ACFC Fullbacks Part I
Jasmyne Spencer
I didn’t make it clear in the Goalkeeper article, but the order in which I’m presenting players for these articles is based on total league minutes played. And I, for one, am kind of surprised to see that Spencer got the most minutes of any fullback on the team. Coming into the season, I actually thought that it was possible that she would play more minutes as a winger this year, but long-term injuries to Riley and Mathias opened the door for Spencer to play more at Right Back. In total, she played 1,626 minutes this year, which is the most she’s ever played, of course with the caveat that the season is longer now with the additional teams. She played more minutes this year than the last two years combined, even.
Offense
Spencer is kind of a conundrum in her offensive contributions. Starting with the basics, she had 0 Goals and 0 Assists. Digging a little deeper, she had 20 Shot Creating Actions (SCAs), which comes out to 1.11 SCAs per 90 and is the lowest rate of any fullback on Angel City. Of those 20 SCAs, only 1 actually led to a Goal. In terms of Key Passes, or passes that lead directly to a shot, Spencer only had 6, which was fifth best amongst fullbacks, and behind even Mathias who played less than a quarter of the minutes that Spencer did. Spencer finished the season with .7 xG from 13 Shots, 5 of which were On Target, or .06 xG per Shot, which was good for 13th on the team. She also had .5 xAG, which was good for 14th on the team.
So far, this seems to show that Spencer was not a major contributor to the offense, but I don’t think that this tells the full story. She was 4th on the team, and led all fullbacks in Progressive Passes Received, and was 3rd on the team in Progressive Carries and Carries into the Penalty Box. She is actually in the 90th percentile of NWSL fullbacks in Carries into the Penalty Box. Along those same lines, she was in the 88th percentile of NWSL fullbacks in Touches in the Penalty Box. Take-Ons is another area in which Spencer shined, in the 97th percentile of Take-Ons Attempted, and 88th percentile of Successful Take-Ons. She was third on Angel City. in both of these categories, behind only Alyssa and Emslie. And while she was often progressing the ball herself, she also had 51 Progressive Passes, which were the 2nd most among ACFC fullbacks. This was only good for the 11th percentile amongst NWSL fullbacks, but I think that’s more of a result of other teams not playing their fullbacks as high as Angel City does.
I’m kind of at a loss to explain the lack of a final product. Spencer is demonstrably very good at getting the ball upfield, as well as getting into dangerous positions. Whenever a fullback gets the ball in the opposition box, it means that there is definite pressure on the other team, and Spencer was in the 88th percentile of fullbacks getting into the box. But somehow, that didn’t translated into goals. Maybe some of this is on Spencer for not making the right pass in these situations, but my opinion is that the rest of the offense was too static. Too often when Spencer would get all the way up the field, I’d see Emslie drop into a position at the corner of the box as an outlet pass. Yes, an outlet pass is needed, but that’s also just basically swapping the positions of the fullback and winger and I don’t think that it overloads the other team at all. We’d also usually see the striker motionless in the box, and no midfielders making runs into the box. So I don’t think that Spencer often had a lot of options. One piece of evidence that supports the idea that it was more a team problem than a Spencer problem is some of her Passing statistics. Spencer was only in the 29th percentile of NWSL fullbacks in Pass Attempts (48.04 per 90), but she was in the 90th percentile in Pass Completion Percentage (80.5%). When she saw a pass, she usually completed it, yet she’s only in the 10th percentile of SCAs from Live Passes. Her SCAs from Take-Ons, Shots, Defensive Actions, and Fouls Drawn are all pretty good, at least in the 60th percentile or better. So since she generally makes a pass when she sees it, I’m concluding that she’s just not seeing passes presenting themselves in the final third, and specifically in the penalty box. There’s also the possibility that Angel City just builds up too slowly, and by the time Spencer gets into the box, the opposing team is already set up in a low block, cutting off all the passing lanes.
Whatever the cause, that final piece of the puzzle was clearly missing. Some might say that this shows that Angel City is right on the cusp, but for me, on the cusp means that it works sometimes, but needs to be more consistent. Spencer routinely getting the ball in dangerous positions, but also routinely not being able to find anybody at all is the sign of major problems to me.
Defense
As high as Spencer was usually positioned, and with her background as an attacker, I thought that I’d find her defensive statistics to be more average, but that was actually not the case. She was in the 77th percentile of NWSL fullbacks in Tackles and 88th percentile of Dribblers Tackled. On Angel City, Spencer was second in Tackles + Interceptions (74) and fourth in Blocks (24). She had 32 Tackles in the Defensive Third, 16 in the Middle Third, and 4 in the Attacking Third. And not exactly a defensive stat, but if you thought that Spencer was always getting be fouled, you were right. Her 1.61 Fouls Drawn per 90 puts her in the 90th percentile of NWSL fullbacks.
Additional Thoughts
Spencer had a club option in her contract that Angel City declined. Perhaps she had expressed an interest to moving on, because it’s hard to look at this season and think that Angel City wouldn’t want her back. Having been an original member of the NWSL, I think that she’s earned the right to experience free agency. But if she does move on, I think that Angel City will definitely miss her. Her ability to slot in on the right or left, and as a defender or winger, is invaluable. Coming into this season, I don’t think that anyone expected her to play a large role, but then she ended up playing more minutes than any other fullback. In my opinion, she’s not a starter; I’d like to see more production in the final third. But while that production is lacking, she’s at least in the top third of fullbacks in several of the progression categories, as well as several of the defensive categories. She’s clearly an above average fullback, at a minimum, and I think that she will be a good addition for whichever team signs her. For the many things that didn’t go right this season, I think that Spencer was usually part of solutions, rather than problems.
Madison Curry
Had Curry not been suspended for the final game, I think that she would have had the most minutes of any fullback, which probably would have been a surprise to most of us at the start of the season. She was drafted in the fourth round (51st overall) out of Princeton and wasn’t actually given a contract until right before the season started. She made her debut against Orlando, coming on for Ali Riley, and never really looked back. In total she had 22 matches with 20 starts for 1,591 minutes and played at left back, centerback, and right back at various times. Angel City finished with the second worst defense in the league, but I shudder to think of what it would have been like if we didn’t have Curry. For me, Croix Bethune was the Rookie of the Year, but I hope that Curry got at least a couple votes. For her to come in as such a late draft pick and make such an impact is amazing. As I wrote in my historical analysis of the draft, if Curry had four substitute appearances this season, that would actually be enough to consider her a success for her draft position. Clearly she exceeded that, and now that the draft has been ended, we can say with certainty that she is the best 51st pick in the entire history of the NWSL.
Offense
Curry scored in only her second game, and was one of only two ACFC defenders to score at all this season. She had 1 Goal and 1 Assist from 1.1 xG (17 Shots, 4 On Target) and .6 xAG and .9 xA. In general, I don’t think that she often got as high up the pitch as Spencer did (20 Touches in the Opposition Box to Spencer’s 32), but she did actually contribute more. Curry had 5 Goal Creating Actions (GCAs) which was tied for second on the team behind only Alyssa. Curry also had 29 Shot Creating Actions (SCAs), which was second most amongst fullbacks behind Gisele, and good for fifth on the team overall.
When we look at Curry’s passing, it also makes sense in terms of her not getting as high. She was 2nd on the team in terms of Passes into the the Final Third (60), and tied for third in Passes into the Opposition Box. However, she’s only 11th in Key Passes (7) and 9th in Crosses (14). I feel like she was never given the same license as Spencer and Vignola to get as high up the pitch, but of course I don’t know that for sure. She was also second on the team in total Progressive Passes (78), which also underscores that she was not playing as high as Spencer or Vignola.
When we compare her to other fullbacks around the league, Curry compares very favorably in the same categories. Even though her 1 Goal and 1.1 NPxG are not high, most fullbacks don’t score, so that puts her in the 77th and 90th percentile respectively. Her .96 Shots per 90 puts her in the 92nd percentile. As we’d expect her SCAs (36th percentile), Key Passes (16th percentile), and Crosses (12th percentile) are not very high. xA (45th percentile), Passes Into the Final Third (55th percentile), and Progressive Passes (58th percentile) are all about average, but again I want to emphasize that being equal to the average fullback in the best league in the world in your first year as a professional is not bad at all. One interesting note: Curry was only 47th percentile in Take-Ons Attempted, but 84th percentile in Successful Take-On Percentage. To me this shows a surprising level of maturity. She didn’t try to beat someone, unless she was very confident that she could, and most of the time, she was right. I also want to touch on Progressive Passes again, because I think that it illustrates a lot about how Angel City plays. Curry was second on the team in Progressive Passes, but still only in the 58th percentile of the league. Almost half the fullbacks in the league pass the ball forward at a higher rate than the best on Angel City. We’ll talk more about how Angel City stacks up as a team against the rest of the league in a later article, but that discrepancy really stood out to me.
Defense
Defense is where Curry really shines, however. In that first appearance away to Orlando, Curry came on in the 78’, and yet still managed to lead the team in tackles with 5. She finished the season with the team lead in Tackles (74), Blocks (35), and Interceptions (44). In fact her 118 Tackles + Interceptions were 44 better than the second best player on Angel City (Spencer). Aerial Duels might be the only defensive area in which she didn’t excel, registering a 41.4% win rate.
And when compared with the other fullbacks from around the league, Curry looks phenomenal. She is 99th percentile in Tackles, 92nd percentile in Blocks, and 95th percentile in Interceptions. She had some foul trouble, with 1.41 Fouls committed per 90, which is above the fullback average of .87, but that still only resulted in 5 yellow cards and no reds. To me, she was never a liability, and I think that those fouls will also go down in future seasons as well. And that fifth yellow card was absolutely not warranted.
Additional Thoughts
It’s a massive understatement to say that Curry’s first season was a success, at least at the individual level. It’s also a sign of the modern day NWSL that Spencer, after 11 years in the league, and Curry, after one year in the league, will both be eligible for free agency for the first time in their careers. I’m kind of shocked that Angel City didn’t include a club option for Curry in 2025, and all I can think is that with the deal coming so late in preseason, and with what we now know about the salary cap considerations, they offered Curry a 1 year “prove yourself” deal that was probably the league minimum and her condition for accepting it was that there were no options. I can only imagine that she now has a number of teams that are interested in signing her.
If I was a scout, my projection for Curry is that her ceiling is something like Casey Kruger. I think that she’s best as a fullback, especially on the left, but she has versatility. She’s not going to be marauding up the wing, but she will contribute offensively. She doesn’t have the height or physicality of some defenders, but I would trust her in a 1v1 against any winger in the league. And I think that if a coach can give her a defined role, then she will have even greater success. If Angel City can convince her to stay, then she will be a huge asset to the team, and I’d even go as far as to say that I think she’s the second most important free agent for Angel City behind Emslie* (which I know is controversial). Curry deserves a paycheck, and I think Angel City should give it to her.
*As of today, Emslie has signed a new two year contract.
Gisele Thompson
Gisele had something of a rollercoaster year, and her stats reflect that. Her talent is undeniable, however. Angel City signed her through the U18 mechanism just days before her 18th birthday, but I thought that she always looked ready to be a professional. Becki Tweed played her as a winger more than I personally liked, but I’m going to focus this analysis on her as a fullback. I think that’s what she’s best at and I think that’s where her national team future lies. Her minutes were somewhat diminished by being at the U20 World Cup, where she won a bronze medal, although those minutes were actually more than I predicted at the start of the season. In total, she played 882 minutes, from 15 matches with 10 starts.
Offense
Gisele’s primary offensive stats are not that eyecatching: 0 Goals and 1 Assist from .3 xG and 1.6 xAG. Her numbers from more advanced stats look very good, however. 30 Shot Creating Actions, or 3.06 SCAs per 90, which is good for 5th on the team. 15 Key Passes, which is good for 3rd on the team, and that’s kind of amazing considering how few minutes she played. I don’t put a ton of stock in Passing Completion, as I think that a player can inflate that stat with easy passes backward, but Gisele is 2nd on ACFC with 86%, and the fact that she beat all the centerbacks does stand out to me. Generally, I think that centerbacks have more opportunity to make an easy pass.
When we compare her to other fullbacks around the league, these numbers stand out even more. These are all on a per 90 basis, so Gisele’s minutes aren’t a disadvantage. She is in the 90th percentile or above in the following categories: Passing Completion % (97th), Passing Completion % Short (97th), Passing Completion % Medium (97th), xAG (92nd), Key Passes (92nd), Shot Creating Actions (97th), SCAs Live Ball Pass (99th), SCAs Take-Ons (95th), SCAs Fouls Drawn (99th), Goal Creating Actions (97th), Touches in the Attacking 3rd (92nd), Touches in the Attacking Penalty Box (97th), Take-Ons Attempted (90th), Successful Take-Ons (99th), Progressive Carries (95th), Carries into the Attacking Third (92nd), and Carries into the Attacking Penalty Box (99th).
I listed all of these in one go just for the shock and awe value, and I actually included only the stats that I think are worthwhile. But let’s break them down a bit. I’m probably getting into a some more categories with Gisele, but that’s also because she has so many facets to her game. And it should be noted up front that some of these stats are inflated by the fact that Gisele played as a winger sometime. That’s true, but I also think that she was able to find similar positions as a fullback, and I think that overall, they speak to her skill set. Also, by my calculations, Gisele only played 16.67% of her minutes as a winger (which is still too much in my opinion), but I don’t think that’s enough to seriously skew her numbers.
Passing - This is a good place to start, actually, because it helps me demonstrate the point that I just made. When we look at Gisele’s Key Passes, only 1 of the 15 came when she was playing as a winger. The rest were all as a fullback. I don’t have the ability to separate all the stats into winger v fullback, but this one at least demonstrates that her high marks are not all down to the time playing as winger. I’d mentioned Pass Completion % already, but I think that it’s worth noting that she excelled at both Short and Medium Passes. Long Passes are definitely something to work on (she was only 7 of 15), but if Angel City wants to continue forward with the possession based style, Gisele absolutely looks like the fullback to do that. xAG also looks really good, and again, coming almost entirely from her time as a fullback. Her .16 xAG per 90 is double the league average for fullbacks, and I think that she’s unlucky to only get 1 Assist for the season, which ironically came on a very unlikely scoring opportunity.
SCAs and GCAs - The thing that stands out to me here is not just that Gisele had so many Shot Creating Actions, but that she was hitting elite levels in multiple areas, specifically Live-Ball Passes, Take-Ons, and Fouls. The passing is one facet that opens up opportunities for her teammates, and the other two kind of go together. When she’s driving with the ball in the final third, she can either beat her defender or get fouled, but either leads to a scoring opportunity, and I think that either will also unsettle defenders. I don’t think that this has entirely come together, but I definitely see Gisele as the type of player that can attract multiple defenders, before she slips the ball through to an open teammate.
Carries and Take-Ons - Gisele ranks really high in both the number of Take-Ons Attempted and Successful Take-Ons, but not quite as high in a Successful Percentage (78th percentile). Still, for a teenage rookie, I think that it speaks volumes about her confidence levels to try to repeatedly beat her defender. I think that as she gets older, she will get better at picking her moments, but I like seeing her so aggressive in her first season. Carries are interesting, in that she’s practically league average in terms of Number of Carries per 90 (32.14), but is elite at Total Distance, Progressive Distance, Progressive Carries, Carries into the Attacking Third, and Carries into the Attacking Penalty Box. So despite the same number of Carries as most fullbacks, Gisele gets 50 yards more total, and 30 yards more of progress up the field than the average fullback. I think this goes together with the Take-Ons, in that the average fullback receives the ball in space, dribbles a few yards until they’re challenged by a defender, and then passes it off. Gisele dribbles past defenders, though, which allows her to go on longer runs that bring the ball up the field. She can also carry the ball into more dangerous spaces, i.e. the attacking penalty area, because she can beat a defender in a 1v1.
Defense
Gisele’s defensive stats also look surprisingly good, at least since I primarily think of her as an attack minded fullback. On a per 90 basis, she’s second on the team in Tackles + Interceptions (5.41 per 90). She’s also best on the team in Tackles Won, so she not just stops an attacker, but regains possession at a higher rate than anyone else on the team. One of the things that stands out is that she actually led the team in Tackles in the Attacking Third (9), and not just on a per 90 basis, but overall. Her sister was second with one less, despite playing more than twice as many minutes. 9 Tackles is not a lot, but this is also Angel City, which usually just presses with only one player. Opta’s stats, which have not been updated since August 5th, has Angel City at 12th in the league in High Turnovers, so anything that Gisele was able to accomplish is a good thing.
These stats still look very good when we zoom out and compare them to the rest of the league. 95th percentile in Tackles, 92nd percentile in Tackles in the Defensive Third, and 99th percentile in Tackles in the Attacking Third. She had no Errors, and Interceptions are still a respectable 62nd percentile.
xG +/-
But now it’s time to rain on the parade. Everything individually about Gisele has looked very good. She definitely makes things happen with the ball, and she’s pretty good at taking the ball away from the opposition. That’s basically what you want in any footballer, right? The issue is how does the team play with her? When we look at her xG +/-, or what is the entire team’s xG For minus the xG Against while she is on the field, Gisele has the second-to-worst mark in the team at -8.1. When we adjust that to a per 90, Gisele is still second-to-worst with -0.83, but Elizabeth Eddy is the player below her, who I think has to be discounted since she only played 32 minutes and that’s too small a sample size. I mentioned this in the midseason report when Gisele was a -1.02 per 90, so she did actually improve in the second half of the season, but it still doesn’t look good. As a team, Angel City wasn’t good in this statistic, finishing at a -6.8. But we can see how the team fared when Gisele was on the field, versus off it, and the team’s xG differential was -0.91 per 90 when Gisele played, compared to when she didn’t. Or in other words, the team conceded almost a full extra goal’s worth of xG every match with Gisele.
I didn’t bring this stat up with Spencer or Curry because it illustrates very little for them. Their total xG +/- per 90 was -0.24 and -0.26 respectively, which was right in the middle of the pack for Angel City. But I am kind of baffled by Gisele’s low numbers here. It translates to actual Goals, as well. The team’s Goal Differential when she’s on the field, minus the Goal Differential without her, on a per 90 basis, was -1.16, which was third worst, with only Eddy and Katie Johnson below her.
First of all, let’s break down how we get to that differential. The team’s xG For when Gisele was on the field was 10.6 or 1.06 xG per 90. And again, only Eddy and Johnson are below her. xGA is actually much better. The team’s xG Against is 18.7 or 1.91 xGA per 90, which is actually the 5th best mark on the team.
I find this really hard to explain, and I almost want to question the data. While I do find a mistake from time to time, e.g. the wrong player credited, I don’t think that they made a mistake every single time that Gisele played. So assuming that the numbers are correct, what are we supposed to take from this? Gisele only played 37.7% of the possible minutes this season, and still finished 4th on the team in total Shot Creating Actions. In a similar way to Spencer’s tendency to get in the box without a final product, I think that this speaks more to the team in general, and the attack specifically.
It really is baffling to me, though. I think that Gisele is so clearly an attack minded player, I expected that the low xG Differential would be due to the team conceding more goals when she’s on the field. But in fact, she more than holds her own defensively, and it’s the attack that gets worse with her on the field. And despite the fact that she’s putting up elite numbers in multiple attacking categories.
The only explanation I have is that Angel City has a problem where we see one player step up, but another player then steps back. For instance, just broadly speaking, we saw Emslie scoring a lot at the start of the season, and then Alyssa scoring a lot at the end of the season. We never saw both having an extended run at the same time. Similarly, I think that Gisele can create opportunities by herself. But when she cuts inside and dribbles into the box, for example, I think the rest of the team often stops and watches and waits to see what’s going to happen. These are perfect opportunities for other players to be making runs, finding pockets, etc. but usually nothing happens. Since I have done a lot of comedy television in my life outside of soccer, the best way I can describe it is that nobody “Yes ands” Gisele. Nobody builds off what she starts and adds their own creativity to it. Her sister is the one exception to this, of course, but they often substituted for each other this past year, or played on opposite sides of the field. But when Gisele made something happen, the rest of the team needed to embrace that, and I don’t think that happened. Of her 4 Goal Creating Actions, 2 of them were from Fouls, meaning that Angel City scored on the resulting penalty or free kick, not the play itself. And her only actual assist came from just heading the ball back into the mix off a corner. Gisele has the individual talent; I don’t think that’s in question. But that xG +/- mark is very concerning, and whether that’s a team problem, or a Gisele problem, or a bit of both, the club and coaching staff need to find a way to translate her talent into production next season.
Additional Thoughts
To me, the fullback might be the most important position in modern football. It’s integral to most plans to overload a certain area of the pitch, whether that be inverting into the midfield, overlapping or underlapping the winger, providing width, or cutting inside. I think that too often in women’s football, players don’t start in this position until later on in their careers. At the youth level, I think that coaches play their best footballers in attacking positions, because that’s where they can do the most damage and youth coaches in America are too focused on winning games, not developing their players. This is a long way of underscoring just how unique Gisele is. At 18, she’s already been playing fullback for awhile, she likes playing fullback, and she plays like a modern fullback. It’s really hard to find these players. Jenna Nighswonger, who is at or near the top of the fullback depth chart for the USWNT, is a converted attacking midfielder and actually has less experience playing this position than Gisele does. This is a big part of why it bothered me so much to see Gisele play as a winger, even if it wasn’t that often. Her skill set is incredibly rare in a fullback, and I think that the team needs to play to maximize that. Same thing for her not getting as much time as possible in the games once Angel City was eliminated. I think that the team, and maybe the coaching staff too, is just used to fullbacks in Ali Riley’s mold and didn’t know what they were supposed to do with Gisele. She’s under contract for the next couple seasons, and I think that she should absolutely be a cornerstone for the team. She’s the kind of player that you should build around, in terms of tactics, formations, and squad building. That means getting her the minutes, not just for her, but also for her teammates to learn her style. And I also think that means playing her in one position, and not moving her all over the field.
Conclusions
This has already been a long article already, and there are still four fullbacks to discuss, but we’ll save that for another time. But just looking at these three fullbacks that played the majority of the minutes, I think that there are some trends. Primarily, all three of them had great individual seasons, and yet the team had a really bad season. I find it most striking that our fullbacks get so involved in the attack, and do routinely get into good positions, but it rarely translated into goals. Between the three of them, they only had 1 Goal and 2 Assists. Gotham had two fullbacks that equalled or bettered that production on their own.
There is also the question of how much of their stats are impacted by the style of play. Angel City has always used the wings to progress the ball, so maybe some statistics are inflated because of that extra involvement. Angel City also doesn’t challenge the ball higher up the field. When the opposition gets the ball, they usually can bring it all the way down to Angel City’s end. ACFC had the most Tackles in the Defensive End of any team, and allowed the 4th most Touches in the Attacking Third for the opposing team. So maybe it’s not a surprise to see our fullbacks having such a high tackling rate. I don’t have the ability to separate all of these details, but I did want to add that grain of salt.
But looking at these numbers, combined with my own observations, I do feel like all three of the players represented bright spots in the season. Curry was a particular surprise for me, and if Angel City can re-sign her, I think that we’ll have a great pair of fullbacks in the coming years with her and Gisele. And if this is the final year for Spencer in LA, then I’m really glad that I got to watch her play for three years here.
Stats in this article came from FBRef and Opta Analyst