Louisville 1 Angel City 1 Post Match Thoughts
Courtesy USA Today Sports Images
A record crowd saw a pretty mediocre soccer match on Saturday evening in Louisville. In the end, the home team shared a point with the visitors, but neither team will be too happy with that outcome. Louisville’s returning international players were honored prior to the match, but they all looked like they needed about half of the match to readjust to their club teammates.
Without giving too much away, I don’t think that Louisville played in the manner in which they hoped to play. Angel City definitely kept more of the ball in the first few minutes and Louisville never got a chance to get its press going in the first half. As much as Louisville dictated the first half in Los Angeles, they really couldn't get a foothold in the match until the second half of the home match. There were a couple of stops and starts in the first half that meant that the overall play from both teams was choppy. The 9 minutes of stoppage time in the first half was proof of just how disjointed the first 45 minutes were. Monoghan had a really decent chance in the third minute of first half stoppage time. From my vantage point it appeared that Haracic made a fantastic save, but on the replay, it was hard to tell for sure. All in all, there wasn’t much going on for Louisville until first half stoppage. Angel City figured out how to manage Louisville’s press fairly effectively by sending their wingers wide and playing the ball into space.
Angel City scored with McCaskill again being involved through an assist. She also had a really good opportunity in the first half that produced an excellent save from Lund. Louisville probably had to trade McCaskill away to grow as a team, but when you compare the production that Louisville ultimately got out of the trade (just barely over a season for Jess McDonald) to what Angel City got, I think it’s fair to say that Angel City won that trade. Conversely (I don’t think this is controversial to anyone with half a brain) Louisville clearly won the trade that sent Press’s right to Angel City for the chance to draft DeMelo. Maybe one day the two Savannah’s will play together, but I do wonder what might have been here in Louisville.
Sav and Lo (who are both delightful off the pitch but play like they are in a bar fight)
Rough segue time, but speaking of Sav DeMelo let’s talk about Maddie Pokorny and let me explain why that isn’t as rough of a segue as you might think. On a cold day in the winter of 2022, Bekki Morgan and I stood on the practice field and watched an intersquad scrimmage at Louisville’s training facility. Memory isn’t always a trustworthy source, but I believe that I remember being taken by surprise at how “league ready” DeMelo seemed to be on day one. I think Bekki and I got to talk to her on that day (if it wasn’t on that day it was one soon after) and we were both pleasantly surprised at how professional she already was fresh out of USC. To be fair, she was already 23 when Louisville drafted her. However, we all saw that she was ready to hit the ground running. Which leads me to Maddie Pokorny. She obviously isn’t Sav DeMelo, but all that I can tell you is that the feeling I get when I watch her is a very close approximation to that feeling I got when I saw Sav DeMelo play for the first time in person. I think it’s probably the energy she brings to her performances. On her first substitute appearance, I was really impressed with what she brought to the match. She is the type of high energy substitute that teams need to change a match. Obviously, she and Davis saved a point for Louisville last night. I want to also heap praise on Davis as well, because even if Pokorny did the hard work on the goal, there was still plenty to do on the header. Davis was able to generate enough power from not a super close distance to get the goal.
Look for my 3rd Quarter of the season review on the State of Louisville sometime this week where I will surely get into Louisville’s playoff hopes, but right now I would say that there isn’t any more margin for error.
