"Every member of Parliament trips on glue"
Courtesy Connor Cunningham
Match Haiku
Cold Sunday evening
Sees Racing lost on the ball.
Utah: Royal pains.
“Until the sky turns green, the grass is several shades of blue,
every Member of Parliament trips on glue…It'll take all these things and oh, much more.”
“(Song for My) Sugar Spun Sister” - The Stone Roses, 1989
Racing got a good glimpse at what they aspire to be on Sunday evening. They saw pressing and counterattacking done right and ruthlessly. The broadcast called what Utah did and does, chaos. That is a lazy description, and it is insulting. Utah plays with relentless ball pressure. It isn’t a high press, it’s an “all” press. There is clear intent in what they do and how they play. Jimmy Coenraets has to be the clubhouse leader to replace Bev Yanez as NWSL Coach of the Year.
Utah wasn’t perfect all match, and Racing gave it a go. Let’s highlight the two sequences that framed each team at their bests.
Sequence 1: Racing is pressing Utah to win the ball high in Utah’s half. Hase comes away with the ball and is immediately looking for space to shoot or pass. A couple of Utah players frustrate her into making a lazy negative pass to try to keep possession, that gets stolen and moved quickly up the pitch with several players, but especially Paige Cronin, running furiously to join the counter. Her cross creates a mess, and Milliet scores an own goal. McMahon had run hard to catch up, but Cronin turned on the jets to leave her in the dust eventually. Ultimately, Utah used Racing’s high defensive line against itself to create the opportunity. The other thing of note is how coordinated the counterattack was with 4 Royals players drawing defenders into spaces. It was organized, decisive and lethal.
Sequence 2: Racing is once again pressing Utah high, but with the keeper in possession this time. They lure the Utah keeper into committing the cardinal sin of trying to play out of a high press through the middle. Before anyone can think, Fischer has snapped a shot into the back of Utah’s net. Hodge’s pressure forces a terrible pass and a mistake that is quickly pounced on. Racing too, are organized and disruptive in this sequence doing exactly what the press is meant to do.
What are we to make of teams doing what they do best? In my opinion, not much. Matches are won and lost in moments where you have to dig deep. On Utah’s second goal, Racing had several chances to avoid the ultimate danger and didn’t take them. After going back and watching, it is I think, very clear to see how much McMahon is struggling when she gets the ball early in the sequence. The smart thing here is to play the ball out for a throw and drop to the pitch to get treatment. Instead, she plays it forward to Morris who likely has no idea that McMahon is struggling. She tries to turn out of trouble and then turns the ball over. Utah pounces and Morris doesn’t exactly go all out to try to win the ball back and lets a cramping McMahon try to stop my least favorite ex-Racing Player CeCe Delzer from getting into a good space to make a cross to Tanaka to score the winner. It highlighted the main difference between the two teams in my opinion. Utah fought to win back lost possession more frequently and with more desire and energy than Racing did.
It was another case of one step forward and two steps back for Racing. All of the good things from the Portland match seem to have vanished and it doesn’t look like sustained excellence is on the horizon until the sky turns green, the grass turns blue and every Member of Parliament trips on glue. Or maybe (definitely) I am just looking for an excuse to use that brilliant lyric…
Post Match Moment of the Match
I get why teams have post-match media availability and I obviously keep showing up, don’t I? Sometimes you just aren’t going to learn anything until you more closely examine the video of the match with some distance. That seemed to be Bev’s perspective on the performance. I think when she goes back, she will see little things to work on. Me? I think Racing is pretty easy to figure out. You can draw a line at 50% for the average possession stat for the league. Racing can likely get results against teams below 50% but will struggle against teams that have more of the ball (Boston excluded, but you never know). It’s not the amount of possession itself, but what it symbolizes which in most cases is organization and control in possession. Utah showed you can have high possession and have a relentless press. This is classic Pep Guardiola football, the philosophy being you ultimately have more energy to press hard for short periods if you aren’t having to work hard out of possession other than in short bursts. Racing cannot play this way right now, so you will get what you get unfortunately.
I was actually more interested in Wright’s opinion on the second goal. As a player she has seen it all. I don’t think she saw the full sequence of what was happening with McMahon and of course she said that you can’t depend on officials to stop play. Once Utah has possession, I agree with this sentiment 100%. However, I believe McMahon was struggling before she played that fateful pass into Morris. Only she knows for sure. If she was, she has to know that she is a liability if she stays on the pitch. Play it out, get treatment, and live to fight another day. Hase smartly went down when she felt her hamstring and the Royals politely played the ball out. Nobody (except Manchester City) wants to win unfairly. I believe if McMahon plays the ball out when she is first struggling, the second goal could have been avoided.
ARE YOU READY FOR SOME MCCALL ZERBONI?
I don’t know why poor McCall can’t help herself. If you listen to her calls, you can hear some really insightful stuff if you can ignore when she openly contradicts herself or throws out another lazy platitude. Color analysts love to make up words, but they really like to make up 8-syllable ones like “counterattackability”. If they just stuck to 7-syllable words, I could use that as the middle line of my match haiku at least.
Ninety minutes is a long time to always have something interesting to say. I am rooting for McCall, because I think she has interesting things to say at times. She just needs to be a little more in tune with what is going on with a team instead of making up what she thinks is going on. Many of her comments on Racing were true but only because she said the exact opposite thing earlier in the match. I know the NWSL probably thinks its broadcasts need to be mostly for a general audience, but that kind of thinking makes it hard for the announcers to know every team in depth. Since that is the case, McCall would serve herself better by not presenting herself as an expert on Racing, which she did a few times, when she clearly is not.
Hey! Look at me! I’m Elton Garcia!
(One of USL PRO’s “top” officials stops by to “discuss the match”)
That’s right! Look at me! Don’t look at the match unfolding in front of you! Everything I do is much more important than what is happening in the match! Watch me run to break up imaginary fights that aren’t going to happen! Watch me spend my time chiding players for simply trying to get a ball to a player on a throw in! Look! There is another coming together that I need to insert myself into for no reason! You came to watch me run all over the pitch to pretend to deescalate situations, but actually make them worse, didn’t you! Nobody watches my matches and says, “gee I forgot all about the referee because he didn’t insert himself prominently into the match!”
Thanks Elton…he did get just about every call right, and he’ll be sure to let you know it.
The Taylor Flint Honorary Yellow Card of the Match
One of the problems with Flint picking up so many yellow cards, other than the blatantly obvious reason, is that when she picks up an early one and gets a final warning, she loses much of her effectiveness. She had to play more tentatively at times during this match because of it.
45th Minute +4: Flint-Reckless Offence
Where have I heard that one before?
She now sits on 4 yellow cards, so expect her annual suspension to be coming soon.
Madchester Song to Make You Feel Better
Don’t wimp out and go for the 7-inch version. You deserve the very best, so stick with the 12 -inch, 10-minute version with its long meandering outro.
“It'll take all these things and oh, much more”
Most of the time this season it feels like the stars have to perfectly align for Racing to have a chance in a match. When “the breaks” never go your way, you have to question if they actually are “the breaks”. In the “you make your own luck” category you have several things to point to in this match. You definitely don’t make your own luck with a 65% passing accuracy. I can live with a lack of possession, but Racing just has to be better when they have it. Racing’s goal came with virtually no possession tied to it. It did come with clinical pressing and a deadly accurate finish. Racing pays a lot of lip service to being better in moments, but I haven’t seen much proof in the pudding. When they trailed late, they lacked the ability to possess the ball effectively enough to give themselves much of a chance, especially in stoppage time. Reality isn’t comprised of single big things being true. It is made up of a bunch of smaller things providing a preponderance of evidence. When Racing plays well it is by showcasing their identity AND a whole lot of other positive little things that go mostly unnoticed. Those unnoticed things tend to turn into glaring weaknesses when they don’t do them well. Racing got a little bit of Fool’s Gold through their solidified identity last season, which may have caught teams by surprise. It is going to take little things to get better this season, and it is going to take a lot of them.
