How newcomers, analytics-driven philosophy will help Charlotte 49ers’ men’s soccer in 2024

Charlotte men’s soccer secured its first trophy since joining the American Athletic Conference last season with an AAC tournament title — a high point even for a program that’s managed to register consistent winning seasons under head coach Kevin Langan.

The 49ers finished with a 13-4-1 record and progressed to the second round of the NCAA tournament, where it lost to eventual national champions Clemson .

Charlotte has since added a 2024 signing class of 14 players, containing a combination of transfers from a variety of levels and incoming freshmen. Langan, who is entering his 13th year as Charlotte’s head coach, believes the new class has an opportunity to strengthen key areas — some of which have been identified by a growing use of analytics within the program.

Some key additions from the new class include midfielder Casey McCloskey, who spent four years at Division III St. Olaf led the Oles to a national championship last year while being named the tournament’s most outstanding player. The 49ers also secured Denmark native Chris Dommer, who scored 14 goals for Mississippi’s Pearl River Community College last season and earned NJCAA second-team All-American honors.

Charlotte added four further international players from Canada, Cyprus and Norway. The 49ers’ new class also contains two Charlotte natives in Caleb Hylton and Ivan Mata as well as three other North Carolina products in Stanford transfer Ryan Dunn, Pittsburgh transfer Eli Mumford and freshman Cole Trollip.

“All the players, what they have in common is we really trust them as people,” Langan said. “We’re really big on the human part, so we spend a lot of time getting to know the players — whether they’re in Norway, whether they’re in Cyprus — really getting to know them as people, so that hopefully when they come into our environment, they’re a good fit.”

Langan also emphasized the importance of the development of players returning to the team, especially those who had to move in and immediately jump into preseason last fall. He hopes players like sophomore forward Natsuki Ogata, who scored four goals last season after joining the 49ers from Japan, can continue to excel and grow after their first full year with the program.

Many of Charlotte’s new additions will face those same challenges, and Langan is hoping that the new group can gel as quickly as possible as they aim to repeat as AAC champions.

“What stands out from those successful teams that have gone on and won and competed for championships are just how the group come together throughout the season, how quickly they gel and they bond,” said Langan, the winningest coach in the program’s history. “The challenge for us again this year is to try and accelerate that bonding part and the team coming together.”

Langan believes the new class adds a lot of pace and creativity in attacking areas — attributes that align with the 49ers’ philosophies of playing direct and getting into dangerous attacking positions.

Over the past few years, Charlotte has increasingly incorporated analytics and has identified a number of statistics Langan calls key performance indicators, or KPIs, that align with and measure the program’s execution of its tactical philosophies.

The 49ers believe that emphasizing these statistical indicators and incorporating them into their style of play will contribute to achieving their objective of scoring at least two goals a game and limiting opponents to less than one goal a game.

Charlotte was among the top teams in the nation during its 2022 nonconference slate in many of the statistics it determined key to winning games, including touches in the penalty area per 90 minutes and key passes per 90 minutes, according to Total Football Analysis . Other key indicators include penalty box entries, getting into key assists areas and limiting opponents’ passes per defensive action, Langan said.

“In terms of tactics, what will keep being driven by what wins games. We won’t get kind of seduced by stats that don’t really mean too much,” Langan said. “We want to go for the real important stats. You know, shots on target, box shots, scoring off of set pieces, blocking shots, tracking runners, field tilt.”

“We have a very strong identity here. We like to play quick, we like to play vertical, we like to keep a very compact team,” Langan added. “So now you can start to align some stats to that that also align to the KPIs. This has been kind of a project of ours over the last five years that’s been a lot of fun.”

Langan said the team’s analysis was initially driven only by coaches, but the 49ers now track and analyze stats with the help of interns each year, many of which are in Charlotte’s sports analytics undergraduate program.

“We try and be very modern, we try and track stuff,” Langan said. “Last year, we scored a lot in various ways. But to be honest, if you look at our last five or six games, our goals all came from set pieces, which is wonderful, but we’ve also got to find a way to maintain that free scoring that we had early on in the year.”

The 49ers will get their first chance to work toward those improvements and their defense of an AAC title with a preseason exhibition against reigning national champions Clemson, which ended Charlotte’s season in the second round of the NCAA tournament, at home on Aug. 10.