One of the bits we’ve been running on the site is calling the Philadelphia Union the Philadelphia Red Bulls instead. Why? Because the Sporting Director comes from the Red Bull setup and replaced Jim Curtin with a head coach who also comes from the Red Bull setup. We have every indication to believe that they will play the Red Bull style of frenetic, transitional, car crash soccer that has become synonymous with the brand over the years.

Bradley Carnell is the man taking over, and he spoke to the media about his tactical philosophies on Thursday, from the team’s current training base in Spain.

Transcribed:

Crossing Broad: Kind of a two-part question here – in your first press conference you were talking about this 60/30/10 philosophy in terms of goal scoring and style of play. One, if you can elaborate on that for us, and two, we know your Red Bull background, we know Ernst’s Red Bull background, we know how the Union played over the years with Brenden Aaronson and other guys, if you can explain what this will look like compared to other Union and Red Bull pressing teams. And if you can differentiate on why not all of that is the same.

Carnell: Yeah, I think each coach is different within the philosophy, right? So (Julian) Nagelsmann plays differently to Marco Rose, and Marco Rose plays differently to Ralf Rangnick, who plays differently to Jesse Marsch, so there’s differences within each of those trainers or coaches but the philosophy remains the same. In transition, that’s where we want the majority of business to be done. You can do the analysis or thesis over all of the World Cups or the leagues all over the world, and 60% of all goals are scored in that (transition) phase. The 30% is the set pieces, so 30% of all goals being scored from set pieces. And in possession, quite surprising, you’d think a lot of people value that the most, but only 10% of the goals are scored within that (category). So we put our emphasis and training methods within that 60% game model and work on all of the pieces accordingly. That’s not to say I don’t want to have the ball, or that I don’t like the ball. I enjoyed the ball myself as a player. But for me it’s about the quality on the ball as opposed to the time on the ball, so if we can have whatever percentage possession, if that time is quality on the ball and we’re inflicting pain on the opponent, and getting success, then I’d rather do that, for sure. 

CB: People throw out this term “high press” rather generically. Not every press is a high press. You can win the ball back anywhere on the field. How do you look at that and explain it to fans and media? 

Carnell: Yeah listen there’s three thirds on a field and we assign pressing lines up high, and pressing line two, and these topics we’ve been introducing to the players over the last couple of days now. We have different areas. Obviously if you just run high, like a pack of wolves, they’re going to overplay you. There are certain instances and certain criteria and certain areas of the field where we try and get the opponent locked in, then we can attack and we can sprint at them with pace and numbers. Our orientation is always the ball, so we can work collectively against the ball and create these numerical advantages in and around the ball when we’re hunting it down. In transition, that keeps us in closer proximity to have passing angles, passing stations forward vertical and getting movement in behind and exploiting the space of the opponent when they’re building up expansively, there’s gaps to exploit in the vertical areas.

All good stuff there, and explanations that Union fans should relate to. The one that jumps out to me the most is when Carnell talks about running high “like a pack of wolves.” I think there used to be this general misconception that all pressing equates to a bunch of athletes running around wildly, like chickens with their heads cut off. In reality, there are rules and cues, and the Union came closest to being a “high pressing” team in 2019 and 2020, when Aaronson was able to run for days at the number 10 position. You’d maybe force the center back to pass the ball to a midfielder who was facing his own goal, then BAM, there’s your signal to swarm, jar the ball loose, and attack with a numerical advantage.

Carnell also mentions verticality, which is more of what you saw from the U during that incredible 2022 season. Take Jose Martinez, for instance, who would tackle some fool and win the ball back in the middle of the park. How many times did you see him look up and someone was immediately running in behind? Those are direct transitional moments generated from good defensive play, they just start in a different third of the field.


The sentence about possession also sticks. You can have the ball all game long, but you need to do something with the ball. That’s why 70% possession means nothing if you spend most of the time knocking it around between your d mid and center halves. In that sense, aesthetically-pleasing Spanish Tiki-Taka is the antithesis of blunt German transition, and the Union will look much more like the latter in the Carnell era.