Adjusting to life without Manaka

On July 3rd, the North Carolina Courage transferred Manaka Matsukubo to Chelsea. The general thought was that they were in trouble; they lost the reigning midfielder of the year, their best player, and the source of their most production over the past 18 months.

Instead, since then, they’ve been by expected goals… the best team in the league?

So, how did it happen?

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What Manaka did for the Courage #

This isn’t to denigrate Manaka. She really was a top-ten player in the league.

She progressed the ball towards goal (more via passing than dribbling, but she was above average at both). She created shots for others. And she got on the ends of passes and got shots for herself as well. Her 0.62 xG+xA (expected goals + expected assists) per game put her basically at the top among midfielders, and top 10 in the league overall among minutes qualifiers.

To recreate Manaka’s production in the aggregate, the Courage would need to cover all three areas: ball progression, shot assisting, and shots. all three areas. “Moneyball” jokes above aside, this is one area where soccer can make this easier than baseball; how you choose to move the ball upfield, who you task with setting up others, and who you decide to set up for shots are all tactical adjustments you can make in how you play. You don’t need to just plug one player in to do all the things; you can adjust where and how you do all of them.

That’s what the Courage set out to do.

Step 1: recreate the ball progression from left spaces #

Manaka was integral in how the Courage would progress the ball in attack. She would pick up the ball in midfield on the left side (sometimes very deep in the midfield), and then either carry or pass it forward.

The Courage needed to ensure that on the left side of midfield they had ball progression, both via carrying the ball and via passing. Their first step was a new midfield signing, Erica Meg Parkinson.

As noted before, Parkinson is excellent off the dribble; she loves to pick up the ball and attack defenders. Dropped into the same left advanced midfield role, the one part where Parkinson can approximate a like-for-like drop-in for Manaka is in carrying the ball up the field.

However, despite completing an above-average percentage of her passes, she hasn’t yet brought the same level of consistent forward passing yet to the team. How could NC recreate the same passing progression in the left spaces in midfield?

Enter Feli Rauch.

Due to injury and/or fitness concerns with Rauch, Dani Weatherholt played most of the first half of the season at left fullback, where she would be characterized as “not adventurous”.

Rauch, on the other hand, loves to get forward, both overlapping down the line and drifting inside to combine and play passes.

Compared to Weatherholt, Rauch has 80% more touches in the final third and over three times as many touches in the penalty area. Her ability to combine in the left midfield spaces, combined with Parkinson’s carrying ability, helps replicate the progression that Manaka brought.

Add on Rauch assisting 0.3 xG per game, and that’s one area covered.

Step 2: recreate the chance creation #

Manaka created over two chances per game out of the midfield. The Courage opted to recreate this by pushing one player back, and one forward.

Shinomi Koyama was already the deepest lying midfielder the Courage employed. Since coming back from the break, she’s been even more so. She’s gone from having 48% of her touches in the defensive half to 58%, and her dribbling and carrying forward has gone from “occasional” to “nonexistent”.

This is by design: if progression is done via Parkinson carrying away from goal, and via Rauch drifting into midfield spaces, Shinomi’s role is to stay back and provide cover for the backline.

However, what you will notice is the sharp uptick in both passing value (via g+), and shots assisted. Rather than deferring to Manaka to generate the attack, Shinomi has been given the green light to play more direct and aggressive herself. When she does venture to play passes, she plays high value ones, usually on a speedy counterattack or just after a turnover.

You can count on Ashley Sanchez 😮‍💨

Her 11th goal of the NWSL season puts the Courage on the board to lead 1-0!

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— NWSL (@nwslsoccer.com) August 8, 2026 at 6:37 PM

Even when it doesn’t end up as a full assist, she’s still playing excellent, aggressive, passes to generate shots.

Evelyn Ijeh's shot is blocked but Ally Schlegel is there to clean up the rebound 🧹

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— NWSL (@nwslsoccer.com) August 16, 2026 at 7:52 PM

Meanwhile, Riley Jackson has been pushed further forward up the field to generate more attack. Her touch percentage in the attacking half has gone from 51.3% to 58.5%, and those touches have come closer to the box as well.

She’s playing more progressive passes, carrying the ball forward 80% more often, and has more than doubled her shot value assisted per game compared to the first half of the season.

When you compare the numbers, both midfielders are not just assisting more shots post-Manaka, but are assisting better shots:

Jackson + Shinomi	Shots assisted per 96	xG per shot assisted
With Manaka	2.85	0.078
Post Manaka	4.18	0.104

How are they assisting better shots? Well, let’s continue.

Step 3: recreate the shots (and goals) #

To recreate Manaka’s shot volume, the Courage made a tactical shift in two ways:

• how they initiate sequences that lead to shots
• who takes those shots (and where from)

When she played as a striker, Manaka played as a false 9, dropping deep to gather the ball. With Manaka as a midfielder, the Courage didn’t drop their center forward deep; all three forwards averaged similar vertical positions for receiving passes.

After Manaka’s departure, North Carolina shifted. Evelyn Ijeh spent more time dropping into midfield to combine in possession. Meanwhile, both wingers pushed further up the field to present as outlets to attack.

They combined this with a more active defensive approach as well, looking to win the ball higher up the field against unsettled defenses.

Defensive metric	Ranking before July 1st	Ranking post-July 1st
Actions per 96 mi	14th	8th
High press actions	9th	5th
PPDA¹	10th	8th

¹ Passes Per Defensive Action: average number of passes the opponents play before a defender does something to them

The goal of these tactical changes is simple: get their wide forwards starting closer to goal, and fed the ball more quickly so they can get more, better, shots. And it worked.

In the first half of the season, Ashley Sanchez would drop into the defensive half for a little under 25% of her touches. She was a dribbling, attacking, winger who would pick up the ball, carry it into the final third, and generate both above average shots on goal, and also elite assisted shots.

After this tactical shift, Sanchez gets the ball closer to goal, more likely to already be in the final third herself. Because of that, she isn’t assisting as many shots when combining. But that doesn’t matter, because her production has shot through the roof everywhere else.

She’s getting high value shots from good locations in the box. Compared to the first part of the season, her average shot has 60% more value.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Ally Schlegel didn’t get many minutes in the first part of the season, and when she did she hadn’t quite jelled yet with the team. Half of her shots were off of set pieces, none of which were particularly good shots.

Once Manaka left and she got pushed forward as an outlet, everything changed. She has gotten forward to get on the end of passes and get good shots.

Even if you remove her rebound against Houston and her self-created tap-in against Denver, she’s still averaging over 0.15 xG per shot - a “good” shot each time.

And it’s not just for shots; her being a forward option allows her to collect the pass to find others as well. (Also peep the perfectly weighted throughball from Jackson.)

Ally Schlegel returns the favor and sets up Evelyn Ijeh 🤝

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— NWSL (@nwslsoccer.com) August 16, 2026 at 8:29 PM

By funneling shots to their forwards on faster attacks, the Courage replaced Manaka’s shot contributions with shots more likely to be from better locations. If you break down their shots by what percentages fit American Soccer Analysis’ poor/average/good/great model, they’ve drastically improved their shot quality.

	Shots per game	Poor	Average	Good	Great
League average	13	51%	30%	13%	6%
NC (pre July 1st)	14.5	52.2%	27.6%	12.5%	7.5%
NC (post July 1st)	15.5	35.4%	34.6%	16.1%	13.7%

More info, and looking ahead #

Manaka Matsukubo really was a unique player: she combined excellent ball progression through midfield, excellent shot creation for others, and a nose for goal herself.

North Carolina and coach Mak Lind looked at the players on the roster and looked at how to adjust their lineup and tactics to best recreate what Manaka brings, spread across six other regular starters.

This hasn’t completely led to success in the standings yet; in their eight games after the break they are 4-4. In their losses, a combination of set piece foibles, route one attacks, and poorly defended crosses has bit them. But those are fixable problems. The work they’ve done to streamline and maintain the attack in Manaka’s absence is arguably the harder work of preparing for the playoff run. Their success in adjusting so far is a credit to both the players and the staff.

(For another similar version of this same story, the folks at Expecting Own Goals did their own dive into North Carolina’s changes post-Manaka in their episode last week.)