Kansas City v Louisville Pre Match Thoughts
Courtesy USA Today Sports Images
Louisville now travels to Kansas for the second part of KC week having won 3-2 vs. a rotated starting lineup in Louisville. LaBonta, Debinha and Kizer put in substitute appearances and DiBernardo didn’t play at all. Combined those four players comprise the top four spots in Fotmob’s player ratings for the season for the Current. It’s a safe bet that all four will start against Louisville on Saturday. Even with all of that talent on the bench, Kansas City still put two goals past Louisville. I don’t think giving up two goals in Kansas City will be the recipe for success on Saturday, so Louisville needs to figure out how to continue its recent offensive outburst while also figuring out how to keep their opponents from exposing them on the counter. The Current showed a high press at times in the Challege Cup match in Louisville, and Louisville didn’t always handle it well. If you recall last season’s league match in Kansas City, you will remember a second half where the Current basically pinned Louisville back into their own half for the last 45 minutes while protecting a 1-0 lead. Louisville would like to turn the tables on the Current from that perspective and it nearly worked for Louisville on Wednesday, but you only need to look back to the 88th minute goal on Wednesday to see the danger in putting most of your effort into front-footed defense, although that was really a mental lapse of taking a normal corner instead of a time-wasting one. It’s still unclear if Louisville is capable of putting in a solid defensive performance with a narrow lead when they aren’t able to keep their opponents in their own half.
Saturday’s match is more important in the grand scheme of things than the victory on Wednesday. The thought on every fan’s mind surely is: Can Louisville go on a long run of good results? I think the best, but certainly not the only way to predict that is to look at a club’s best run of form. For Louisville, its best run of form ever is 9 points from 5 matches (1.8 points/match rate), which was the last 5 matches in 2022 when all of the pressure to make the playoffs was off. The form extrapolated over the rest of the season would put them at 34 points and would likely get them into the playoffs. As great as the wins vs. Chicago and Kansas City were, I think we have to be honest and realize that it would basically take Louisville duplicating its best run of form ever and applying that to the rest of the season in order to say that the playoffs are likely. In order to change that rather bleak prognostication, Louisville must go on a run of results soon that yield point totals in the 2 points/match range. Currently, only the Washington Spirit and OL Reign are hitting that clip in their last 5 matches. As good as those victories were, there is still a rather large mathematical, but nowhere near impossible, hill to climb.
