Angel City’s unbeaten streak comes to an end. It was fun while it lasted!
The team suffered a 0-4 loss to Gotham FC on Friday night. Angel City was without Alyssa Thompson due to an upper leg issue. This leaves a decent hole to patch up and the changes Interim Head Coach Sam Laity made to the starting lineup to account for this fell short. The strategy seemed to be to replace Alyssa, who typically plays on the left wing, with her sister Gisele Thompson who is a defender… Who plays on the right side of the pitch… Because they look the same? I’m sure that this switch was made because they both play with pace and manage 1v1 situations well, but there are other actual wingers on the bench who could have played in order to keep the backline intact. Miyabi Moriya took Gisele’s spot at right outside back. I like Moriya and have felt like she looks pretty good coming off the bench, but she unfortunately had a pretty rough night for her first start. Welcome to the NWSL, I suppose.
Moriya may have had a hand in almost all of the goals. On the first she slips in the box going to ground just long enough to let her mark gain a bit of space to lay the ball off to the Spanish international Esther Gonzalez. Gotham’s second goal comes from a long ball from Lilly Reale taking an unfortunate bounce off of Moriya’s head turning what was probably supposed to be a clearance into a chip over our own goalie’s head. At the end of the game Midge Pruce takes Savy King to school down our left wing and sends a cross to Geyse who’s waiting on the other side of the pitch in acres of space that probably should have been Moriya’s to cover to make it 0-4. Again, rough night for the Japanese international, but I hope she bounces back from it and adapts now that she has experienced how a full 90 in the NWSL feels.
The changes to the lineup definitely impacted the cohesiveness of the team. For most of the game it seemed like the players were a step behind or ahead of what their teammates were doing leading to a fair amount of missed connections or taking a second too long to make decisions. I felt like the team battled though. Kennedy Fuller was working hard the entire game trying to get something to land, but it never materialized. Despite the scoreline, I don’t think the team gave up at any point. At the end of the day, they were outplayed by Gotham who are a great team with a lot more experience and time together. They had 59% of the possession to our 41%, 1.4 xG to our 0.6, and all four of their shots on target found the back of the net while we weren’t able to find even one.
Could Laity have kept Gisele at outside back while having Julie Dufour or Christen Press play up top? Probably. Would bringing in substitutes sooner have been helpful? Probably. Is Christen Press allowed to play more than 25 minutes a game? I honestly do not know. Would these changes have made an impact? Maybe. Was I expecting Casey Phair’s NWSL regular season debut on Friday night? Absolutely not. Would the game have been significantly different if Laity could have played his preferred starting XI? I think Angel City may have been able to put up a better fight, however, the underlying numbers suggest that maybe Angel City just finally came up against an opposition that would actually punish them.
The performance on Friday night simply wasn’t good enough, but as much as fans may not want to believe it’s true, this team is still in the relatively early stages of a building phase. There’s still a long way to go before they fully realize their potential. However, I think things are heading in the right direction. I truly believe that past iterations of this team would not have emerged from the first four games unbeaten. They would have hit a snag, choked, or fumbled at least one of those, but those were four games they should have walked away with at least something and they did.
It was leaked late last week that current Bayern Munich Head Coach Alexander Straus will be Angel City’s new Head Coach starting in June. I think the pieces and foundations for a truly good team are in Los Angeles.The mentality and the talent is there. I hope that this new coach can bring true stability and vision to this group, and hopefully then they can finally flourish.