Maybe we won
Photo by Elizabeth Shaw
Link to Elizabeth’s gallery of the match
6-6-25 Racing 3-Utah 2 — Fleur-de-lis FC
Pregame note of the match
I feel like I spent the overwhelming majority of my life before I heard the word “bespoke” used in a sentence. Now I feel like I hear it everywhere, even in places where it seems out of place…like the game notes of a soccer match. From Utah's game notes: (on new coach Jimmy Coenraets) “Coenraets also implemented a plethora of bespoke tactical tweaks…” I don't know. Sounds weird but technically accurate, I guess. I think I may try it to see if I like it.
Stolen The Wire Epigraph
For those of you who haven’t seen The Wire, it is like Antiques Roadshow except for bespoke heroin vials.
It’s good to win a match that you should win, especially when you don’t play that well. Teams that do well (make the playoffs/win championships) find ways to win. Racing won this match by being excellent in some moments to compensate for the moments when they weren’t so great. It feels like it could be a little like getting over the proverbial “hump”. Racing has never won 4 out of 5 matches prior to this stretch. If I recall correctly, I think a point total of 10 out of a possible 15 is the best they have ever accomplished. This means that we at least have some evidence that this team can go on a pretty decent run.
There wasn’t a moment in the match where I didn’t believe a Racing win was possible or even probable. When Utah’s Tejada picked up a second yellow, a win felt inevitable, to me at least. As a team, Racing doesn’t seem to get too bothered when bad things happen to them and doesn’t seem to put too much pressure on themselves when they need to be patient and put in the work to make good things happen. I think we have all been waiting for this team to be something identifiable even if it isn’t perfect. It has been a struggle, but maybe we won.
Post Match Moment of the Match
Bev graciously let assistant coach Mitch Sowerby take the post-match media duties since Bev was gone for most of the week (for required training) and Mitch really ran the practices. Mitch was deferential and didn’t want to take too much credit for the win. We spent some time asking him about Sears’ excellent goal which he said was down to technique and Emma spending extra time at practice working on shooting. I asked Sarah Weber if she or teammate Katie O’Kane was more excited about Weber’s first goal. Sarah conceded that Katie may have been even more excited than she was (I am unsure if the broadcast picked it up and if you were in the stadium, you may have missed it, but O’Kane embraced Weber excitedly on the sideline after the initial celebration.) Ellie Jean confirmed that her bespoke goal was her first one ever but also conceded that she was a little disappointed that Utah’s initial goal came from a ricochet off of her legs.
Lightning-in-a-Bottle-O-Meter
Racing didn’t play that great at times and Sears’ fine goal was, if not fortunate, the result of an unpredictable swerve that threw off Utah keeper McGlynn. Jean scored from a set piece and if Weber planned a bespoke header exactly like that (by her own admission felt like “it was in the air for 30 seconds”) I will eat my hat. The deflection off of the first goal was unfortunate, but the positioning could have been better. The perfectly timed run (yes it was, don’t argue) from St-Georges could have just as easily been offside as onside. On the whole if feels like a middling score is appropriate. 2.5 out of 5
“On a traffic light green means 'go' and yellow means 'yield', but on a banana it's just the opposite…
Green means 'hold on,' yellow means 'go ahead,' and red means, 'where the hell did you get that banana at?”
- Mitch Hedberg
Utah’s bespoke 2024 primary uniform may be a new favorite after seeing them in person again. The blue isn’t as navy as it appears on the screen of a phone or computer. The yellow socks are great too.
And Racing is back to its stupid green home uniforms. I don’t care that everyone else likes them. I get sicker and sicker of them every time I see them. Unlike Utah’s uniforms which are striking when they reappear into my field of vision, Racing’s green uniforms are too much green for a rainy spring that blasts your retinas with constant emerald shades.
As for the red donning referees, I didn’t think they were half bad other than Adorae Monroy’s insistence of bespoke positioning of every free kick, and throw in. She unnecessarily stopped play too much for my taste, but if that is the worst thing I have to say about an official then I think you have to say job well done.
Did the stadium have good food?
The tomato basil caprese sandwich was a nice vegetarian option (sorry vegans, but the buttered cauliflower was good too). Shrimp and Sausage Jambalaya was an interesting but tasty choice as well. I will say this. Every time someone brings a bespoke burrito from I Love Tacos into my line of sight, I do kind of wish I wasn’t too cheap to try one of those. Maybe on a Lou City night with a food voucher.
The Kayla Fischer Honorary Yellow Card of the Match
Pure unnecessary time wasting (although Monroy didn’t seem to add any time to make up for it) from DeMelo. Monroy had already shown a bespoke yellow for time wasting to Nuria Rábano 20 minutes earlier for virtually the same thing, so why test her? Now she will have to try to work it off based on good behavior, something she isn’t universally renowned for.
“Movin’ the river: bucket by spoon”
Moving the River/Steve McQueen/1985
“If it's uphill all the way, you should be used to it by now”
Slowly but surely Racing is accumulating points. That’s a good thing because the road gets pretty tough really quickly. It’s unreasonable to expect exponential growth in a team that is run like Racing, but the slow and steady growth seen over the first part of the season is really encouraging. The team still likes to make things hard on themselves. Joe Havelda said to me as we were leaving that Racing’s new motto should be something like “Racing always makes things harder than they need to be” (I am sure he was more poetic, sorry Joe). I agree. One, anything to replace “Go Big Purp” and two, it is painfully accurate. There are better ways to move a river than bucket by spoon, but I guess it will move eventually.
“You surely are a truly gifted kid, but you're only as good as the last great thing you did”
Doing great work almost always gets you two things: higher expectations and more work. Sears has six goals and if the season ended today, that would still be the club record for a season. However, ask anyone if she ended the season with 9 goals, would it be a disappointment and I bet almost everyone would answer “yes”. What is the number for her? Is it12…15? She is in the high-pressure position now of having to be the face of the team while scoring loads of goals. Her demeanor makes me think she can handle it, but we will have to see.
O’Kane was my player of the match. No player on Racing’s roster is going to single-handedly replace what Fischer gives Racing in the press, so other players are going to have to step up. O’Kane’s bespoke secondary pressure, especially after Utah insisted on trying to break the press through the middle for some reason, was really good. She sniffed out when to go after 50/50 balls really well and let Weber keep some of her energy so that she could last the entire match.
Weber didn’t quite play the full 90, but 87 minutes was her longest night by some measure. I am not quite sure that the goals will come one right after the other just yet (she only touched the ball 22 times) but it is always good to see that first one go in.
“Did the schedule get you down?”
Oh boy…the schedule makers did Racing no favors. While the KC/Orlando double gauntlet is broken up by a six-week summer league break, it is a four-game stretch where zero points isn’t beyond the realm of possibility. I think the important thing here is to play well regardless of the points you get. There are 27 points available in the last 9 matches, so if Racing can scrape 4 or 5 in the next six matches, they should be in decent shape. Long low-point runs have gotten to Racing in the past, so Bev’s job over the next few months might be therapist and cheerleader as much as head coach. The whole point of getting points early in a season is to weather these inevitable storms. I am not writing off any of these matches, but in aggregate they look very daunting because you get Washington and San Diego away after the second Orlando match.
