Ever since its inaugural season back in 2017, Liga MX Femenil has garnered a reputation as one of the fastest-developing leagues in the global women’s game, with it boasting an array of player talent and continually growing its fanbase as each year goes by.
Such is the quality on show each week and the overall competitiveness of the league, it has become a popular destination for those hoping to experience a new culture and to further develop their games, with American striker Mia Fishel turning down Orlando Pride in 2022 in favour of Tigres UANL Femenil, forward Sarah Luebbert making a permanent switch to Club América Femenil from Chicago Red Stars in December and Spain duo Andrea Pereira and Jennifer Hermoso opting to leave Barcelona Femení a year ago to join América and Pachuca Femenil respectively.
Clubs, too, have begun to recognise the rich resources that the division can offer, with Chelsea Women signing Fishel this summer to boost their attacking options and Bayern Munich Frauen signing a partnership deal with current Apertura leaders Tigres in January, allowing both to share training facilities and to work together for the good of the game.
However, it’s not only Europe and the USA who have conducted business with Liga MX, with other players from around the world showing a desire to sample its culture. One of those is El Salvador international Brenda Cerén, who is currently in her first campaign at Guadalajara-based Atlas Femenil but who has already shown her value to the team, and there is every reason to expect that she could attract admiring glances in the future, as this tactical analysis will show.
Attacking threat
As she plays primarily around the forward line, this scout report will begin by highlighting how Brenda Cerén operates inside the final third, both in terms of assisting her teammates to maintain a constant attacking threat and in creating problems for her opponents.
A key quality that any good attacker must have is being able to play with both feet, and there is a good reason for this as it makes players less predictable and therefore trickier to contain. Cerén has shown as the season has gone on that she can play with both feet and so possesses that unpredictable nature in her game, with her able to get into positions inside the pitch and then either drive towards the goal line or cut inside and test their luck with a shot on goal.
This situation highlights the effect that this has on opposing defenders, with Guadalajara Femenil’s Damaris Godínez trying to keep Cerén back here but not knowing which way to move, and that means that the Salvadoran forward will always have the advantage here as she can push off before Godínez can.
On this occasion, she decided to move the ball onto her left foot and shoot at goal. Even though the ball missed the target, the fact that she was able to fashion the opportunity in the first place is the crucial point. It shows how, even in seemingly minimal space, she can still create chances and make life difficult for opponents.
Guadalajara have posted the joint-second-best defensive record in Liga MX this season, having conceded just eight goals to date, so creating clear-cut goalscoring opportunities has not been a regular occurrence. However, the fact that this doesn’t faze Cerén here shows why she is such an exciting player and is one to keep an eye on, as it is a quality that a lot of teams will value highly.
The other thing that Cerén has demonstrated as the season has gone on is spatial awareness and recognition of when to move forward and when to wait for a moment before progressing into a goalscoring position, and that is shown here through Alejandra Lomelí taking the ball towards the goal line and Cerén holding back rather than moving to immediately offer her a passing option.
She does this because she knows that Pachuca have a relatively solid defensive setup here, with Mexico defender Karen Díaz and experienced Nigeria centre-back Osinachi Ohale forming a solid line and working together to limit Atlas’ ability to shoot at goal. As a result, when the ball moves forward through Lomelí, they drop back to follow it, allowing Cerén to adjust the direction of her run as needed to ensure that she can connect with the ball with maximum impact.
The result is that when Lomelí’s attempted pullback takes a slight deflection off of Ohale, the El Salvador player can put herself into the right place to send it towards the goal, ending up as one of her three solitary strikes to date.
It is not always about being reactive, though, and there have been occasions when she has needed to show a proactive approach, too. This was one of those situations, with the ball on the far side of the pitch and in the possession of Costa Rica defender Daniela Cruz. Still, she doesn’t have many options in the middle due to Tijuana Femenil having a structured setup and limiting the space that Atlas have to operate in.
Cerén therefore recognises here that she will need to make the first move and runs towards the goal area, exploiting the gap between Mayra Pelayo-Bernal and Victoria López, and that has the same effect as Lomelí’s attack in the previous example had, with Tijuana instantly losing their shape and space opening up for Cruz to target with her cross.
Unfortunately, the delivery lacked quality and failed to find either Fabiola Ibarra or María Paula Salas here, meaning the attack prematurely broke down. Still, the fact that the opportunity was there at all was down to Cerén’s intelligence and off-the-ball run to create it, which shows again why she has become such an essential member of the team.
Controlling the tempo
What has been made clear in the analysis so far is that Brenda Cerén has an excellent spatial awareness and the intelligence needed to help her team use that to their advantage, and that theme continues when looking at how she controls the tempo of Atlas’ play and can either speed play up or slow it down as her team need her to.
In either case, this is instigated by the Salvadoran dropping back to position herself in holes between opposing lines, just as she has here against Pachuca. In this case, Atlas were progressing the ball forward at speed and needed to keep that up to stop their opponents from launching their own fast transitions, but they initially didn’t have a player in the midfield to use as a link to keep the ball travelling up the field.
That was where Cerén came in, with her reading what her team were looking to do and moving to ensure that there was a passing route for the ball to travel down. It also opened up the space behind for her to turn and send the ball into, with Díaz unable to resist the temptation to close her down and subsequently being caught out once Cerén had the ball at her feet.
As a result, the former Alianza Women player was able to feed the ball through to Lomeli without needing to break stride, meaning that the rhythm that had been built up until that point was not lost, and only a poor shot by Lomelí prevented this attack from seriously testing the Pachuca goal.
However, when looking at Cerén’s role in creating the opportunity, it shows a different side to her game and one that a lot of teams will appreciate, and the fact that she has a 71.8% passing accuracy whilst playing for a team struggling to pick up results again shows how she is a player who could fit into a bigger team in the future.
It was mentioned that dropping back into these gaps can also be used to slow the game down, and this is something else that Cerén has really excelled at during her short stay in Mexico so far.
What really helps when she is trying to hold the play up is that she possesses a high level of strength and can stay between the ball and an opponent with ease. As a result, her teammates can move the ball into her path and know that she will give them the time they need to move either up the field or back into their defensive shape and will play a key role in preventing them from conceding easy goalscoring opportunities.
It also means that she and they can win fouls in dangerous positions, with them knowing that there is a greater chance of opponents getting frustrated and mistiming a tackle the longer they cannot dislodge it. In this case, Tijuana’s Sanjuana Muñoz did just that and gave Atlas a free kick just inside her half, enabling them to send the ball forward and gain yet more territory.
As this graphic shows, this was not a one-off and has been a regular feature of Atlas’ play, with Cerén winning 15 fouls inside the opposing half alone and so using her strength well when her teammates have needed her to bring things to a gradual halt.
It is also noticeable that all of those fouls have occurred in different areas of the pitch, as that indicates once again how much the El Salvador player moves around the pitch and looks to affect the game in different ways and the danger that she poses by winning set pieces for her side is another reason that she could be an attractive player for another club somewhere down the line.
Positional changes
It has already been mentioned that Brenda Cerén plays a key role for her side both in attack and when further back, but what has not been made clear is how much of the pitch she covers during games, with her often seen supporting attacks and making significant defensive contributions in the same game.
As mentioned, Cerén’s primary role is to play as an attacker, and whilst she does frequent all three channels, her primary role is as a wide forward. When in that area of the field, her main tasks are to make the pitch as big as possible, enabling the expansive tactics that Atlas likes to deploy and creating options for her teammates to use to break down opposing defences and keep their attacks alive.
When faced with defensive lines that set up with a compact shape, as Tijuana have here, that proves to be especially important, with Costa Rica striker Salas unable to move any further up the pitch here, and so requiring support either side of her. Cerén and Jetsuvely González are the two providing that here, and even though this attack again doesn’t lead to anything, the fact that she was in the right place when her team needed her again makes her an attractive prospect for some who might be keeping an eye on her progress.
That is the attacking side of her game, but the defensive side of things has been just as impressive. In this case, Monterrey Femenil have possession and have made one of their usual attacking runs up the field, using the full width of the pitch to make it as difficult as possible for Atlas to win the ball back too early, and have now got themselves into a position from which they can take it into the middle.
However, they overcook it here and end up losing the ball after a series of loose passes, culminating in this one sending the ball into the gap between the Monterrey players. Given that they have numbers in the vicinity, Monterrey would hope that they can regain the ball easily here, but they have not reckoned on the pace and desire of Cerén. The El Salvador international is behind the attackers. Still, it reaches the ball first and evades numerous tackle attempts to take it into the middle, where she draws another foul, this time by Yamile Franco.
It might seem a little strange that a forward moves this far back, but the fact that Cerén does so means that she can again show how well-rounded her game is, and this graphic provides a clear picture of how committed she is to winning the ball and helping her team out, regardless of where it is on the pitch.
That point is made even more apparent when looking at how she has made just as many interceptions inside her own half as in the opponents’, and that again shows how many have fallen foul of her clever movement around the field and have given her too much room to manoeuvre in, as Monterrey did here.
Her heatmap also helps to show how much of the pitch she covers, with her getting almost up to the opposing goal line and becoming virtually a centre-back sometimes. The fact that she has won 55.6% of her defensive duels and 35.7% of her offensive battles to date indicates her equal confidence in both attack and defence.
All in all, it is clear that Cerén offers her side a variety of options tactically on the field, and it is for this reason that they will be pleased that she opted to leave her home country during the close season and to join them, even if results have not been as easy to come by for the Guadalajara club this time around.
However, it is not only Atlas who will be enjoying her performances this season, with the El Salvador national side no doubt keeping a close eye on her progress in Mexico and head coach Eric Acuña finding the best way to use her in his own tactics.
When watching their most recent outings, against Nicaragua and Martinique as they opened their Concacaf W Gold Cup qualifying campaign (which ended as 3-0 and 9-1 victories, respectively), it is clear that they have a preference to use her speed and positional versatility in attack over her defensive capabilities, with her constantly seen either shooting at goal or moving aside to allow critical threats like Elpides Karditsas’ Samaria Gómez and Danya Gutiérrez of California-based FC Premier Women to move into central areas and to test their luck.
With El Salvador making a really positive start to their qualifying campaign and demonstrating how dangerous their fast-paced, incisive transitions will be, it is clear that Cerén will play a significant role in their matches between now and the finals in the USA next year and any hopes that they have of getting there will likely depend on if she can have the same effect on their play during the remainder of their qualifying matches.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this tactical analysis has taken a closer look at El Salvador international Brenda Cerén, highlighting several key aspects of her game that make her such an interesting player and explaining why she could be on the radar of other sides in years to come.
Until now, Cerén may not be a familiar name to many fans, except those who closely follow Liga MX or Central American football. Still, there is no doubt that she has the capabilities to perform at a major club and to follow the likes of Fishel in being rewarded for her strong form if she continues on her current trajectory.
Atlas’ struggles might mean that she needs to switch to a team higher up the league to really establish herself, but it will certainly be interesting to keep a close eye on how her career develops and to see who, if anyone, is linked with adding her to their ranks in the future.
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