Racing 1 Wave 0 Post Match Thoughts
Courtesy USA Today Sports Images
First of all, I would like everybody to calm down a bit on the “best team in the league” and “top of the table” status of the San Diego Wave. It is way too early to be staring at the NWSL table and way too early to be calling any team “the best team”. It also isn’t fair to the Wave as they will surely go through some growing pains this season and shouldn’t have to answer a bunch of “What happened?” questions if they do eventually slide back into the mid or bottom part of the table. However, for the night Racing got 3 points against the team that was at the top of the table entering the evening.
It was Racing’s first clean sheet of the league season, and it was a team effort especially in the last 10 minutes plus stoppage. Lund was called upon in the later stages of the match, but the players in front of her kept her out of too much trouble early on. San Diego had 10 corners, and many of those seemed to come in the first 15 minutes or so. Racing was able to buckle down and didn’t really allow a dangerous change in those first few minutes. After the first 15 minutes Racing did a good job of controlling the match (which in my opinion is the best defense you can play). Alex Morgan had a dangerous run, but ultimately tame shot in the 46th minute to open the second half, but for the next 35 minutes, Racing looked like the team more likely to score. In the 80th or so minute, Racing did the inevitable and set back and defended for the last part of the match. There was one really good opportunity from Doniak, but Lund was in the right spot.
I thoroughly enjoyed the run that Fox had that basically killed off the match. She had a couple of similar runs in the match which makes you wonder if anybody in this league can catch her when she is on the ball. Fox basically singlehandedly killed off a minute of stoppage time with her run and the corner that she won. Sh’Nia Gordon also deserves special mention here as she was responsible for reclaiming the ball in Racing’s end to give Davis a shot on goal, and also killed of the last few seconds with a run into the box. I always appreciate killing off a match in your attacking half vs. your defending half, which is exactly what Racing did here.
Howell mentioned in her post match press conference that hopefully Racing had “broken the seal” on their ability to get wins. Racing didn’t have a dominant performance last night, but it was a performance that was good enough to give them a chance at a victory which they took. There will surely be several matches for Racing like this one where the outcome is in doubt until the very last minute. I think the team can feel good about how they managed all of the difficulties surrounding this match and move forward confidently that 3 points are always available to them.
I recorded an episode of the Vamos Morados podcast with Zach Allen-Kelly on Tuesday night that will air sometime this week. We both mentioned that we thought a goal for Sav DeMelo was coming sooner rather than later. After the match, Coach Björkegren said that he told his wife the same thing before tonight’s match. One of my favorite aspects of being a fan is watching a good player develop into a great one. I think that may be what we are seeing with DeMelo. Her injury in her Junior year of college, probably set her back from a development standpoint a bit and now Racing are the beneficiaries of that. In a few year’s time we may be looking back in even more astonishment at Racing’s ability to select the right players in the first round of the draft.
