Taylor Kornieck is a 6 for the USWNT now. Good or bad idea?

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The United States women’s national team’s recent successes have all had Julie Ertz at the heart of them. When Ertz was fit and in form, they could afford to take risks and overwhelm opponents with numbers in the box, knowing that they had a defensive monster who could shut down 2-on-1 counter-attacks by herself. Without Ertz, the USWNT has taken a slight step backwards.

Between Ertz having a child, Morgan Gautrat missing most of 2022 with a major injury, and Andi Sullivan missing some time with injuries as well, the USWNT has had a bit of a revolving door in the No. 6 spot. Coach Vlatko Andonovski clearly rates Sullivan highly, but he’s also trying to find someone closer to an Ertz replacement. Sullivan is a great player – and a better passer than her predecessor – but she isn’t that level of physical presence or crunching tackler. Enter Taylor Kornieck, a super talented, physically imposing, attacking set piece superstar who’s played several positions in her early professional career. I am contractually obligated to mention that she stands 6’1”.

Kornieck had a breakout season last year as an attack-minded box-to-box player for San Diego Wave, usually playing ahead of a more defensive lone No. 6 in a three-player midfield, or occasionally as the more adventurous member of a double pivot. But she got 45 minutes in a holding midfield role in the USWNT’s January 17 friendly against New Zealand, and last week she revealed that she’s training in that position ahead of the SheBelieves Cup.

“It's pretty different,” Kornieck told reporters on February 8. “It's my first time playing there, but I'm learning from the best. Vlatko has been really helpful and showed me the ropes. Andi as well, just learning from her. She's been great in that position, and I'm really grateful to learn from her every day.”

The decision to play Kornieck as a lone defensive midfielder is the yet another instance of a positional choice by Andonovski that’s been unpopular with fans. It’s a move that ostensibly blocks Samantha Coffey and Jaelin Howell, two players close to Kornieck’s age who performed well as 6s in NWSL last season. It’s also another instance of Andonovski utilizing a player in a different position on the national team than they play on their club team. 

It doesn’t seem like San Diego Wave coach Casey Stoney, her club coach, loves the idea either. “I like to give Taylor a little bit more flexibility in her game than that,” Stoney told reporters on February 9. “I played her more as a 10, and I thought her and Alex [Morgan’s] connection was very good. And also when she arrives in the box, she's a danger. I did play her lower at times, but with freedom. I always played her there with somebody else. So she wasn't an isolated 6. I don't see Taylor in that light for us. I think we'd be taking away her strengths if she played as an isolated 6.”

So why does Andonovski want to try to make this work? Probably because Kornieck is more of a physical presence than his other options at the position – or anyone else on the team, for that matter. She plays some excellent long balls and line-breaking passes, and she’s among the best set piece threats in the world. He wants to find a way to get Kornieck on the field, but he’s not interested in dropping Lindsey Horan or Rose Lavelle, the incumbent starters in the roles where Kornieck has performed well at club level. 

Unfortunately, I think this is a conversion project that’s going to take more time than the USWNT has between now and the World Cup. I also think that, while Kornieck has some good defensive skills and could be a great DM in the right team, she doesn’t fit what the USWNT should be looking for in a player to rotate with and/or back up Sullivan at the 6.

What is a 6, really?

At the heart of the debate over whether or not Kornieck is a good fit for the USWNT as a defensive midfielder is a more philosophical debate about what a defensive midfielder actually is. The very unsatisfying answer: It depends. What shape is your team playing in? How high is your defensive line? What does your pressing structure look like? What are the players around your 6 trying to accomplish in possession? How are you trying to build up from restarts? 

The way a coach answers those questions will produce a number of different types of ideal defensive midfielders. Stoney hinted at this herself with her quote about how Kornieck worked well as a DM with a partner that allowed her some attacking freedom, even if her role was primarily a defensive one in those games.

But regardless of the system you’re playing and your DM’s specific duties, there are a couple of non-negotiables, and the order you’d put these two things in might vary by tactic or personal preference. They are: Provide some level of defensive support for your back line, and avoid crap turnovers in dangerous areas. If you can’t do those two things, you can’t play the 6 for anyone in any competition. These are certainly not Kornieck’s biggest strengths, but she performs these duties adequately enough for me to not dismiss Andonovski’s idea immediately.

The problem lies in the next level of desired skills one might prioritize for a USWNT No. 6. Based on the way the USWNT plays – and admittedly, using Ertz as a bit of a template – I think Andonovski should be trying to find a DM who is very mobile, is excellent at reading how dangerous a particular situation is, and has the ability to shuttle opposing attackers into less dangerous areas with their positioning, to stop the ball from moving towards the box. These are arguably the weakest parts of Kornieck’s game.

This leads me to want to dismiss Kornieck as an option for significant minutes as a 6 for the USWNT. But Kornieck is a talented player, and Andonovski is an accomplished coach, so they deserve some level of benefit of the doubt and a dig into why this might be a good idea. 

Not all ball-winners are created equal

On the surface level, Kornieck does a higher number of Ertz-like things than other potential options. She led NWSL with 6.6 aerials won per 90, according to FBRef, which uses Opta data. She replicates – or likely improves on – the threat Ertz provided on set pieces. She had more tackles + interceptions per 90 minutes (4.77) than Sullivan, Coffey, or Howell, and also won a higher percentage of her tackles (56.3%) than those players.

But those are not apples-to-apples comparisons. Tackles and interceptions won by a pressing box-to-box midfielder with a holder behind them are not the same as those won by someone playing that holding role. While those numbers do not necessarily indicate that Kornieck is a better ball-winner than the players she’s competing with for USWNT playing time, they do suggest that she has some defensive ability, and that trying her in a role where she has to play more defense is a reasonable idea.

Kornieck is also likely capable of getting better than she is right now at any position, as evidenced by her rapid improvement from her time at Colorado – when she was pretty much just an aerial target and a shooter – to now. Stoney and Kornieck also both seem to have a good understanding of what she needs to work on.

“If she plays as a single 6, you have to be disciplined and understand the role very clearly,” Stoney said, before adding, “She's so coachable, and she wants to do well. So I'm sure she'll give it a go in there and be successful.”

Kornieck mentioned several times during her media availability that her main focus at camp was learning about the positioning in her new role. “The positioning itself is just a really difficult task as in any position, but for me, I think holding back and making sure that I don't get ahead of myself and I need to obviously protect the back line,” she said when asked what she has to focus on to adapt to her new position. “That's the most important role. So I think just positioning in itself for me is going to be a big task, to learn about and appreciate it.”

Those are the things everyone wants to hear from a player and their club coach when they’re learning a new position, and hopefully Kornieck looks much more prepared for the job during SheBelieves Cup than she did against New Zealand. But there are a couple of big issues with her game that I don’t see getting fixed between now and the World Cup.

The problems

First is Kornieck’s passing, which I have to admit, is a bit hard for me to understand. She occasionally plays outrageous long switches or through balls, so there’s pretty clearly some quality in her feet. But consistently – from Colorado, to Duisburg, to Orlando, to San Diego – she’s been among the lowest percentage passers in the competition she’s playing in. 

Some of this is clearly down to tactical choices, but great passers who take a lot of risks and play for direct teams are usually somewhere in the neighborhood of 70-75% completion rate. Kornieck was at 57.5% for Wave last season, good for 4th percentile in NWSL. Her numbers for the aforementioned three other teams, and in two other competitions, were similar. Even given her considerable skills, it is difficult for me to justify playing such an inaccurate passer in midfield for the USWNT.

To her credit, some of this is down to Kornieck actually being good at one of the things that I mentioned earlier is a non-negotiable quality in any DM – avoiding crap turnovers. Kornieck averages 1.66 miscontrols and 0.53 times dispossessed per 90 in NWSL, both slightly better than average for a midfielder. Part of her passing percentage being low is down to her playing long rather than committing a turnover when she’s in some danger on the ball. Obviously you’d strongly prefer for your midfielders to be able to turn out of pressure and make crisp passes, but Kornieck’s approach is certainly preferable to gifting opponents a numbers up counter-attack.

Kornieck also had some issues pop up in the New Zealand game that exposed her lack of mobility relative to not just Ertz, but the other candidates for the USWNT DM position. It’s possible that they could be covered up by truly elite positional sense, but she doesn’t have that right now, and she’ll probably never be particularly quick.

Fast players can cover up a lot of mistakes when they’re learning a new position. The occasional incorrect decision or second-slow reaction can be covered up with a burst of speed to get back into the right place. Kornieck has a lot of excellent qualities, but she lacks this one, and it makes her errors stick out. There were several instances in the match she played against New Zealand – I can’t include footage here for copyright reasons, but you can check the 15th and 34th minutes for the most glaring ones if you have access to a replay of the game – where Kornieck was slow to close down or made a poor decision to step up, leaving her opponents a lot of space to attack into. 

A New Zealand squad missing some of its best players wasn’t able to punish those errors, but the likes of England and Spain would have. I am struggling to envision a scenario where this hole in her game is patched in 6 months or less.

Kornieck could be the right 6 for some teams, but not this USWNT

I think there is a world, and a system, where Kornieck could become an elite defensive midfielder. It’s not a ridiculous idea just because she’s a better attacking midfielder at this moment. If you were a team that played a mid-to-low block – meaning your DM was not asked to cover a lot of space and would not get isolated in defensive transition frequently – and asked her to play a lot of long balls to spring direct counter-attacks, Kornieck could be a superstar.

But the USWNT do not play that way, and will not start anytime soon. They are a team that likes to have a lot of the ball in the opponents’ final third. They like to commit two of their central midfielders and at least one of their fullbacks to attacks to overwhelm opponents. The trade-off from playing this way is that your opponents have a lot of space to counter into. Without a DM who can cover that space, the USWNT is extremely prone to losing games where they put up 10 times the shots and xG as their opponents. This might sound harsh, but I believe the USWNT’s three options are: Play an extremely mobile DM, make wholesale system changes, or lose to top teams.

I understand why Andonovski wants to give Korneick a shot at the 6. She might be a great defensive midfielder for some teams immediately. She might be a great defensive midfielder for the USWNT eventually. But she’s the wrong choice for the USWNT in the role right now.