A new formation, positional play, individual errors and Paterson's return
My Birmingham Legion FC talking points following their 4-2 loss at Louisville City in Saturday's USL Championship game
Few Birmingham Legion fans truly expected anything from a trip north to this league-leading Louisville City team.
So to go ahead 15 minutes in, especially after not scoring the opening goal in any league game since the season opener, was a nice surprise.
Things didn’t pan out from there, but it did show there might be some hope of breaking with the negative trends that have plagued this team so far in 2025.
New formation, new spark
Given Mark Briggs’ affection for a 3-4-3 formation at Sacramento Republic, there have been questions since his inaugural press conference on whether he might bring that formation to Birmingham.
On Saturday, he did so for the very first time.
Originally reported as a 5-3-2 with Ronaldo Damus and Preston Tabort Etaka as the strikers, it ended up being much closer to that 3-4-3. Enzo Martínez, originally believed to be one of that central three, actually evolved in a more forward, tucked-in left attacker role.
That left Edwin Laszo and Kobe Hernandez-Foster as a two-man pivot.
However you want to describe it — whether it’s a five-back or three-back is moot — the important thing is that it worked. For the opening half hour, at least.
Whether Louisville was unprepared for the formation shift or whether it was truly the formation, Birmingham Legion were the team on the front foot in the opening 30 minutes.
The Three Sparks opened the scoring off an, albeit lucky, Ronaldo Damus goal, and could have had another through either Martínez or Tabort Etaka within ten minutes of the first.
While like any formation there are downsides to a 3-4-3, there’s a lot to like too.
With the wingbacks providing the width, there were greater opportunities for the attacking players to link up in the center of the pitch. This drags players inside, leaving that space for a wing back to run into, or even for Tabort Etaka or Damus to suddenly race beyond the backline.
It all resulted in an exciting start for Legion, who went toe-to-toe with arguably the best team in the USL for 30 minutes, and did not look out of place. Of course, when the hosts figured out what was going on, it became a different story.
That isn’t to say the formation isn’t good once teams expect it, that’s more to do with the quality of Louisville and the relatively short space of time Birmingham have had to work on their new shape.
We don’t know when Birmingham started working on the 3-4-3, but given their last match was still the traditional 4-1-4-1, it’s safe to say the heavy lifting didn’t start until after that Indy Eleven loss. As such, the players had just 10 days to really get to grips with the finer tactical details, something that will obviously take longer than that.
As the players get more familiar with the system, additional variables will come into play to counter the opposition adapting. It’s all part of the game.
Until then, the shift provided something just as valuable: the belief things can change. Like a new manager bounce, the change in formation would have reinforced the idea that the team isn’t just accepting its misfortune, it’s actively fighting against it.
New ideas, like new coaches, can sometimes be the springboard for success because it’s something new for the team to rally around. Something to get them back excited and focused.
If the opening 30 minutes are to be believed, the 3-4-3 might have done just that.
Positional learning curve
Now for the downside.
As mentioned above, learning a new formation takes time. Unfortunately, time is sorely lacking for the Three Sparks.
It’s quite unusual for a team to attempt a system shift midseason, and for good reason. Most coaches want a full preseason to work on drilling in key concepts to make their formation work. Players need to understand every facet of their role, but also of those around them to be able to anticipate their teammates’ moves and work together like clockwork.
Midseason, teams do not have the luxury to do that. With games coming thick and fast, much of any given week’s preparation is geared to a specific opponent. As such, there is much less time for an overarching philosophy change.
It’s no wonder Briggs did not opt to attempt the 3-4-3 until after a 10-day window without a game, his first such break since the week immediately following his appointment. Doing so earlier would have been a death sentence for those first couple of games, crucial games to get the new coach momentum rolling.
Now that he is slightly further removed from his appointment, the timing feels more adequate. But that isn’t to say it’s ideal.
“We’re much more organized now,” Suárez said prior to Saturday’s game. “We’re going to start to change our formation and the way we want to play. So it’s going to take a little bit for some of the newer guys to adapt, but I know we can be successful under Mark and this new style of play.”
Suárez has the luxury of having already worked with Briggs in Sacramento. As such, he knows his role and what to expect from a 3-4-3. For some of his teammates, the adaptation phase is going to take a little bit longer, something that was quite clear on Saturday.
The first goal is a perfect example of this. A pretty straightforward cross is swung in from the right side, and Louisville’s Amadou Dia is there to knock it in at the back post.
It looked simple, and thus preventable, because it was.
Erik Centeno, playing as the right wing back, was caught on the wrong side of Dia, allowing for the tap-in. This is a common issue when switching from a back-four to a back-five: covering those spaces between centerbacks and wingbacks.
Because there is suddenly an extra man in that defensive line, marking responsibilities can sometimes get blurry. A centerback can think a fullback is going to be there, while the wingback can fail to realize it’s his responsibility, erroneously believing the extra centerback means one of them should be on it.
When that happens, as was the case on Saturday, it leaves gaps to exploit between that outside centerback and wingback. Those mistakes will disappear with time, as players become more familiar with their roles and the positioning of their teammates, but until then it will be a growing pain.
Defense isn’t the only area that showed signs of questionable positioning. Martínez was heavily responsible for another.
When you think of Enzo Martínez, other than the glorious beard, you think of a battling, ball-carrying, all-action midfielder. You definitely don’t picture the 34-year-old making lung-busting runs down the left wing, getting to the byline and sending in crosses.
So it is no surprise the Uruguayan preferred to tuck inside rather than exploit the space down that left flank.
Two things happened as a consequence.
The first is an unfortunate result of the available personnel. In an ideal world, the left wing back is left footed. It then becomes his responsibility to dominate that left flank and be the one sending in dangerous crosses, allowing Martínez to do what he does best and come inside to operate in the half spaces between the lines.
Moses Mensah and Dawson McCartney, as players who love to bomb forward, both sound ideally suited to the role. Unfortunately, both are currently sidelined with injury. Instead, Centeno and Stephen Turnbull, both right-footers, operated in turn as the left-most defender. It’s no surprise then that virtually no attacks came down the left wing.
Which leads to the second consequence.
Damus is undeniably an excellent striker, currently leading the team with eight goals. But he is also the kind of player who, by virtue of his obvious talent, tends to try to do more than he should. This was apparent earlier in the season when he wasted energy trying to drop deep and perform hold-up play ill-suited to his 5’9” frame.
Once Damus clocked what was happening — or more accurately not happening — down that left flank, the Haitian tried to take matters into his own hands. He made a couple of runs into the space Lousiville was leaving there, as they too had realised it required less attention than other areas of the pitch. While he got the ball and surged forward, it just led to a new problem.
With Damus on the wing, there was nobody left in the middle to receive the cross.
At one point, the Haitian put a ball in from the left flank, only for Tabort Etaka to try and rush over to it from the other end of the field. This was, once again, a common issue when shifting formations.
Damus is trained to find and exploit spaces. He did just that, without understanding what would happen as a result. If this was a 4-1-4-1 with Trejo down the left, the Mexican would have recognised Damus’ movement and made up for it with a central run himself. In the absence of such an option, it just created gaps that nobody was ready to fill.
As with the defensive understanding, this sort of issue will sort itself in time. But until one of the left-footed wing backs returns, it will probably benefit the Legion to play someone more capable of exploiting that left flank than Martínez.
Individual mistakes
I’ve written in the past about the team’s mentality, but Saturday showed a new kind of frailty on that front.
All four goals conceded could be chalked up to clear errors, sometimes several of them within the same play.
On the first goal, as mentioned above, Centeno is the wrong side of his man. One of the first things you learn as a defender is to always be between your man and the goal. Some of the goal comes down to positional understanding between him and Jake Rufe, some of it is the result of Centeno misreading the ball’s flight path. Regardless of it all, if the right back had applied that simple teaching in this case, that goal does not happen.
The second goal is perhaps the least obvious, but is still a mistake. This time, it’s an error of communication as much as anything else. There’s no denying it was an excellent pass by Taylor Davila to lead to the chance, but look closely at Tiago Suárez. The centerback hesitates a split second when the ball is being played, unsure if he can play Phillip Goodrum offside or not.
That moment of doubt not only creates the opportunity for Goodrum to make that run and stay onside, but also prevents the backline from working as a unit. If Suárez makes his mind up earlier, he can give Phanuel Kavita a shout to let him know there’s a player running off his back. The two can then either move as a unit to spring the offside trap, or at the very least the Rwanda international can anticipate the run and be better prepared to deal with it.
Neither happened, and Goodrum got an easy finish as a result.
The third goal was the most obvious mistake, but it’s not just on Suárez this time. Though the centerback is at fault by not playing the ball faster, Kaylor Hodges was right to mention in his Hammering Down film study that the pass back was probably not the wisest choice either. That pass is inviting the pressure, and against a team like Lousiville, that’s playing with fire.
Additionally, Fernando Delgado made the odd choice to jump up when Goodrum gets his touch, leaving an easy poke home for Goodrum’s brace. I can understand the instinct — a bouncing ball is more likely to result in a shot in the air than on the ground — but it did feel like a scenario where the young goalkeeper would have been better off keeping on his toes and reacting rather than trying to anticipate.
Finally, the fourth goal can be classified as a mistake by several members of the team, including, potentially, the coaching staff. Louisville attempted and threatened with the exact same corner routine on no less than two occasions in the first half. The inability to adapt and find a solution in the second half, when there was a 15-minute break to do so, is unforgivable.
I don’t know if the coaching staff did not address it or if it was a failure of the players to implement their new instructions, but someone undoubtedly messed up at some point given the result. Delgado is the one left looking the worse for it, coming out too late and leaving an empty goal to head into, but he is hardly helped by his defense. If the coaching staff is analyzing the first half and giving clear instructions, and if the players are following through on those, that goal never happens.
I’m not just listing these errors out to torture Legion fans. There is a point to all this.
A lot of these mistakes have caveats to them. Delgado and Suárez are still young and learning and the other players are adapting to new positions and roles. Though they hurt, none of it was the end of the world.
Mistakes happen. Goals happen. Losses happen. It’s how players respond that matter.
In this game, it could be said that the response was underwhelming. The comedy of errors can easily be viewed as cause and effect, one mistake leading to another as players grow demoralised, lose focus and fail to do the basics.
As such, it will be instrumental to see how players react in training and in the next few games. Will they let their heads drop and allow this negative spiral to continue, or will they learn from their mistakes and re-emerge determined to put them right?
In a game of margins as fine as those we see in professional soccer, errors can very easily decide a game, as we saw all-too-well on Saturday. But mentality can as well.
The next few days might provide a perfect opportunity to learn who has the right mental strenghth to be that difference-maker, and who might not be cut out for this level.
AJ Paterson makes his return
If there was one positive to take away from Lousiville, it was the return of AJ Paterson.
The left-sided defender, capable of playing both centerback and left-back, had yet to play a game in 2025 prior to his introduction in the 67th minute.
Despite appearing in the team’s schedule release video, where he expressed his eagerness to return to the field, Paterson soon disappeared from the team’s radar to the point of forgetting his existence.
That’s because he picked up his injury before the first game of preseason even kicked off, and has been rehabing ever since.
So it was a welcome sight to see Legion’s number 20 back out on the field after a lengthy period of recovery, one which has seen him slowly reintegrated into first-team training over the course of the last two months. For context, he was already back out on the grass at the time of Briggs’ appointment, but the road to recovery was still a long one to get him up to full fitness and prevent any risk of a re-occurrence.
But despite the lack of match fitness and the sharpness only competitive encounters can provide, Paterson did not look out of place when he returned.
Coming on as the left-sided centerback, he was not afraid to show for the ball and try to make things happen, a very positive sign so soon after his return. It could be easy after such a prolonged absence to not fully trust one’s body and shy away from possession, especially against a team such as Louisville and in a game such as Saturday’s, but Paterson did just the opposite.
The 29-year-old defender showed for the ball constantly and was a welcome addition to the team, providing more of a balance through his left-footedness.
He ended the night with 33 touches in just 23 minutes of play, won two aerial duels, won possession on two occasions, achieved one of just three successful tackles on the team and completed 24 accurate passes, seven of them in Louisville’s final third.
Only two Legion players, Martínez and Hernandez-Foster, had a higher number on that final stat.
Now let’s be clear, Paterson is still going to need plenty of time before he can play a full 90 minutes. With two more games this week, it’s likely he’ll only get a cameo in one. But if Saturday’s showing is anything to go by, his return to the starting lineup cannot come soon enough.
For further reading:
Mark Briggs: connected to success
When you talk to those who’ve known Mark Briggs over the course of his career, they all say the same thing.