Racing 0 Courage 3 Post Match Thoughts
Courtesy USA Today Sports Images
Last night’s Racing performance was reminiscent of several mid-season performances that Racing put in last year and eerily similar to some of those put in against the North Carolina Courage. The effort and energy seemed low from the start which resulted in another early goal conceded. After the match, Coach Björkegren conceded that there were too many areas of concern in the match to focus on a single one.
Racing has continued to sign players throughout the season and then immediately integrate them into the Starting XI. I would say that Lester has been the best of these decisions. Chidiac has put in solid performances, but seemingly at the expense of Olofsson, Davis, and Ekic. Holloway in my opinion hasn’t done much to merit an immediate inclusion. I saw some noise on Twitter about Simon and Merrick not being included in the squad at all. The fact of the matter is that who does and doesn’t start will always be up for debate among the fans. I asked Coach Björkegren after the match if he was considering switching things up a bit. I give him credit for basically saying that it would be a consideration, but also he said he wasn’t ready to move on from the loss yet and talk about the next match vs. Angel City.
Coming into the match, the Courage and Racing were the top two teams in the league in possession, so obviously something has to give in the match yesterday. The Courage were able to completely dominate the first half and got into halftime with a 2 goal advantage and over 60% of the possession. Racing simply need more of the ball especially early in the matches. In previous matches after going behind early, there has seemingly been a spark in the team to fight back. Last night the team seemed to be missing that spark. The way that the Courage play surely had something to do with that, but I also wonder if it wasn’t a bit of “here we go again” after conceding another early goal. In the final 10-20 minutes, Racing finally looked like a team desperate to win balls. While you would like to see that same fire all match you can also see that one mistake when giving that much effort to the offensive side can lead to dangerous counters. Personally, I didn’t think Racing’s press worked at all last night because you need to get a foothold in the game in order to get it going. In short, Racing needs to find a way to start matches better.
Racing did have a chance to get back into the match via a couple of opportunities from Jess McDonald: one through a first half effort that bounced off of the crossbar (where no other Racing player was in the box for the rebound) and a golden opportunity that was incorrectly ruled offside.
The flag had gone up and the whistle had blown too early for me to call it a “disallowed” goal. People will call for VAR again after this and others (like me) will point out that it is an expensive technology. However, I believe that there could be a compromise for calls that are so obviously incorrect to be quickly reviewed. I believe the major expense in the VAR technology is the multiple angles needed and the drawing of the lines. In last night’s instance neither would be necessary. A quick look at the broadcast replay showed that the decision was incorrect. Why not have somebody in a central office be available to take a look at clear and obvious errors? Frankly, this is also a bit of a pipe dream because 1) officials would have to be trained to leave their offside flags down until a phase of play was completed on close calls, and 2) I don't think the league is run well enough to afford or manage something as simple as this.
Now is not the time to wallow in the pain of two consecutive defeats. The team (Emily Fox in particular) looked down after the match yesterday. It's hard sometimes to keep a positive attitude after a couple of bad results, but winning typically comes from confidence. This may be the biggest test of Björkegren's tenure: to see if the team can stop the bleeding before it turns into a losing streak.
