Alfredo Morales is a 28 year old tri-national. He plays defensive midfield in the Bundesliga. His father is Peruvian, but became an American citizen and served in the US military. Morales himself was born in Berlin, which makes him eligible for Germany.
He has been playing in the Bundesliga since 2015 at lower level clubs, Ingolstadt and Fortuna Dusseldorf. Yet, despite this top tier experience he only has 13 caps and hasn’t been called up by the national team since May of 2016. He started at left mid against Puerto Rico. 😐 Hi, Jurgen.
So what gives?
I’m not going to pound the table and assert that he should have been a regular call up. However, I’m also not arrogant enough to say that he’s been playing for low level Bundesliga teams therefore he doesn’t deserve it. Bobby Wood plays at a similar level. Julian Green plays at a lower level. They both have been regular call ups at one point or another while Morales hasn’t gotten a sniff. Why? Is it just positional scarcity or in Morales’ case depth?
With that in mind, I watched his two most recent* (full 90) performances with Fortuna Dusseldorf. Morales played 90′ against Schalke in the DFP Pokal on 2/6 in a 4-1 loss and 90′ in a 1-1 draw with Hoffenheim on 2/2. As usual, I tried to concentrate, as much as possible, on just what Morales was doing.
*Morales came on as a sub in the 65′ of Dusseldorf’s most recent game.
**Note to all soccer tv producers everywhere** STOP THE CLOSE-UPS OF PEOPLE RUNNING! You can’t see anything and it makes me miss stuff.
Team Set-Up
Vs Hoffenheim: Morales was playing as the 6 in a formation that functioned as a 5-3-2 when defending and a 3-5-2 when attacking. The 3-5-2 portion of the formation was more theoretical in nature, by that I mean Dusseldorf never had the freakin’ ball…so that part of the formation didn’t come out to play too often. He played the full 90 as the central 6.
Vs Schalke: Dusseldorf set up in a 4-4-2 for this game and Morales was one of the two CMs in the formation. He was the more defensive of the two but did occasionally get into the attack. (Full disclosure – I stopped watching/evaluating this game once Dusseldorf went 3-0 down in the second half.)
Strengths:
Anticipation:
One of Morales’ strengths (based on these two games) is his defensive anticipation. He sees the pass coming and gets on his man very quickly. If he doesn’t win the ball he can still force a turnover by forcing a bad pass.
Barely a minute into the Hoffenheim game (1:02 to be exact) Morales anticipates a pass, closes the space, and gets in between the player and ball to win it. Good start.
In the gif below, Morales sees a dangerous pass coming and steps in front to cut it out. This clip also sort of demonstrates a limitation though. Instead of remaining calm and finding an outlet, he just boots it clear.
The clip below is probably Morales’ best moment from the Hoffenheim match. He cuts out a pass and plays a good pass forward to help create a fairly dangerous scoring opportunity for Dusseldorf.
Leader/Organizer:
This was more apparent against Shalke than it was against Hoffenheim, but Morales was attempting to keep the team in shape, exhorting, etc. There was lots of gesturing, talking to teammates, and generally being a leader. A couple of regulars were left out of the lineup since it was a cup match. That may be why it was more noticeable during the DFP Pokal game against Schalke than against the league game vs. Hoffenheim.
Room to Improve:
Not sure what to categorize this as, but the 2nd goal for Schalke was kind of his fault. It feels a little harsh to say “jump higher,” (judge the flight of the ball better?) but the ball goes just over him for McKennie to head down. Sane then scores on the rebound.
Getting in position to receive the ball:
Whether it’s due to instructions from the coach or his own predilections, Morales doesn’t really seem to want the ball. Here the keeper rolls the ball to a defender and Morales is standing right next to a Hoffenheim player, not working to get into an open position and receive the ball.
And again here, the keeper plays it to a defender and Morales does a poor job of getting open. Now maybe his job was to drag his defender out of the way for his teammate to get the ball, but it’s clear that either Morales or his coach don’t want him to have it. The last one of these I wrote was about Cristian Roldan and Morales appears inferior to Roldan in this area. Roldan was excellent at getting into good positions for his teammates.
Possession/Passing:
If you need a sideways or backward pass to keep things simple in possession than Morales can do that job. If you are looking for creative, aggressive passing or passing under pressure…not so much. Here, Morales receives the ball under a little bit of pressure, never picks his head up and plays a safe backwards pass. Notice a wide open teammate calling for the ball at the bottom of the screen.
Wins possession here, has a chance to play the ball to a teammate to keep the ball, but just clears it downfield.
One more here – Morales gets the ball, but instead of turning into space and finding a forward pass he dinks around with it and then just plays it back. You can imagine McKennie in the same situation getting the ball and driving at the defense.
Even though passing doesn’t seem to be a strength for Morales, that doesn’t mean he never hits a nice pass. I’m nitpicking and clipping out “bad” plays here, but obviously it isn’t all bad. Just as an example – Morales plays a nice little give and go here, then keeps possession while under pressure.
Random Weston McKennie Thought/GIF:
You know that one guy when you’re playing that’s just a little too rough? And you think or even say, “Settle down, man. This ain’t the World Cup.” That’s Weston. He’s just a little extra and I love him.
Conclusions?
If Berhalter doesn’t call him up in March…I get it. Berhalter looks like he wants a distributor filling the 6 role and that doesn’t play into Morales’ strengths. What I absolutely don’t understand is why he didn’t get more call-ups under Klinsmann/Arena. Once Beckerman aged out/slowed down the team was crying out for a destroyer-type midfielder to play with Bradley.
In my opinion, the only thing that ever made the Bradley-Jones pairing work well was Beckerman staying home and cleaning up for them. Someone should have filled that role. I’m not positive Morales would have been the best pick (Danny Williams maybe?), but it’s a mystery to me that he didn’t at least get a few more shots at it.
He’s not Kante or Casemiro, but if Berhalter (I don’t think he does) wants a pure destroyer on the roster then Morales should definitely get a shot in March.
