Wave v Racing -1

Racing finally faces San Diego for the first time this season on Friday. Louisville is entering a stretch of matches where the competition will start to be more difficult. They have San Diego twice, Gotham, Utah and KC who are all in the top half. They will get the two other California teams and the two expansion teams in Denver and Boston to balance out the schedule. Racing will need to take a decent number of points from the six teams that are higher up on the table in order to make a last-ditch effort towards the playoffs.

San Diego poses a particular threat down the wings in Barcenas and Byars. Trinity Byars torched Utah in the Wave’s last match getting two goals and two assists. Barcenas had a goal and an assist as well. It will be a good litmus test for Racing’s back line. Ludmina in the middle of those two is no slouch. It is a frankly terrifying attack, especially if you consider what Chicago’s attackers were able to do Racing on Sunday.

‍The elephant in the room (or in cyberspace, I guess) is that Racing’s good run of form came mostly against the NWSL also-rans. A good four-match run can blind you to the truth. Here is a list of the net points taken against the other teams in the league this season:

Gotham (1 Match): -3

Washington (2): -4

Portland (2): 0

Utah (1): -3

North Carolina (2): -6

San Diego (0): N/A

KC (1): -3

Seattle (2): 0

Angel City (1): +3

Houston (2): -4

Orlando (2): +6

Denver (1): -3

Bay (1): -3

Boston (1): +3

Chicago (2): 0

Racing only has a positive differential on three teams, all who are out of the playoff positions at the moment. Racing has neutral differentials against Portland, Seattle and Chicago. Two of those are pretty decent differentials for the season. That leaves eight teams where Racing has a negative point differential this season. They have a chance to get equal with Utah, KC, Denver, Gotham and Bay. In a league where half of the teams make the playoffs, I think you want a net score of around zero to be a safe bet. Racing has one of -17.

However, Racing still has a chance to prove the doubters (including me), wrong.

In the pre-match media availability, Bev shared that the strategy on recovering from a loss to end a winning streak was to not get hung up on the result. I agree. However, the defensive performance on Sunday was not nearly good enough. Racing will be up against (presumably) Byars twice, Chawinga, Sam Kerr and Jaedyn Shaw, and Tanaka from a “scary-good attacker” perspective in their toughest five matches on paper. They’ll certainly have to find a better way to deal with them than they dealt with Swanson in Chicago. Even if Racing went perfect against everyone else, which would give them 35 points, they are going to have to get something from a few of these tougher matches (36 points from 26 matches got the job done for Gotham last season).

McKeen has one more match before she becomes unavailable for a while, so Racing is going to be short-handed in midfield/attack until she returns, unless there is other help on the way (don’t hold your breath, but maybe don’t rule it out completely).