Nashville SC grabbed a crucial three points at Geodis Park last Saturday, beating Real Salt Lake via Sam Surridge's 91st-minute penalty kick.
During the match, the SixOneFive Soccer Discord got into a lively discussion about Gastón Brugman's performance. The 32-year-old Uruguayan midfielder started his third match for Nashville SC, and his match split opinions in our discussion group.
"I know the club is very high on Brugman. He still doesn’t look comfortable, in my opinion," said one subscriber. "How many times has he lost the ball in the midfield? I don't mind him forcing it into the box, but he has lost the ball in silly ways about five times that I've counted."
"I think what I saw from Brugman last night was a very good holding mid that can be a playmaker but was missing on one-fourth of his passes," said another. "When he did miss on a pass, it was a major miss and obvious miss, which kind of over shadowed the three good passes."
"Brugman is the only going guy creating anything," countered another subscriber. "I thought Brugman was our best player on the night for what it's worth."
At the request of our subscribers, let's take a deep-dive into Gastón Brugman's performance against Real Salt Lake. I've pulled the numbers and re-watched the match, specially noting 64 separate actions, to try and assess how he played. Let's try to figure out why his performance was encouraging to some viewers and frustrating to others.
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The numbers
Let's start with a look at the stats. In 83 minutes against Real Salt Lake, Brugman completed 46 of his 60 passes (77%). He touched the ball 73 times, the most of any Nashville player besides Jeisson Palacios, and was fairly aggressive with his passing. He created four chances (the most in the match) and played 10 passes into the penalty area.
Diving a little deeper into the American Soccer Analysis numbers, Brugman had a really strong performance. Of all central midfielders in MLS Matchweek 8, Brugman had the most expected assists at 0.57 xA. He tied New England's Carles Gil with four key passes (passes leading directly to a shot) and took 14.1% of Nashville's total touches of the ball in the middle and attacking thirds. He got on the ball a lot.
Giveaways
We'll start the video review with some of the negatives. Brugman's performance split opinions in the fanbase, and I think a lot of that came from some of the poor giveaways he had in midfield. I've highlighted some of them here.
— - (@back_post_run) April 17, 2025
It's fair to say that Brugman could and should have done better in several of these scenarios. Some of the touches were a bit sloppy and some of the passes were off-target enough that the receiver couldn't control the pass. He'll certainly want to clean that up going forward.
