball when he makes runs down the left frustrates me to no end so I can only imagine what it does to him. That he still goes out with that fire despite what's happened in recent weeks shows me that his mentality is worthy of a higher level. His skills will almost certainly develop to match his stock, especially if he continues to win all his ground duels and 75% of his tackles like he did on Saturday.
#4 Tyr Walker
(6.5): For everything Tyr did right on Saturday, something else seemed to go wrong. It started off so strong for the centre back, standing up Tristan Broges as he looked to threaten the goal early before taking the ball away from him and clearing out of the Ottawa defensive third. Offensively, he also managed to show improvement with a 70% success rate on long balls, and a successful dribble forward into the teeth of the Forge defense. Unfortunately, his team let him down tremendously, leaving him in difficult situations for any defender let alone one with only 13 games of professional experience. One such sequence saw a David Choiniere shot careen off the post as Tyr played too tight to Poku and a ball easily found Tristan Borges, who laid it off to Choiniere as Matteo intervened. His ability as a young defender shines through even in difficult games like this, I just worry what playing with this lack of a system will do for his long term development - see the current young Ottawa Senators for a dire warning. He really can grow into a true professional if given the time and correct coaching, I just hope he isn't left wanting for those two things.
#55 Amer Didic
(6.4): Much like the rest of the defense, Amer Didic wasn't given much to work with throughout this match. He still managed to succeed in all of his aerial duels, and prevented a couple of additional Forge attacks. It was unfortunate that his only block of the game fell directly to Borges for his second goal, and that he was left in no man's land when Ompomah took the shot that fell at Borges’ feet for his first, as with better help from his teammates both of those goals were easily preventable. That said, he did still get dribbled past multiple times in this game, with the most notable being on the chance I mentioned above that Matteo snuffed out. That he only managed 20% on his long balls is a cause for some concern, as I've been harping on his distribution becoming predictable as the season has worn on. Not that it wasn't before given the number of sideways passes he makes, but now the ones going forward don't have a ton of impact either. It should be noted he had arguably ATO’s best chance of the night on a corner early in the second half. But given the attacking prowess on display on Saturday, that's akin to being impressed by a 4 year old walking.
#23 Kris Twardek
(6.6): With Twardek having to handle more and more defensive responsibility, he's being exposed more than he was at the beginning of the year. Despite not really being in great position to cut out a simple through ball that led to Forge's second goal, he still stood up to the challenge well. Five of six ground duels won, both tackles he made were also won, and he had five further defensive actions to prevent this game truly turning into a rout. My concern is more about his contributions offensively. The crosses he delivered today never looked threatening in the slightest. Even if they had managed to find an Atletico Ottawa player, they did not have the force required to generate a goal directly from a header. I'd like to see him try and cut the ball across goal at least once in those positions - not all the time, as I have always preferred as varied an approach as possible when attacking to keep opponents on their toes, but at least once to change it up a little. It is hard when it seems the right side is never how it's supposed to be, with either not enough people there or too many, but Twardek needs to overcome that as the season winds down. He's been plenty good enough this year, and hopefully everyone else can be that for him too.
#96 Ilias Iliadis
(6.5): The re-debut for Atlético Ottawa's only new signing of the summer window went better than I had anticipated given he was brought in at left back. Iliadis’ best minutes for ATO were in midfield last season, and I was fairly critical of his performances along the left when he played there. Given my low expectations, and the issues that existed everywhere else on the pitch, Iliadis had a fine substitute appearance. He'll need to polish up his passing a tad, given some of the misplaced offerings to Matteo down the left wing, but the fact that he was offering service to Matteo at all is a welcome change from the way the team has been playing the rest of the year. Given the game state when he entered play, I'm holding off judgment on Iliadis as a way of having Matteo play up front, as he wasn't really tested defensively. Perhaps it'll work in late game situations, but we still need to see if Iliadis has improved in that position sufficiently.
#99 Rayane Yesli
(6): Was there really anything he could've done about those goals? Maybe a bit better rebound control on the first, but that's asking so much in the moment from a young goalkeeper that it would be harsh to say as much. It's hard to say who should be starting in net given what's going on with the ten outfield players ahead of them, as I don't think there's anything they can really do to facilitate those changes. Instead we're probably going to be left with a bit of a carousel in the position for the remaining ten games of the season. Much like us, the keepers are oftentimes spectators to the things going on around them, only making interventions when required. Given how hard we’re taking this, I can only imagine what it's like for them.
This husk of a football team has left me as nothing more than a husk of a football fan. Sure, we somehow still sit top of the table as of writing, but that will inevitably change before anything of consequence does with this team. The biggest difficulty is knowing that the change many are clamoring for, the removal of Carlos González, likely won't occur until a formal leadership replacement is announced. With that, we need to figure out how to change the team with what we've got, cause the window is closed and there are only ten games left in the regular season. The last three games have all been “get right” games, but next week against Pacific takes that term to a whole new meaning. They have been as poor as us in recent fixtures and we need to take advantage of that to avoid getting into a dogfight for the final playoff positions. One would think that there's enough experience to pull this team through this last third of the season, but this middle third hasn't really shown us all that much. I really wish I had the answers, because these questions are ruining my mind.
About Patrick
Having joined CCSG in 2022, Patrick started his footie career playing at the age of 4 and began watching the pros around the same time. While the first pro team he supported was Manchester United, as soon as Atlético Ottawa came to town, he was immediately on board. His wealth of footy knowledge has been a constant asset, along with his role as caretaker for Atléti Wikipedia pages.
