Racing 2 Pride 0 Post Match Thoughts
Courtesy Connor Cunningham
Coach Björkegren was his usual stoic self after the win last night, but had to feel better and a bit relieved by the result. Racing was the better team for pretty much the entire match, and their lead never looked in any real danger after the second goal. There were good performances all around the pitch last night, but perhaps the most encouraging one was Emily Fox’s performance, who is the absolute key to Racing’s success going forward.
Emily Fox once again showed her quality last night, and it was good to see her put in a commanding performance. For the first time in quite a while, Fox looked 100%. I warned earlier in the year about her overuse by the national team, and I really believe those minutes caught up with her in midseason. Because Fox missed the previous match due to recovering from a concussion, she had the chance to get in some much-needed rest. I can’t say for sure that the rest is what made the difference in her performance, but she looked like her old, dominating self last night. Fox is perhaps the only Racing player that can make a defensive recovery once an attacking player is past her. On a few occasions, you saw Emily be the last defender back and make the vital tackle or at least slow-down the counter. The truth is that she covers defensive lapses, but last night she benefited by not having as many to cover.
I don’t want to bore you with a bunch of heatmaps or touch maps, so take my word for it when I say that a cursory examination of the maps from last night’s match showed positional discipline. There were a few items of interest. First, Coach Kim stated in his post-match press conferences that he thought Bonner and Murray did a good job of covering more ground by spacing out a bit more. Looking at their heatmaps and average positions shows this to be accurate. Their combined heatmap shows them covering just about the entire defensive half. Wang had a really good night being all over the pitch. In her post-match words, Nadia Nadim stated that Wang tended to stick close to her when in attack and that their on-the-field connection was in evidence last night. Looking at the four primary attackers, each of them were disciplined by keeping to their natural areas on the pitch. Wang perhaps had deeper touches than your average CAM, but her instinct to drop deep cut off a few Orlando attacks. Howell and DeMelo painted the midfield with touches but were both pretty disciplined in sticking to one side of the pitch. All of these combined efforts made Racing look in control of the match, especially after taking an early lead.
Björkegren kept his tendency to stick with the team that is working when Racing is playing well. Racing didn’t make a sub until the 85th minute. I know that this drives many, many Racing fans crazy, but it doesn’t bother me. Professional soccer players can play 90 minutes pretty consistently. Here is the part that I think people may be missing. No player ever wants to not play…ever. You could argue that the coach needs to protect the players from themselves sometimes, and I tend to agree with that. However, one of the advantages that Racing has is youth. If Racing is to ever get over the hump, I believe it will be with players like Howell and DeMelo leading the charge. They have to get minutes to get the necessary experience to lead the team forward. Racing does have 3 of the top ten outfield players in minutes so far this year (DeMelo, Milliet, and Howell), but all of them are still young. Unlike Fox, who has seemed to have played at least a match per week since January, those three have had international breaks to recover. You also have to remember that rotation is different than substitution, and I think rotation is much more important than substitution. Only 4 players have started every match and 19 different players have started. I am all for making a sub to change a match, but if it doesn’t warrant changing why substitute?
Racing’s two goals were squarely of the “team” variety, which is encouraging. The team still has a tendency to overplay the ball a bit in the box and the two goals showed the benefit of a) getting off a shot directly from an advancing move, and b) taking a shot from distance even if you have other options in the box. One day I would like to see a performance where the opposing keeper is pelted with shots. Racing had 11 shots compared to Orlando’s 14, but I feel like they could have easily had more. The on-field communication was better last night, but players still were occupying the same space in attack a few more times than you would like to see.
