It was a tale of two halves between Angel City and Gotham on Sunday at Sports Illustrated Stadium. Angel City’s four game unbeaten run was snapped by the 2023 NWSL Champions.

The recent departures have put Angel City at the roster minimum. On top of injuries and excused absences, midfielder Macey Hodge was serving her yellow card accumulation suspension. Luckily Jun Endo was available for the first time in a few weeks and was able to get some minutes. Without Hodge, Kennedy Fuller was bumped deeper into the midfield while Brazilian international Maiara Niehues made her first NWSL start as an attacking midfielder.

Angel City opened the scoring in the second minute with a pretty strike from Fuller. They continued to get opportunities going forward off of success in their press, and showed off some nice passing sequences in transition. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to close out a couple more big chances in the first half. Going into half time, things were feeling okay. Angel City looked composed and were getting into decent areas. At that time, they were winning the xG battle 1.18 to 0.78 with shots and shots on target looking fairly even.

The second half spelled a different story, though. Angel City’s depth issues were apparent even before four players departed in the past couple of weeks. The contrast with Gotham was pretty stark when they were able to put national team caliber players like winger Midge Purce and midfielder Rose Lavelle on at the half. In post-match press, Head Coach Alex Straus reported that they had to pull Gisele Thompson as she was feeling ill.

From there, it was pretty much a Gotham onslaught down Angel City’s left side. There were a couple of times in the first half where the Gotham attack was getting past outside back Evelyn Shores, but nothing came of it. Gotham’s first two goals came from Purce and then Bruninha bombing down the flank without a defender in sight. The player who tried to pick them up late? Defensive midfielder Madison Hammond. Not exactly who you want to see getting fully end line, unsuccessfully, to try to snuff out the danger. Goalkeeper Hannah Seabert tried to contain the cross on the second goal, but bobbled the ball allowing an easy goal for Lavelle. A worldie from Jaelin Howell made it 3-1, and Angel City could not crawl back out of the hole.

Angel City broke down defensively and were stuck in their own half for much of the last 45. They struggled to gain much momentum as the clearances became sloppy and passes out of the defensive third never found their targets. I hope that Sveindís Jónsdóttir’s first NWSL goal comes soon. She’s certainly worked hard enough for it. Every game it feels like she gets closer and closer. Two of her chances tonight could be classified as good-great. Despite the scoreline, Angel City cracked 2.0 xG on the night and the two teams were fairly even on that front. The team’s chance creation seems to be improving overall. They need to be more clinical with putting them away. The vibe of this game probably looks quite different if they had gone into the locker room at half with two, or even three goals.

Game week 19 ends with Angel City sitting in 10th. They are tied on 23 points with the Houston Dash right outside of the playoff line. Next up is another away trip to a struggling North Carolina, the team directly below them in the standings. Another big game coming up as the league standings continue to be plunged into chaos. Four points separate 8th from 3rd. Six points separate 9th/10th from 4th. Straus alluded to some reinforcements arriving in the coming days. Hopefully it’s true because the squad will reasonably need a few more numbers to make the push in these last seven games sustainable.

**Images courtesy of Angel City