Who had the most successful passes last night against the Dayton Dutch Lions? None other than central defender Lawrence Olum. He completed 85 passes and had just two unsuccessful ones. That is almost a 98% successful pass percentage. That does not happen very often, if ever.
The next closest player on Sporting KC was Michael Thomas who completed 67 of 71 passes, for a 94% rate.
Looking at previous games for Olum, he completed 39 passes at 74% against Toronto FC, 15 passes at 62% against Seattle Sounders FC and 47 passes at 82% versus Philadelphia Union.
As a defender, maybe some of these numbers are skewed. However, when looking at games from other top players in the league, Olum still comes out on top.
David Beckham completed 52 passes at a 70% rate this past weekend when LA Galaxy beat the Vancouver Whitecaps FC 3-0. You’d say, oh that’s because he plays midfield. Okay, well how about Geoff Cameron of Houston Dynamo who is currently third in MLS All-Star voting for defenders. Against FC Dallas, he completed 49 passes at 89% in a 2-1 win.
That’s a little closer, but still pretty far off from 85 of 87 passes completed. Let’s go even further and see how this happened for Olum.
Well that explains things a little better. Even as a right central defender, Olum was all over the place against Dayton. He made passes from the left, from the right, from the middle, from Dayton’s side of the field and he even had a shot off of a corner kick.
What does all this information tell us though?
Olum, who only played a total of 13 minutes in 2011, is starting to gel and get comfortable with the team. He’s not making glaring mistakes as made evident by the 98% pass completion percentage and he’s getting involved as indicated by the 87 total passes. He’s now started four straight matches and plays at a position that was once lacking at Sporting Kansas City.
