Emily Sonnett - player analysis
A compilation of Sonnett‘s strengths, weaknesses (cause everyone has them) and general observations from Portland and USWNT games (mostly from 2018 and 2019) ft. my irrelevant opinion.
Enjoy!
Before I’ll start a few notes:
I’m obviously not a professional soccer analyst person or whatever, so please don’t come for my ass. These are just patterns or reoccurring things in Sonnett’s game I observed while rewatching tons of PTFC and USWNT games.
I will focus on a few key points, that doesn’t mean that she has deficiencies in other aspects, sometimes it’s just hard to show them and I tried to avoid stating arguments without giving visual evidence. (All the links and credits are below the gifs)
I would love it if you gave additions, feedback or criticism to this post but all in all I just hope that you enjoy reading a bit about Sonnett’s more professional side and soccer tactics in general.
Please let me know if the format is weird, I’m still figuring out how to make big posts.
I sincerely apologize for the low quality of gifs, as I said, I’m figuring things out and I wasn’t able to upload proper clips.
And lastly, Sonnett is a precious little bean and I enjoyed making this more than I should have. Also, did I use this as an excuse to spend days on end rewatching old games? Yes I did.
I will start with three main strengths I think she brings to the pitch:
Communication / Leading the back line (this is in regards to her position with the Thorns, I will talk about the differences between PTFC/USWNT later on)
As a center back you naturally have a more responsible role in terms of shifting players that are in front of you and communicating things to them they can’t necessarily see. Sonnett embraces that role completely and at 25 years old she is at the level of world class CBs in that regard. A lot of players take on that role much later in their career. Her college coach Steve Swanson for the University of Virginia said about her:
"There is a standard of focus and intensity that Emily demands of the players that play around her. She’s not afraid to hold her teammates accountable in that regard. That was one of the unique aspects of our team dynamic this year, is that Emily's style of leadership is different than the team was used to. I think the team has recognized that the qualities Emily has, we need.“
http://www.espn.com/espnw/news-commentary/article/14100802/virginia-emily-sonnett
This clip I wanted to show you is from a situation that is very common for a defensive line but overlooked bc we as viewers naturally tend to look at the movement of the ball. It’s the intentional shifting of the back line in the exact right moment to let an opposing attacker run into offside. In the original video you can hear Sonnett shout “DROP THE LINE“ and Menges and Kling follow her movement which results in Alex being successfully caught offside at the side line.
((Tumblr won’t let me upload video clips, so here’s a crappy gif (look at Sonny and Menges), click the link to get to youtube, it’s at 21:30))
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JGM6Nju0b4
A simple moment but a very crucial part of back line coordination.
2. Box positioning
A.k.a. one of the most important parts of good defending. Sonnett covers runs from attackers almost always with textbook precision. She anticipates passes and is able intercept balls which makes her a proactive rather than a reactive player. When she does have to go for a tackle she brings a feistiness that she probably learnt from a certain Kelley O’Hara I can imagine. She usually opts for slide tackles and that decision could be debatable if you’re the coach but it’s just so good to look at tbh
(credit to @geekmythologys for the last gif)
But anyway, her box positioning. Having watched a lot of games with my eyes glued to number 16, I can of course safely say that Sonnett knows what she’s doing. But I’ve been thinking more and more that she often has a sort of intuitive approach when it comes to box positioning in particular. For this next clip I’m gonna need your opinion. Normally I wouldn’t tell Sonnett to abandon her player in that moment, especially bc it creates a 3v2 situation on the attackers left side and also considering the angle in which Dunn is facing the goal. However, she steps in and is able to block the ball.
to see it properly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ev3SFCmbqQ at 15:40
What do you think?
Oh and this is just excellent clearance work. AD was certainly hyped about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvcOuadyFu4
3. Offensive effort
Sonnett is one of the highest scoring CBs of the league but her offensive efforts aren’t measurable in just goals. For corner kicks she likes to do the near-post run Julie Ertz style and has been successful in the past, most notably the 2-0 in the semifinal 2017 against Orlando (which resulted in this gem of a gif):
She likes to stay up top for a bit when her position is covered by someone else and tbh I’m living for these moments.
Here she encourages quick playing and would have gotten through with it if the nwsl had good refs. She didn’t even touch her. (get it? haha)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOIDLJ4ZL1A
Here she drives the ball after winning it, even if her teammates are pushing up late and then she stays up front to participate in the counter attack. Unfortunately nothing evolves out of this situation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ev3SFCmbqQ
Right. Those were the strengths, in terms of weaknesses, I don’t wanna pick apart the smallest things but this is what I found:
Misjudged midfield positioning
We’ve talked about her excellent positioning in the box, however, a huge part of modern soccer is having the Center Backs pushed up to the half-line (as well as inverted outside backs but that’s another point). And what I’ve noticed is that sometimes during turnovers Sonnett goes in to put pressure on the player and with that an even wider space opens up behind her that the opposing team could exploit. Like in this picture.
Blue is the ball movement, red (Sonnett) goes in when in my opinion green (Lindsey) should have been the one putting pressure on the ball bc now Daly can run into that open space.
Luckily Sonnett’s speed prevents Houston from getting anything out of it but Daly tried it several times during the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOIDLJ4ZL1A
My second example is that iconic tactical foul against ARod that we all remember.
Her positioning isn’t optimal, Klings pass isn’t the best, ARod gets her off of the wrong foot, she can’t turn around fast enough and has to stop her with a professional foul which is (I’ll say it again) demanded by coaches in situations like that. But anyway, tumblr has talked enough about this game rip
2. Determining the biggest threat
This is a minor one, because Sonnett is usually really good at reading the game and making the right decisions. However in this game against Australia, she tries to cover the space behind Dahl which is technically reasonable but considering how wide open the Australian is, she should have closed her in earlier. That little hop inside the center of the field made the difference and the opposing player was able to score.
I think it’s safe to say that stuff like this comes with age and experience. And again, Sonnett is only 25!
(The whole game against Australia is awesome for spotting strengths and weaknesses, plus we get tons of Sonny close-ups thus I can recommend rewatching it) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBNvE3owllY
Two more things I wanted to include are two risks that could be relevant in the future.
From time to time she doesn’t control her arm movement in the box.
This is obviously the natural thing you do when you make a move like that but with the new rules by Fifa, defenders are more and more limited and this would have been a penalty if it had hit her arm. Idk it could bite her in the ass at some point.
2. Intuitive positioning
We’ve talked about this and people might have different opinions on it. I personally think though that this might make the difference between a great and a world class defender. So I say go for it Sonny.
Phew, I’m almost done guys, congrats for getting this far, I hope it’s interesting at all.
The last thing I wanna mention is this: The difference between Portland Sonnett and National Team Sonnett, a.k.a. CB Sonnett and RB Sonnett.
Even though as a right back your role is more offensive, I feel like Sonnett has to be pushed to go for it. She rarely does those runs in behind the winger and towards the end line. When she does it it’s great but compared to Kelley she simply isn’t there yet. It also seems to me like for Portland she takes more liberties in pushing forward which maybe is a confidence thing as well. She is a given for the Thorns but had to fight to regain that roster spot for the NT in 2017 after not being called up for several months. Maybe the fear of making mistakes bc of being out of position hinders her a bit? (I’m saying this while being aware that I of course don’t know what the coaches want her to do and what the different game plans require of her.) Anyway, I love her 1v1 defending as RB. I think she is underrated and absolutely deserves a spot on the Olympic roster next year.
One last low quality gif because we gotta stay on brand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBNvE3owllY
Well that’s it, I hope you enjoyed it. Again, I’d be grateful for additions, opinions, feedback, whatever.
Thanks for reading :)
