When listing leagues considered to be at the top of the global women’s game, the first names that generally spring to mind are the likes of the WSL, NWSL, Frauen-Bundesliga and Division 1 Féminine. However, others are gradually catching up, and one country whose top flight is rapidly increasing in quality and interest is Mexico, with the Liga MX Femenil attracting high-profile players and giving them a chance of testing themselves with new experiences.
One player who has helped to increase the attention given to the division in recent months is 21-year-old American striker Mia Fishel, who has been with Tigres UANL Femenil since leaving her home country this time last year. It was a brave decision to move south in order to make her name, but it has ultimately worked wonders for her, as she topped the scoring charts in the first part of the Mexican season (the Apertura) and has rapidly established herself as one of the most potent players in the league.
As a result of her achievements in Mexico, there have been growing calls for her to be included in the USWNT squad, with many fans desperate to see her on the world stage playing alongside the likes of Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan and Sophia Smith. This tactical analysis will look at why she has become such an important player for her club and why she should be given a chance in USA head coach Vlatko Andonovski’s team, with the scout report focusing specifically on how she leads the line, how she links up with her teammates and why she would be a good fit for his preferred tactics.
However, before looking at some of the specifics of her game, this graphic provides a general overview of some of her key strengths and weaknesses on the field.
The first thing to look at here is how Fishel has a low percentile ranking for passes made during games, but at the same time ranks highly for passing accuracy. Initially, this seems a bit strange, but what it demonstrates is that whilst she doesn’t make many passes during games when compared to others in her position, the ones that she does make more often than not find their intended target and rarely lead to possession being given away — an important trait to have and something that not all strikers can do.
Another thing to point out is her aerial duels because the chart indicates that she is just above the median mark both for the number of aerial battles that she has competed in and the percentage that she has won. This shows that controlling long passes with her head is not her forte and when looking at her game, it is more common to see her allow the ball to drop to her feet before moving it forwards; it takes good intelligence to do that as it means that defenders have a better chance of clearing their lines if they are more dominant in the air.
Nevertheless, because Fishel is strong and tends to win more defensive duels than aerial duels, as is also shown on the chart, it can be concluded that she doesn’t often let that happen, and covering up a weakness with a strength is another way that she has become an intelligent and highly-rated player.
Leading the line
When operating at the top of the field as a lone striker or as part of a front line, it is important to give the team different ways of creating chances, because having just one way of building attacks will always make a team predictable and easier to defend against.
Fortunately for Tigres, they have a player in the final third who can adapt her body positioning to suit different situations. Here, the ball is on the far side of UNAM Femenil’s goal area, with Tigres trying to find a way in, but UNAM have got players back, doing their best to cut off all possible routes into the middle.
Fishel has noticed this whilst making her run into the box and recognises that carrying on as she is will not give her teammate a viable passing option. Therefore, she slows down and hangs behind the two defenders in front of her, pulling away from them and giving her teammate a way of keeping the chance alive and time on the ball when it does reach her feet.
It is not uncommon to see her accelerating and decelerating in this way, and it is one reason that she has been such a tricky opponent to face, with defenders unable to react in time to her sharp changes of pace and therefore leaving her open and able to shoot at goal, and that is one reason why she has attracted so much attention this season and is why there have been calls for her to be included in her country’s national squad sooner rather than later.
Once she gets the ball in these central spaces, Fishel’s focus instantly turns towards keeping control of it and trying to create a route through to goal. Sometimes that is easy, but this situation is not, with Tijuana Femenil getting numbers back into their goal area to give the American as little chance as possible of finding the back of the net.
However, this is where another notable feature of Fishel’s play comes into its own, with her constantly making sharp changes of direction and twisting around opponents as she looks to carve open a gap in Tijuana’s setup, and her composure in tight spaces and ability to keep moving around is another reason opponents are kept guessing whenever she is on the ball.
There does come a point when she is unable to maintain possession though, which is when she releases it here to left-back Natalia Villarreal, but what she then does is stay alert and focus on the next phase of the attack, ensuring that, should the ball come back into the goal area, she will be able to react and convert the opportunity. Sure enough, once the cross is delivered from the near side of the pitch, Fishel heads the ball into the net almost before Tijuana have realised the threat, and it is not hard to see why she has been so potent in the Liga MX this season when watching moments like this.
Leading the line doesn’t only mean creating passing options though, with it also referring to how those in the forward line can take opponents out of the way and open up spaces around the pitch for their teammates. Here, Fishel has used her reputation as a prominent goalscorer to make a run towards Tijuana’s box, knowing that the defenders will track her and not allow her any space or time to receive the ball. However, this is what Tigres want to happen, with the act of forcing Tijuana back leaving a vast amount of space open in the middle of the field, and there are now two players in a position to take advantage of that and help to keep their attack alive.
Without Fishel’s initial decision to move forwards and take the three defenders nearest her out of the game, using that space would not have been possible, and it is these details that often go unnoticed during matches. However, they are just as important when looking at strikers’ performances as goalscoring is, so having a player who can recognise where she can help her teammates continue moving up the pitch is vital for any team wanting to succeed.
Link-up play
However, as mentioned at the beginning of this analysis, Mia Fishel is not just a player who stays high up the pitch and waits for the ball to come to her, with her demonstrating throughout her time in Mexico that she is just as important in helping to build phases of play as she is at ultimately converting opportunities.
In this case, she has noticed how UNAM have a balanced defensive setup, with them moving up the pitch to apply pressure but also leaving themselves in a position to drop back if Tigres were to send a long ball over their heads, and therefore moving forwards as she did in the last section was not an option.
Consequently, she instead moves into a pocket of space further back, offering a shorter passing option and trying to provide a link for her team, enabling them to move the ball forwards but without the risk of losing the ball. Again, her ability to change her pace is important, as it gives her time to control the ball before feeding it into the path of Nigeria forward Uchenna Kanu, in the red circle, and the fact that this led to a shot on goal when, previously, that might not have been possible indicates how important Fishel’s ability to link up different areas of her team has been to their success on the field so far this season.
When looking back at the radar included at the beginning of the scout report, it is worth noting that Fishel has a marginally higher percentile ranking for goal contributions per game than she does for shots per game during the current campaign, and that might initially sound strange for a striker who has found the net on 19 occasions in 2022/23.
However, the reason for this is that she has been involved in so much of Tigres’ build-up play and has constantly been dropping back into deeper areas to get on the ball, just as she did in the last example, and this graphic provides an indication of how many progressive passes she has made for her side during the ongoing campaign.
Therefore, whilst goalscoring is undoubtedly one of her key strengths, making passes into dangerous areas and setting up teammates to shoot at goal is another area that she thrives in, and the fact that she has provided five assists indicates that she is just as dangerous when in these areas of the pitch as she is when in the opposing goal area.
As with the last section, Fishel uses her reputation to manipulate opponents and create space for her teammates. Doing so relies on her ability to hold play up and wait for the right moment to make a pass. Here, she doesn’t immediately turn to move the ball forwards and instead stays facing her own goal, using her aforementioned strength to hold off her opponent and slow the game down.
What she is looking to do here is to tempt one of the Club América Femenil defenders out of their line, knowing that doing so would leave a gap open for her teammates to exploit. In this case, the attempt came off as Andrea Pereira (who joined the club alongside former Barcelona Femení teammate Andrea Falcón in the summer) obliged and allowed Mexico forward Stephany Mayor to break through the defensive line, as the red arrow shows, and get on the end of an aerial pass from Tigres captain Liliana Mercado.
However, without Fishel’s hard work to keep the ball and create the initial gap, none of this would have been possible, which again demonstrates why she is such a tricky player to play against.
The USWNT
As mentioned in the introduction to this scout report, Fishel’s abilities in front of goal have led to some demanding that she be called up by USA head coach Vlatko Andonovski, which is another result of how much she has been developing whilst down in Mexico. Whilst it seems certain that she will be included in a squad in the future, with her obvious talent meaning that she cannot be ignored forever, what role to give her is another question altogether, and it is not an easy one to answer.
When looking at the USA’s squad selections at the moment, what is clear is that they aim to give their younger stars game time and blood them in alongside some of the more experienced members of the squad, meaning that when the older players hang up their boots, the next generation will be more than ready to take over the responsibilities of winning titles.
In the forward line, Andonovski has often gone with a combination of San Diego Wave striker Alex Morgan, Chicago Red Stars’ Mallory Swanson (as she is now) and Portland Thorns’ Sophia Smith, giving them pace out wide and goals in the central areas. However, the other reason that these three work so well together is because they get into different positions and give the team ways of keeping the ball moving along the ground and maintaining the pressure on their opponents. Here, in the first of their two games against Germany, Morgan has dropped back to take up an attacking midfield role whilst Swanson has made a run behind the German defensive line, and the progression route for the ball to move up the field is clear.
If Fishel were to come into the national team right now, she would be comfortable fitting into these tactics, with this analysis demonstrating throughout that she is equally as good at leading the line as she is at dropping back and linking play. Therefore, there would be no need for her to adjust to new tactics and she would settle into the team without delay, which will be important if she does get a chance between now and the World Cup.
She would also help to improve some areas of their performances too, with one area of their play that has been lacking at times being their ability to convert their opportunities. Here, the USA have possession on the nearside wing, as is normal, and are looking to move it into the middle, but there are no players in a position to get on the end of Rapinoe’s cross and Real Madrid Femenino centre-back Rocío Gálvez ends up easily clearing the ball once it comes into her vicinity.
Were Fishel in the side, she would likely be in the middle and ready to get on the end of the OL Reign player’s delivery, with her demonstrating on plenty of occasions for Tigres this season that she is constantly alert and looking at the next phase of attacks, and this is what the USA have not had during some of their more recent games. Therefore, bringing Fishel into the national camp might be something that Andonovski should explore before making the trip to Australia and New Zealand this summer, to ensure that he has all bases covered before the tournament gets underway.
One reason that he might be holding off on introducing her to the national setup is that she excels in doing the same things that Morgan currently does for the team, in that Morgan and Fishel both drop back when needed, lead the line well, are clinical when they get chances to score and have a good awareness of their surroundings (with Morgan making a run through Germany’s back line to meet OL right-back Sofia Huerta’s cross here, having identified a gap that she can exploit).
Therefore, perhaps the 21-year-old will get her opportunity once Morgan indicates that she plans to end her international career, and maybe that is what Andonovski is waiting for. However, whether that is a sensible thing to do or not, the fans’ demands for her to be given a chance on the global stage will keep growing with every international match that passes by, and that, combined with the fact that she seems to get better every time she plays, may force him to rethink his plans.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this tactical analysis has taken a closer look at young American striker Mia Fishel, detailing her qualities on the field and analysing why there has been so much interest in her of late. There is no doubting that opting to leave the NWSL behind, despite having been selected by Orlando Pride in the 2022 Draft, was a big risk to take for a player who had yet to really make her name, and it was an even bigger risk to move to a league that was growing as a global force but was ultimately not seen to be as strong as others around the world.
Nevertheless, Fishel’s exploits have helped to give Mexican women’s football many new fans, and the fact that Bayern Munich Frauen have recently signed a partnership agreement with Tigres indicates that the big clubs are now also recognising the Liga MX’s value and importance in helping to increase the sport’s popularity.
As for Fishel, there is no doubt that she will get a chance to play for her country, but when that chance will come is still up for debate among the powers that be. Nevertheless, if she keeps her head down and continues to work hard on the field, then she surely can’t be ignored forever.
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