Gary Smith says his Nashville SC players have been quick studies as he implements defensive philosophy
Nashville SC opened up one of its two-a-day training sessions to the media on Thursday, giving a first glimpse into how head coach Gary Smith is preparing the team for its inaugural season in the USL. The players began training on Monday, and Smith said the first portion of the week was spent testing the players’ fitness; he was happy to report that the players had apparently kept to the conditioning programs they were given during the offseason, allowing them to move quickly toward implementing “some of the philosophy and direction” that Smith hopes will come to define their style of play.
Though Smith has mostly been tight-lipped about formation and tactics, the nature of the players on the roster suggested a strong possibility that we’d see NSC line up in a back five at some point this season and, sure enough, the team spent Thursday morning working through scenarios they’re likely to face when defending the ball in their half of the field with three centerbacks and two wingbacks.
The most common grouping we saw was Taylor Washington at left wingback, Kosuke Kimura at right wingback, and Justin Davis, London Woodberry, and Liam Doyle at the centerback positions. Though lining up with a back five is sometimes decried as an overly defensive formation, Smith insisted that he wants his wingbacks to “go and get pressure on the ball so we don’t just become a group that are gonna sit deep.”
Passages of spirited play were occasionally interrupted by Smith giving direction to his players, and he seemed satisfied that they were picking up his instructions quickly.
“There are some intelligent lads,” Smith said. “They don’t take long to understand what I’m asking of them, and they’ve got the right physical and athletic qualities to get that done as well.”
Washington stood out as a player who seemed to quickly pick up tactical instructions. During one sequence, Washington closed down Michael DeGraffenreidt too aggressively and got sent through a spin cycle by the speedy former Louisville Cardinal. Smith stopped the play to give Washington some coaching, and in a similar scenario that followed shortly thereafter, Washington kept to his defensive positioning, showed the man with the ball toward the inside of the field, earning a cry of “Good boy, Taylor. Wonderful stuff!” from the head coach.
During a break in the play, Washington was off to the side picking up advice from Kimura, a 33-year-old veteran who was on Smith’s 2010 MLS Cup-winning Colorado Rapids team.
“Kosuke’s been helping me with my attacking side of the game as well as the defending side, taking players 1v1,” Washington said. “Because of how coach wants us to play, we’ll be in those positions.”
With players like Kimura, goalkeeper Matt Pickens, and Davis (whose brain Washington says he’s been eager to pick), there’s so much veteran experience on this team that even a guy like Woodberry, who has 46 MLS appearances, says he thinks of himself as a young player on this team. And many of those veterans have worked with Smith before, making the learning curve that much shorter.
“The good thing is, having constructed the group, there are three or four of the guys that I’ve worked with before,” Smith said. “I think that makes the process a little bit easier rather than having 23 players who have never worked in my environment before. It certainly gives us a little bit of a basis to work from.”
But even having that shorthand with a few of the players, there’s still a lot of work to be done.
“A lot of the stuff is going to be to give the guys a very good overview — not just this week, but throughout the preseason — of the different aspects of our style of play,” Smith said. “What do we look like when we haven’t got the ball and we’re defending deep? What do we look like when we haven’t got the ball and we want to press high? What do we look like when we have got it and we’re playing out the back? What do we look like when we’re in their half and we’re trying to create in their half of the field?”
“Those are the big topics, but within those topics I can dig a little bit deeper and ask more of the players and try to find out a little bit more of how we’re going to achieve that: supporting angles, interaction, relationships. There’s plenty to be looking at, there’s a lot of ground to cover.”
A lot of ground to cover, and just eight days until Atlanta United come to town.
