The seven-week Olympic break could not have come at a greater time for Angel City FC. With Saturday’s 2-1 loss to New Jersey/New York Gotham FCThe crew has misplaced three video games in a row, gained solely as soon as in 9 matches and scored solely as soon as within the final 275 minutes.
While it ought to be climbing the rankings, Angel City is falling.
“Nobody desires to take a seat right here with 4 wins,” coach Becki Tweed mentioned. “The group is dissatisfied. The wonderful thing about this league is you may’t be dissatisfied for a very long time. You have to maneuver on and you must transfer on.
“We have an actual alternative within the second half of the season. It must be ‘what do we would like out of the season?’ Like, ‘how are we going to indicate up?’ We have to maneuver ahead in a short time.”
Quickly could also be a relative time period as a result of Angel City gained’t play one other NWSL recreation till August 24. In the meantime, the strain shall be on Tweed and her employees to determine precisely what went mistaken.
“It’s irritating when the items don’t match collectively,” captain Ali Riley mentioned. “One factor that may’t be questioned is the trouble. So the standard of that last cross, the standard of the throw, the monitoring of a runner, these items should be referred to as out. We should take duty for that. And we’ve got to be higher.
“If these on the sphere do not do it, then another person can have that chance. I feel we’ll see that within the second half of the season.”
They noticed it final season, when Tweed changed Freya Coombe as coach in mid-June with the crew in eleventh place. Under Tweed, Angel City went undefeated in 10 of its final 11 NWSL video games and clinched a playoff spot on the ultimate day of the season.
Angel City (4-9-3) heads into the break sitting in eleventh place, however simply three factors out of a playoff spot with 10 video games remaining. With the switch window opening through the break, Tweed expects the crew to look totally different once they return to NWSL play.
The crew is nearly sure to have again within the squad striker Christian Press, who has been out for 2 years attributable to a torn anterior cruciate ligament, and the coach additionally expects different reinforcements.
“I might be stunned if I did not see each crew attempting to herald gamers on this window,” he mentioned. “Everybody’s rising. Everybody’s including gamers each window.
“This is an efficient alternative for us to reset a little bit bit, refresh a little bit bit. Everyone wants this break to take a while off mentally and bodily, and we have to come again with the perspective, the vitality, the will, the grit that we delivered to the second half of final season.”
Or the second half of Saturday’s recreation. After conceding first-half objectives from Rose Lavelle and Delanie Sheehan, Angel City performed an impressed 45-minute second half, halving the deficit on Claire Emslie’s 69th-minute penalty, however getting no nearer.
Lavelle, who was harmful for many of her 60 minutes, gave Gotham (9-3-4) the lead within the sixteenth minute after a fast sequence of 5 passes that left her alone within the middle of the world, prepared to complete simply.
Sheehan, a Hermann Trophy semifinalist at UCLA, doubled the lead simply earlier than halftime, scoring into an empty internet after Ella Stevens lured Angel City goalkeeper DiDi Haracic into the highest nook of the penalty space, then performed a low left-foot cross to an unmarked Sheehan for her first purpose of the season.
Emslie’s team-leading sixth purpose got here after Gisele Thompson was introduced down within the field by Gotham’s Mandy Freeman, inflicting the foul that led to the penalty. But the purpose was pricey: Thompson left BMO Stadium sporting a protecting boot on her proper foot.
Haracic matched his regular-season profession excessive with seven saves.
The crowd, introduced at 16,542, was the smallest of the season and the second smallest in Angel City historical past. The crew entered the weekend main the league in common house attendance at 19,865.
