Racing 1 Thorns 0 Post Match Thoughts
Courtesy Connor Cunningham
Racing put in their best defensive performance in quite some time and used a late winner to take all 3 points at home against the Thorns. The late-night result in San Jose means that Racing still needs help to make the playoffs.
In my opinion, this is exactly the type of match that Racing should be striving to play at this point: Nullify the first 60 minutes or so and win the final 30. You are never going to turn down an early lead, but you shouldn't play like the scoreline is 1-0 until about the 80th minute if you are a team like Racing. They needed a clean sheet to win this match. They also needed to know that they were still capable of one as a unit.
This really was a team effort to keep a clean sheet. After the match the Thorns coach Rob Gale bellyached about what he thought his team “deserved”. He must have skipped over the part of the match where Racing won the “Duels” category (Racing won 62% of the duels, and 78% of the aerial duels). Racing won this match the old-fashioned way in that they used their taller players to play over the top of the Thorns. Racing played 27 accurate long balls (51%) compared to just 4 (9%) for Portland. This is anti-modern football, and the reason I think more teams need to try it is that it can nullify a talent disadvantage AND teams are not used to seeing it as often. Everyone wants to play beautiful football and stick to playing out from the back. At this point that stubbornness to play out of the back at all costs is more reflective of dull conformity than rare beauty. Racing got this match 100% right.
I really didn’t think any player for Racing particularly distinguished themselves last night, and that isn’t a bad thing. To be honest, Flint had some sloppiness to her game (64% percent accuracy including a couple of real head-scratchers) but got the goal in the end. Beckie, Flint, and Bev all commented on how this was a specific change in set piece work this week to focus on Talyor as the target on that particular piece. The Fischer for DeMelo sub was a good one. DeMelo didn’t have a particularly poor match, but Fischer brought enough energy to change things up. It was a cohesive performance for the most part and that has to be encouraging to the coaching staff.
It was a good win, but it was a win that you get from time-to-time where your team gets the single big break. I don’t think the team we saw last night was drastically different from what we have seen in the last few matches. There were fewer mistakes, which is good, but it was honestly just a random win. Racing could go out to San Diego and play about the same and get a win, draw or loss. This is a C-student level team. From time-to-time you will get an A-level effort and an A-level result, but you will also get some Ds and Fs.
I don’t know why the league decided against another “decision day” schedule like the one last year. It is rather unfortunate. Anyway, Racing will know when they kick off next Saturday if they have a shot and exactly what they need to do. The most “fun” scenario might be Racing needed to win by a 3-goal scoreline to overtake Portland, but the easiest would be for Bay to lose. Either way, Racing still needs help. A-students get the job done early and sometimes get to opt-out of the final exam. C-students sometimes have to cram and hope nobody blows up the grading curve. Humility is not my strongest asset, so I don’t have any hesitation letting you know that I was consistently an A-student. Maybe that’s why I never got Racing’s mentality this year. I never wanted to just scrape by and “peak” in time for the last six weeks or a final exam. From a mentality perspective, I just don’t think you can go wrong with pushing yourself early and often and leaving nothing to chance. Racing wrote off the first part of the season as a learning and growing exercise and the A-student in me just finds that frustrating and mind-boggling. I will admit that it could have worked, but why even set yourself up to squeak into the playoffs. None of this was deliberate by Racing. Very few people want to set themselves up to be C-students. I think they just misjudged where the bar was ultimately going to be set. Only the players and coaches will know if they gave it their all. If they did and still fall short, then it was a noble season if it was ultimately unsuccessful.
