James NaltonBy James Nalton.
If you can win your headers when all about you are losing theirs, yours is The MLS and everything that’s in it. And—which is more—you’ll get a call-up to the MLS All-Star team two seasons running. This has been the experience and the achievement of DC United’s aerial dueller extraordinaire Christian Benteke. If winning aerial duels was a sporting event, then Benteke is a record-breaker. He’s a soccer special-teams player. A designated headerer among Designated Players.
The merits of All-Star call-ups can be debated, but some kind of recognition for Benteke was much deserved. The striker who spent ten seasons in the English Premier League has been one of the outstanding forwards in Major League Soccer.
Quite literally outstanding, as he regularly rises above his peers to perform aerial feats. He went into last month’s All-Star showcase ahead of the league’s month-long break as one of the most remarkable players in the league and in many ways in the game as a whole.
Benteke’s headed duels numbers this season are extraordinary to the point of being peculiar. According to the statistics site FBref, up to the Leagues Cup break in the 2024 MLS season in July, with around a third of it left to play, the Congo-born, Belgian number nine has won 237 aerial duels. That’s 152 more than the next player, DC United teammate and central defender Lucas Bartlet, and 176 more than the next striker, Petar Musa of FC Dallas. For additional context, the most aerial duels won across Europe’s top five leagues in the whole of the 2023/24 season was 179 by Tim Kleindienst of German Bundesliga side Heidenheim.
When challenging for the ball in this manner, Benteke has the kind of hangtime that might even be the envy of a few players up the road at the Capital One arena, home of the Washington Wizards NBA team. This skillset has resulted in Benteke scoring seven headed goals, joint-top alongside the league’s top scorer Cristian Arango. He has taken 30 headed shots in 2024, the most in the league. His heatmap from SofaScore tells a story of holdup play and a penalty box threat, and shows he has also used his aerial ability to help defend opposition set pieces.
The only player who has come close to Benteke’s performance in this area of the game in MLS is Benteke himself last season. In 2023 he won 241 aerial duels across the season at an average of 7.77 per 90 minutes. The next highest Opta has on record is Steven Birnbaum in 2019 with 177. Up to the Leagues Cup break this year Benteke almost matched his 2023 total already and is up to 11.7 per 90 minutes, which is more than 14 MLS teams. Even by his own standards, it is off the charts. His previous highest was 10.2 per 90 in the 2019/20 season for Crystal Palace. In top-flight league seasons covered by Stathead, only Peter Crouch at Stoke (14 per 90) in the 2017/18 Premier League season and Milan Đurić at Hellas Verona (13) in the 2022/23 Serie A season have recorded more aerial duels per 90 among players who have played more than 900 minutes.
While Benteke might be winning an extraordinary number of headers, there is one problem. His team is struggling to win games. DC United started the season in an encouraging manner, topping several areas of statistical output, suggesting it could be in for a good season should this output be turned into goals and points, but this didn’t happen.
Wins last month against Nashville, and Minnesota United—in which Benteke assisted a goal with his head and scored twice with his feet—lifted DC United off the bottom of the Eastern Conference going into this mid-season break, but data suggests Troy Lesesne’s team should be higher still. Expected goal difference data on FBref has DC sixth in the east, while the expected points model on American Soccer Analysis has it seventh in the whole of MLS.
Opta data shows DC United also has the highest set piece xG in MLS. It attempts more long balls per game (66) than any other team in MLS this season, and only St. Louis City, Philadelphia Union, and Orlando City attempt more crosses per game than DC’s 20. This all aligns with getting the most from Benteke’s aerial ability.
Could it be that this prowess in one particular area is as much a problem as it is a strength for DC United? Conceding more and scoring fewer than the data suggests could be seen as an unlucky combination, but maybe there is a flaw in the game plan. When Benteke puts in the kind of performance he did against Minnesota, though, and against Atlanta United in May when he scored a hat-trick of headers, it is clear this is a go-to tactic rather than one to ignore.
Benteke, though always strong in the air, has this year become some kind of aerial-duel-winning machine. There is much talk of verticality in modern soccer tactics, related to the progress of the ball up the field rather than across it, but this is a more literal verticality — towards the sky.
Benteke is currently just one behind Arango in the MLS Golden Boot race, so further individual recognition may come by the end of 2024. If these goals lead to more DC United victories, as the data suggests they should; if these headers are a strength that propels the team towards these triumphs; DC’s might be a place in the MLS postseason and a nagging worry for every other team that’s in it.
