Angel City heads into the international break with a win under their belts!
Right now they sit fourth in the table with five points and a positive goal differential. They are one of three undefeated teams in the league along with the Washington Spirit and Orlando Pride. Let’s relish this moment, Angel City fans, because this might be our peak standing for the season!
Just kidding.. sort of.. maybe not. Jokes aside, while we realistically will not be breaking into the top four this season, this performance from Angel City gives fans something to be hopeful about.
It was satisfying to see the team come out with intensity, know their roles, and dominate for a whole 90 (actually 100..) minutes. We looked better. We deserved to win. We won. No buzzer beater draw. We walk away with all three points. It’s refreshing.
One change from the previous two starting XI was putting former Manchester United skipper in the midfield over Mace Hodge. While I see a lot of potential for Hodge, I think right now the Kennedy-Zelem-Fuller midfield combination is our best bet. While Kennedy and Zelem lack some pace, they bring better positional awareness and organization than Hodge right now.
Interim Coach Sam Laity rolled out a 4-3-3 on offense and what looked like a 4-4-2 on defense against his former boss Laura Harvey. Overall, forward progression looked good, and while we still had turnovers, I felt like Zelem, Kennedy, and Fuller did a pretty good job at either winning the ball back or slowing down the Reign in the midfield, preventing sticky situations in transition. Vignola and Gisele Thompson looked great down the wings combining well with Fuller and the wingers Claire Emslie and Alyssa Thompson. In the eighth minute, Kennedy Fuller plays a beautiful ball into Alyssa Thompson who does her thing taking on two defenders at once and rocketing the ball so hard into the top corner that it bounces straight back out. Two games in a row where Angel City scores in the first ten minutes.
Shortly afterward, Gisele Thompson becomes the victim of yet another soft penalty call on the weekend, and South Korean international and veteran Ji So-yun sinks it from the spot. The Reign have their equalizer, however, they never seem to be able to get their footing. They put up a higher xG than Angel City (1.3 vs. 1.1) but that’s between two shots on goal, one of them being the penalty. The game felt like a barrage from Angel City.
That brings me to an area where I think we can improve both offensively and defensively: set pieces. Angel City earned 9 corners last night and they converted a grand total of zero. As we saw last week, we’re a bit sloppy on defending corners. We now have Alanna Kennedy who gives us some height. Something that we’ve been missing. She’s great in the air and we’ve got to try to capitalize on that on both sides of the ball.
Despite not scoring on a corner this game, our game-winner was served up on a silver platter due to a great cross from Emslie delivered straight to rookie Riley Tiernan’s noggin. I’m happy for Tiernan to get a goal, she’d been putting in a lot of work in these games but hadn’t converted anything. Each game she’s seemed more comfortable, more involved, and more threatening. She’s still got a way to go, but I’m hoping this sort of opens the floodgate for her. The caller for the Coachella Valley Invitational was probably losing his mind.
We seemed fairly locked down defensively. I continue to be really happy with King and Gorden’s partnership. I wasn’t totally scared at the end of this game that we would fumble. The players kept their composure fairly well as the Reign became a little more frantic trying to push for another goal. I think Hodge was a good sub at the end of the game. Her more chaotic energy helped to bottle Seattle’s efforts. I’m still not all in on Dufour, but hopefully she improves in pace and confidence soon. Gisele Thompson and Savy King came off again for what looked like cramping and we got to see Moriya again. Madison Hammond and Christen Press came on in the dying minutes of the game. It felt like before they went on Hammond shook Press’s hand and looked her straight in the eye and said “I will give you the ball, and you will score.” And that’s exactly what happened! But it was called offside. Press’s first goal back at BMO will have to wait for another day.
Again, I think a hopeful performance where everyone played well. Hopefully we can keep up some of this momentum after the international break. As of today, Gisele Thompson will be replacing Tierna Davidson on the senior roster after the latter suffered a knee injury on Friday. I’m excited for her and thought she deserved to be on the original roster. Additionally, we’ll be welcoming young Brazilian midfielder Maiara Niehues from Sporting CP in Portugal. From the looks of it, she’s been having a good season over there and hopefully she’ll inject some flair into our midfield. If nothing else, her presence will hopefully raise the competition in our squad which can only be a good thing. I’ll be at the Los Angeles friendly against Brazil so looking forward to that. Wishing all of our players luck during the break!