Louisville v Chicago Pre Match Thoughts
Courtesy Elizabeth Shaw
Louisville looks to return to action against Chicago on Friday night at 7pm. After a week off, the team will look to continue its momentum in the Challenge Cup and keep its perfect record going. Louisville has a season-high of 8 players listed as out (6 for international duty), so they will have to pull from there depth to get a result on Friday.
In addition to the six players at the World Cup, Louisville also has Holloway, Ekic, and Pikkujämsä returning from international duty. This match more than any other will be a test of Louisville's bench strength. Luckily for Louisville, they could get potentially 20 minutes from Nadia Nadim if her pattern follows a similar pattern to Kgatlana’s return. In addition, Louisville will benefit from only having to make one forced change in Wang Shuang. Chicago is starting to play better and doesn’t have many international absences. It would be virtually impossible for them to play worse than they did in Louisville’s 3-0 victory at Lynn Family Stadium earlier this year. I expect Chicago to put up more of a fight this time around.
One of the difficult things to do in my opinion is to beat an opponent multiple times in a season, especially in a league where the margins are so fine. Jae Howell commented on Thursday, that the difficulty comes down to mentality more than anything else. It is a fine line between confidence and overconfidence. Even when playing well, Louisville has been prone to slow starts. They have shown resiliency to be able to overcome them, but Chicago pretty much capitulated after going down 2 in Louisville. I think the plan will be to try to attack Chicago early and shake their confidence.
With a win, Louisville can set itself up pretty favorably for the next couple of matches. It’s not impossible, but it would be difficult to see any other team that doesn’t win its group hitting 12 points. I will go ahead and say that a win on Friday all but guarantees Louisville a place in the semifinals. Therefore, it will be key to go out and attack in the this match. Louisville’s last two Challege Cup matches will be on the road and there will be very little rotation in the squads now that there are no double game match weeks in the schedule for a while. Louisville can expect the full force of Kansas City’s and Houston’s available squads in the two road matches, so it would be best to take care of business at home on Friday night.
