Marilia Macedo provided information.
Image courtesy of Alejandra Rivera
The OL Reign had its first match with their new Head Coach, Laura Harvey, this Saturday against Kansas City NWSL, with the first victory for the hosts this season.
It wasn’t an easy challenge, as the team was experiencing an important recovery under Sam Laity as Interim Coach since the infamous departure of Farid Benstiti just hours before playing against Houston Dash. Plus, the record was promising: OL Reign is 2-0-0 against Kansas City NWSL given they’ve played only twice, with the last match between them ending with a 2×0 score with two goals by Bethany Balcer.
Laity’s last match was an outstanding 5×1 against the same team from Houston.
It was so outstanding that it broke the club record for number of goals scored in a single half. It’s also important to consider that Quinn, Rapinoe and Lavelle were not considered for this match as they’re still on International Duty because of the Olympics. However, the positions were well covered by Weatherholt, Le Sommer and Marozsán.
The match was stopped multiple times in the first half because of low pressure on the balls.
Both Weatherholt and Le Sommer were seen uncomfortable with the situation. However there were also players from Kansas City complaining about this particular problem.
Basically the Reign started with the same 4-2-1-3 we usually see every weekend, with Balcer as center forward and Le Sommer on the left side. The chemistry didn’t change though, as the defense looked pretty solid by stopping every attempt from the host team who didn’t have a very productive evening. Kansas City NWSL went to the field with a 4-3-1-2 formation, trying to open the field by playing through the wings.
Something interesting to discuss is the peculiar location of Kansas City NWSL stadium, because it was built from East to West (the standard is from North to South), causing problems for Reign’s players who were facing the sun during the first half. As it was played at 7pm local time, this was not an inconvenience for the hosts in the second half.
Both teams did an interesting defensive work over the first half.
Because of this, The match only had mild attacking opportunities for both teams until the 27 minute, when a reckless defensive maneuver by Kiara Pickett injured Eugénie Le Sommer who had to be attended by the medics before being substituted by Zee King on the 34th minute. With Zee on the left side the team preserved the momentum. Her chemistry when playing alongside Balcer and Fishlock has always been evident, and today was not the exception.
Since the substitution the team was more active trying to push all the lines forward, which also caused the team to be more vulnerable to counter attacks, the most concerning one on the 44th minute. A very intense first half ended shortly thereafter.
The second half looked more like the same compared to the first 45 minutes, where both teams were pretty good at defense but without ideas when attacking. On the Reign side, Fishlock was missing for most of the match meanwhile the team was struggling to find enough spaces for attacking.
The substitutions tried to change this status quo: Balcer and Celia were substituted by Angelina and Hammond.
The score was opened on the 73’ when, after a free kick, a loose ball was captured by Pickett who was completely alone inside the box. It was the first goal for Kansas Cit phoy, and a big hit for Laura Harvey on her first match since she came back to the Reign. McNabb and Shirley Cruz went to the field on the 76’ in an attempt to revert the scenario. However, there were not too many options available for the Reign to score the equalizer before the final whistle.
When asked about the result, Jess Fishlock was clear:
“We didn’t deserve much out of that game”
With this victory (the first of the season), Kansas City stays in the last position with only 7 points (1-4-9). On the other side, the Reign stayed 7th with 19 points (6-1-7).
For the next game, OL Reign will host the NJ/NY Gotham FC on August 21 at 10PM ET. Meanwhile, Kansas City NWSL will travel to North Carolina as they’ll face the North Carolina Courage at 7PM ET.