HANOVER, N.J. – He isn’t your prototypical No. 10, but Sacha Kljestan is trying to make his own mark on the position since joining the New York Red Bulls.
Playing just underneath a lone striker, Kljestan is adapting to a largely unfamiliar position. After making a career as a deep-lying playmaker during his time with Belgian side Anderlecht, Red Bulls head coach Jesse Marsch has asked the former US international to push higher up the pitch in the hopes of bringing a veteran presence to that role.
“I think he’s been very good,” Marsch told reporters after training. “In the run of play, he fits the way we want to do things very well.”
While a versatile and competent playmaker in his own right, Kljestan has not produced the same stat lines as other MLS players deployed in a similar role. More traditional attacking midfielders such as Kaká, Benny Feilhaber and Pedro Morales bring a bit more flair to the role, but Marsch contends that Kljestan is a more complete player.
“He’s not just a final-play guy,” Marsch said. “He’s an entire-game, every-aspect-of-the-game player. That’s what we want out of that role. We want a guy that can fit in, can cover ground, can make it hard, knows how to press, but then is smooth on the ball, helps connect plays, helps to make things easier for the players around him and in the end, put some final plays together.”
The season now a third of the way complete, Klejstan has amassed just two goals and one assist while starting each of New York’s first 12 matches heading into Friday's road match against the Houston Dynamo (9 pm ET; UniMas). The stats are hardly overwhelming, but the American knows his role is a fair bit different than some of the other No. 10s within MLS.
“I do a lot more running than those guys,” Kljestan said. “I do a lot more things off the ball than those guys do. It would be nice to just hang out and wait for the ball to turn over and be open and be an attacking guy, but that’s not really in my nature and that’s not how we want to play.”
Although his role on the pitch has changed, his industrious nature has not. Bringing a box-to-box mentality to his new role has meant that Kljestan has done his fair share of defensive tracking and link-up play, but it also leaves something to be desired in the attacking third.
“Football-wise, being able to keep the ball in the midfield and have a lot of possession and be available for my teammates at all times and doing all the little things, it’s been good,” Kljestan told MLSsoccer.com. “But I think I need to be more aggressive at getting into the box. I look at a guy like Clint Dempsey who, in the 90th minute of the game plays a ball out wide 40 yards away from goal and ends up getting on the end of a cross. Putting in that little extra effort around to be in the box and be closer to Bradley [Wright-Phillips] has to be better for me and that’s what I’m working on.”
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Confident in his abilities and happy with his production thus far, Kljestan admittedly knows there is still more he can give.
“I feel like I do a lot of dirty work,” Kljestan told MLSsoccer.com. “A lot of poking balls away and things like that that helps my team in many different ways, but I also want to be a guy that helps the team in the attacking half. I’m trying to be a more complete player and trying to get on the end of crosses and things like that.”
As has been the case during the team’s recent slump, Marsch and his men have continued to preach patience and calm. That mentality is no different when it comes to holding out on more production from his biggest offseason acquisition.
“We know he’s dangerous around the box.” Marsch said. “[It’s coming down to if] his eye for attacking plays can lead to more goals. I continue to say that I’m not worried about scoring goals. We’re going to have lots of different contributors on that end.”
