Inconsistent showings, Pasher's position, Martínez moments and right back questions

My Birmingham Legion FC talking points following their 2-1 win over Miami FC in Saturday's USL Championship game

Edwin Laszo makes a pass last week against Detroit City. (TIMOTHY BELIN)

Saturday was a night of firsts for the 2025 Birmingham Legion team.

The Three Sparks claimed their first road victory and first Eastern Conference scalp of the 2025 season, while new head coach Mark Briggs got the first win of his Birmingham tenure.

It didn’t always look likely. A lacklustre opening half had fans fearing another Rhode Island-type display. A much-improved second half has everyone much more positive.

A Game of Two Halves

In 1859, English author Charles Dickens gave us A Tale of Two Cities. On Saturday, his compatriot oversaw a game of two halves.

The term is a soccer cliché, but it exists for a reason.

Birmingham Legion came out flat, uninspired and lethargic. The Three Sparks barely entered Miami’s third and did not register a single shot on target in the opening period.

The second half was the complete opposite. The Black and Gold came out all guns blazing, scored three minutes in and could have been 3-1 up by the 50th minute.

“We had instances in the first half where we weren’t crashing the goal and taking chances,” Briggs told the club after the game. “We took those chances in the second half and made the correct movements and were rewarded for it.”

But more than just an issue on Saturday, this inconsistency has been something that has plagued the Legion for a while now. Under Briggs’ tenure alone, the Three Sparks have shown it within the same game, as on Saturday, as well as within the same week, with contrasting performances against Rhode Island and Detroit last week.

The only constant about the team this season has been that inconsistency.

In all 10 league games played so far this season, the Three Sparks have trailed at one point or another.

It doesn’t matter if there’s a quick start, like against Tampa Bay Rowdies earlier this month, or even an early goal, such as in the season opener against Loudoun United. You can reliably count on Birmingham Legion to go behind in every game they play.

Asked about it last week, Briggs mentioned the need to be “switched on” for the full 90, while Phanuel Kavita pointed at the team’s mentality. Both said players don’t always start games the way they should.

While the ability to come from behind shows great resilience, it’s far from sustainable. Teams with better defenses than Miami will shut up shop once they get the go-ahead goal, and Birmingham need to be proactive about preventing this.

There was a lot to like about the second half on Sunday, but until the team can do it for the full game, they will remain maddeningly inconsistent. And results will suffer for it.

Pasher on the wing

The one other big inconsistency under Briggs’ tenure so far has been Tyler Pasher’s positioning.

First successfully deployed as one of the central midfielders in Eric Avila’s final game in charge, Pasher has split time between that role and his usual right wing ever since. In Briggs’ first game, he played centrally, once again to great effect. That is why his move back out wide against Rhode Island raised so many questions, especially given the team’s overall display.

Fans where therefore understandably pleased to see him return to the middle against Detroit, only for the Canadian to find himself back out wide on Saturday. Not until Sebastian Tregarthen came on for Kobe Hernandez-Foster did he resume his central role.

But even before then, he appeared to have instructions to get more central in the second half, as seen by his goal.

If you look at his starting position on the play, Pasher is essentially operating as a second striker just off of Ronaldo Damus. This is a stark contrast to the first half, where he was asked to hug the touchline for the majority of the period.

And that isn’t to say that he wasn’t effective in his wider role.

Amidst Legion’s struggles, Pasher was the one bright spark offensively. The right winger but in two dangerous crosses in the first half, and only poor communication with Damus prevented the Haitian forward from connecting with either.

But once he moved more centrally, we could see what we have come to expect from the Canadian this season.

Pasher got his goal in the 48th minute and continued to be a threat in more central spaces. Once fully switched to a midfield role, he was able to drift through the lines, and find pockets to operate in. This culminated in his second shot on target in the 74th minute, which Hamid spilled ahead of the second Legion goal of the game.

“He’s been magnificent,” Briggs said. “The energy he shows as he plays consistently, and he is always a threat. Tyler is one of the best players in this league. We’ve got to get high-level performances for us to be at our best. There’s still more to come from him.”

There certainly is more to come from Pasher, but one could argue it will rely heavily on giving him a permanent place in that midfield three.

The Enzo Martínez question

Pasher’s movements in and out of that starting midfield are due to another issue Legion have been faced with this season. They have yet to find their best central trio.

When playing a 4-1-4-1/4-3-3 as the team has done so far, you generally want three distinct roles.

• The destroyer: Deepest of the three, this player shields the backline and keeps the ball moving on offense with simple, short passes to his fullbacks or the two other central midfielders.

• The progressor: A hybrid, box-to-box role, this player has as much responsibility on defense as he does moving the ball up the field, either carrying it himself or with line-splitting vertical passes.

• The creator: The most forward-thinking of the group, this player has the least defensive responsibilities. His primary goal is to break the defensive lines, find the space between the opposition’s midfield and defense and generally cause chaos.

Over the course of the season, we have seen multiple players stake their claim for these respective roles. Martínez is one of the few who’s been deployed in all three.

But now, with new-signing Edwin Laszo seemingly claiming the destroyer role, spots are at a premium. Pasher’s role, when played in midfield, is that of the creator. That leaves just the progressor for Martínez, arguably the role he is best-suited for anyway.

Martínez led all players for minutes-played last season and is currently on course to do it again. Since missing the season opener through suspension, the Uruguayan has started every single game and been subbed off just once, in the USL Jägermeister Cup against Chattanooga Red Wolves. That puts him at 984 minutes for the season, nearly a full hour up on second-placed Jake Rufe (932).

Needless to say, a central trio without the veteran midfielder has yet to be tried since that opening day. Some would say for good reason, giving the impact he made upon his return on Matchday 2.

But since then, his impact has been much less apparent.

In the first half against Miami, Martínez was so invisible that when the commentator brought him up late in the half, he mentioned his shock at not speaking the Uruguayan’s name earlier. But after the break, he was crucial to creating the goal — getting the “hockey assist” ahead of Dawson McCartney’s cross — and had two gilt-edge chances of his own that would have given Legion the lead if not for excellence by Bill Hamid in the Miami goal.

And then, he vanished again.

There is no doubting Martínez is a tremendous player. In his 124 appearances in Black and Gold, he leads the team in assists (25) and is just five shy (34) of Neco Brett (39) for goals. But he is also 34 years old and not the player he once was.

A player of his quality and experience is always going to have big moments, whether those five post-restart minutes in Miami or popping up for the equalizer against Tampa, but it might be time to question if he is just that: an impact player.

With Kobe Hernandez-Foster currently missing out when Laszo, Martínez and Pasher operate together, and Sam McIllhaton and Roman Torres waiting in the wings, there is no lack of competition for those midfield slots. The team is still in search for its best trio, and it might be time to consider whether Martínez is no longer a part of it.

An abundance of right backs

When Birmingham Legion announced the signing of Erik Centeno, a right back, there was some consternation.

After all, the team already has two players in that position: Jake Rufe and Stephen Turnbull. Rufe had been ever-present in the backline, either at right back or centerback, prior to the Miami game, while Turnbull was the team’s most expensive offseason acquisition (Damus is on loan and Trejo was a free agent). Even Tiago Suárez and Dawson McCartney have shown themselves serviceable right back cover, though Briggs made his thoughts clear on the former after the Detroit game.

So there was even more consternation when Centeno went straight into the starting XI. Unlike the team’s other new acquisition, Kameron Lacey, Centeno has not been training with the team long, and question marks could therefore be raised over his fitness.

It did not matter, as the new signing played the full 90, switching over to left back following McCartney’s forced withdrawal in the 67th minute.

The plan might not have been to play him the full game — consecutive injuries to Mosese Mensah and McCartney forced other defensive substitution in his place — but what is certain is that starting him from the off was a big show of faith in the new man.

The verdict? Mixed. With a lack of sharpness and inability to track back at times, it was clear Centeno had not played a competitive game in a while. The right back had a few poor touches and got caught upfield one too many times, but also showed signs of why Briggs, who oversaw his first professional steps in Sacramento, wanted him.

Even though he may not have had the fitness to get back, Centeno was constantly making overlapping runs high up the right side of the field, stretching the Miami defense in the process. This was a stark contrast to Rufe, who as a more traditional right back is less adventurous with his forward bursts.

We know from his time in Sacramento that Briggs loves to exploit the wings, and this was the first proper look at what the Englishman wants from a right back. Though Rufe started the previous two games, Turnbull came on in both as he tries to find form following an injury-disrupted start to his Birmingham career. However, the former Rhode Island man was once again absent from the matchday squad at the weekend.

With lingering questions over Turnbull’s fitness, Centeno might already have surpassed him in the right back pecking order. It remains to be seen whether he’s also ahead of Rufe, or whether that decision was purely based on the opponent of the day.

If Centeno is the first choice, it might be a sign of something else Legion fans have been wondering since Briggs’ arrival: a potential shift to the five-back formation he used in California.

As discussed after Brigg’s first game, Birmingham already have players well-suited to making that formation work. In the absence of Turnbull, Centeno might have been the one missing piece he still needed.