Tag: Flying

The mark of a good defensive midfielder is when you hardly notice their presence. They’ve snuffed out an opponent’s attack before the crowd can begin to anticipate a box entry. Their passing is so metronomic that it puts a viewer in a daze. Even the most game-changing of defensive actions look tidy when handled with masterful precision.

Tyler Adams is a good defensive midfielder, as has been established for nearly five years now after his breakthrough with RB Leipzig. Despite this, he lacks that “blink and you’ll miss his work” air about him. The reason for this is simple: his clubs and country fare noticeably better whenever he’s involved.

Bournemouth is the latest beneficiary of Adams’ play. They played their first seven games of the season without Adams as he recovered from back surgery in July. Since then, Andoni Iraola’s side has seemingly gone from strength to strength: 10 games unbeaten, dating back to a 4-2 win at Wolves on Nov. 30, with a 2.2-points-per-game clip over the period that only trails Nottingham Forest among Premier League sides.

Adams’ return has been highly anticipated by Bournemouth in part because he was hardly available in his first season. The club signed him after Leeds United were relegated, hoping he would be a more dependable midfield anchor than Jefferson Lerma, who was leaving for Crystal Palace.

So great was their faith in the former New York Red Bull that he was their only defensive midfield reinforcement in the three windows following Lerma’s exit. The need for cover was immediately pronounced, as Leeds’ overuse of Adams left him with a torn hamstring that ended his season in early March. Even as he missed nearly all of 2023-24, Bournemouth focused its recruitment on the forward and defensive lines.

After his surgery rehab, Bournemouth has been more willing to ease him back into action. He was slowly reintroduced in late October: one unused appearance on the bench, then two substitute shifts, then his return to the lineup in mid-November.

Starting with that galvanizing win at Molineux, Bournemouth’s 10-game heater yields ample data suggesting Adams has played a significant part. Since Nov. 30, Bournemouth has increased its ball recovery rate by 3.1% (to 58%) from the previous 12 matches, improved the average xG per shot faced from 0.105 to 0.085, and upped its pressing intensity of passes allowed per defensive action made (or PPDA) from 11.2 to 9.3.

“It’s a controlled chaos,” Adams told TNT Sports after last weekend’s win at Newcastle.  “We want to make the game as chaotic as possible but controlled for us. We try to overwhelm the opponent as much as possible but for us, it feels normal. We’re running all over the place.

“We know I have the freedom to step, I know center backs are coming with me. It’s trust, but you have to have the nuance to it as well. You can’t go flying into tackles all over the pitch. You have to be smart, because we know we can leave ourselves vulnerable at times.”

Adams has looked back to his best. His 12.43 ‘true’ tackles per 1,000 opponent touches — combining raw tackle data with instances when a defender is either shaken by the ball-handler or commits a foul in the process — since Nov. 28 trails only Alexis Mac Allister and João Gomes among all Premier League players (min. 500 minutes played). His ‘true’ tackle win rate of 55.3% exceeds both of them, while he also ranks highly in interceptions and blocked passes per 1,000 opponent touches (4.5, 5th among 61 qualified midfielders) and aerial win rate (64.3%, 15th).

Even more eye-catching than the data are the results themselves. Since returning, Adams has participated in: a 1-0 win over Tottenham, a 3-0 win at Old Trafford, a 2-2 draw at Stamford Bridge, and last weekend’s 4-1 blowout at St. James’ Park. Adams was particularly immense in the most recent result, making a mark all over the pitch in a vintage display.

The run has made Iraola among the hottest names in coaching. It has also reinforced the abilities, individually and as a collective, of Adams and his teammates.

“The system that we play, you have to be a certain type of player to fit into the style,” Adams said last weekend. “You have to have the mentality to press, run, and compete.”

Thankfully for Bournemouth, those traits fit Adams to a tee. The next trick is to keep him available for his national team’s biggest tournament in over three decades.

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One can assume that Adams and USMNT manager Mauricio Pochettino have spoken several times since the Argentine’s appointment in September. Unfortunately, Adams’ back injury prevented him from featuring in either of Pochettino’s first two camps before year’s end.

Adams last played for the national team that he co-captains in early July, when he started the Copa América group finale against Uruguay. The match felt doomed before it kicked off, as the previous game’s shock defeat against Panama made advancing from Group C a near impossibility. It was the only time that Adams played a full 90 minutes in the tournament, having played the opening half against Bolivia and Panama. 

As The Athletic wrote in the weeks following the USMNT’s early exit, Adams clearly looked below his usual standard across the competition. His lack of involvement in the preceding months left the USMNT’s crucial midfield cog with significant rust. It’s quite understandable why: Adams had logged just 118 minutes for Bournemouth and 96 minutes for the United States dating back to Jan. 1, 2024.

In the Copa, Adams was far less effective than usual when tackling opponents. Comparing to another small sample — his 360 minutes in Qatar — his duel win rate dropped from 61% to 53%; his ‘true’ tackle win rate fell from a robust 64.7% to a paltry 37.5%. Concerningly, he was forced to commit fouls more often, possibly a side effect of being below his opponents’ fitness standard: from 1.96 fouls per 1,000 opponent touches at the World Cup to 2.89 per 1,000 touches at the Copa América.

This almost certainly wasn’t a case of a player regressing over 18 months. Adams won’t turn 26 until mid-February. Instead, his and Bournemouth’s shared inability to avoid injuries in the months preceding the tournament left him without time to adequately prepare. Compare that to the months preceding the 2022 World Cup, when he’d logged 1,167 Premier League minutes for Leeds in the season’s first half, and it’s clear how much more ready his body was for hard-labor tournament shifts.

Bournemouth and the USMNT have a shared interest in ensuring that Adams’ recent stretch of consistent, high-level play can be sustained for longer than a couple of months at a time. The United States will need all of its best players in fine form to make a deep run when the 2026 World Cup comes to North America. When drafting the USMNT’s projected strongest lineup for that summer, it’s hard to come up with even a few names who are as vital to making it all work as Adams.

For Bournemouth, that may also mean finding adequate cover before the January window closes. Billing was loaned to Napoli as other attacking options surpassed him on the depth chart. The fact that Adams has quickly partnered well with Lewis Cook and Ryan Christie shows that any two starters from the trio complement each other. During this 10-game run, however, no other player beyond these three has logged a single minute in the engine room.

For the USMNT, Adams may require rest and rotation whenever he has been heavily utilized before an international window. Thankfully, Pochettino has more depth in defensive midfield than his predecessor Gregg Berhalter. Johnny Cardoso, Tanner Tessman and Aidan Morris have all progressed since the 2022 World Cup. None is quite as industrious of a ball-winner as Adams, but each can take a shift to ease the toll on Adams’ legs.

Adams is invaluable to the USMNT, a quintessential “glue guy” with strong leadership attributes and level-headed relatability. Having him as part of each ensuing Pochettino camp will ensure he’s in sync with his teammates even if his minutes must be managed during friendly windows.

With respect to the next handful of windows, none comes close to matching the magnitude of the 2026 World Cup. Entering that tournament with Adams below optimal fitness, or seeing him miss outright due to injury, would be among the worst imaginable setbacks Pochettino could face.

(Top photo: Bryn Lennon/Getty Images)