Portland 2 Louisville 0 Post Match Thoughts
Courtesy USA Today Sports Images
Before I get started here, I want to state that I feel like I watched a different match than some other Louisville fans did last night. I thought it was a below average performance on first appraisal and I stand by that. I will outline why below, but that was just my takeaway. There are going to be perfectly valid opinions that have a rosier viewpoints on last night’s performance, and I am 100% comfortable with that. No two sets of eyes are going to see the same thing. I probably gave the collectively lowest player ratings ever for a match. There were 5s across the board except for Lund and Davis. I saw comments online about Holloway’s performance being her best. That may very well be the case, but my player ratings this year are not going to give 6s and 7s and 8s when the team loses by 2 goals (on 3 balls in the back of the net). If you want those type of ratings, Fotmob will give you an unbiased statistical rating for each player. I will make my case below, but as always feel free to disagree.
Portland forced the bad performance. This wasn’t Louisville coming out and laying an egg. The Thorns set a pretty clever trap for Louisville and the team immediately fell for it. I feel like this team’s style of play could be talked about ad nauseam, so I won’t do so here other than to say that Louisville made it easy for Portland to counterattack, which is something they love to do. The threat of relegation forces pragmatic performances sometimes, so since there is no such possibility for Louisville I don’t every think you’ll see them go with a plan to change their formation based on their opponent. I was on a Twitter Live pregame show with Stumptown Footy. On that show I said that if I were coaching, I would have an extra natural defender on the pitch to prepare for Portland’s offensive talent. The formation wouldn’t matter so much, but I think you needed one more player consistently sitting deep for Louisville. I also conceded that there was zero percent chance of this happening. Louisville was immediately exposed on the first counter of the match with not enough help back to defend. Pikkujämsä unfortunately went down on that play, but she was always behind the action. On the second goal, the back line again was not settled due to a bad giveaway from Wang and Portland easily cut through them.
More troubling for me, was the goal that was correctly ruled out. The back line was a mess on that one, especially with Milliet and Holloway getting beat on their side. I will be honest with you. The 5s that I gave the back line were greatly influenced by that particular sequence. It ended up not mattering on the scoreline, but the handball had nothing to do with how poor the backline looked during that sequence. It was part of the performance whether or not the goal counted. I will also be upfront here in saying that when that goal went in, I started writing my player ratings. If anything in the last quarter of the match would have changed the scoreline I would have reconsidered my ratings, but it didn’t so I didn’t
Let’s talk about the scoreline. I say this over and over again. The scoreline dictates the play. In mind my you can throw all of the statistics out of the window for this match. I expect that other people discussing this match will point to the numbers and show some positive trends. Louisville basically played the entire match behind and your opponent is always more likely to concede possession to you when they have the lead. Portland had immediate joy in the counterattack, so why change that with a lead. The stats will show a significant advantage for Louisville in first half possession. I don’t think that matters much in this situation. Portland was happy for Louisville to have the ball and Louisville didn’t do much with it.
Now on to things that you won’t see in the stat sheet. To my eyes and possibly my eyes only, Portland killed Louisville in the spacing matchup. This is a hard thing to find numbers to support, so let me try to describe for you what I saw. When Portland had the ball in its attacking third, they were direct and calm in their passes with the movement from the players off the ball creating multiple options for the player with the ball to choose the best pass. They never looked rushed or disjointed in the buildup. It was frankly beautiful to watch. It looked like what it was: a team that had long played together and knew where each other would be. This more than anything else is what forced the below average performance from Louisville in my opinion. Louisville on the other hand was sometimes too slow and sometimes too fast. More than once Howell went backwards with a safe pass when she was under virtually no pressure. That drives me absolutely crazy. I don’t lay all of the blame on her because one of the other things I saw was when Louisville was going forward, they would play a long ball early due to the lack of any other forward option. Portland runs like a machine. Louisville starts and stops. In my opinion, this is mainly facilitated by the runs that Portland makes and spacing that they consitently maintain. Louisville couldn’t make effective runs or get good spacing against them. Full credit to Portland on this.
To the people that disagree with my assessment above, while conceding that you may have seen something different in the match, I will say that I am not going to give 7s in the player ratings when the team was so outplayed, when the match was in doubt. Anything that happened after the 70th minute after Portland throttled down into 2nd gear isn’t really of consequence to me. Holloway may have had her best match. I still think Lester is a better option, and I am still fine with giving her a 5 because the rest of the back line got a 5. I will not be giving this particular team 6s and 7s when they concede 3 goals (even if only two counted). They are better than that and I won’t patronize them by treating them like they aren’t. It was a bad performance in my opinion. I will state once again that it was a bad performance forced by Portland, but a bad performance nonetheless.
