After falling to Bay FC, Racing faces another tough test from Angel City
A late error sent Racing home from Bay 0-1 last Saturday. With only seven games left, can they still make a late playoff run?
Note: Work and family commitments held me up quite a bit this week, so I made the usual recap into more of a preview than a look back at the Bay match. Here’s to doing something new!
Racing fell to Bay FC 0-1 on the road last Saturday night on the back of a late defensive error. They return home this weekend to face Angel City to hopefully regain much-needed ground with a win and keep their playoff hopes alive.
“Every game is going to be big for us, especially when pushing for playoffs,” team captain and defender Abby Erceg said. “We’re not in that picture and we’ve got to get ourselves in that picture. The last two games didn’t go the way we wanted them to or needed them to, so [the upcoming match] is a big three points.”
With only seven games remaining in the regular season, Racing has dropped into 11th place. Although a win this Saturday still won’t be enough to push them over the post-season line, it would get them close to the edge. More importantly, they would leapfrog ninth-place Angel City with three points and take a much stronger spot on the table.
Erceg said these high stakes are what make the National Women’s Soccer League so exciting.
“You don't know until the last game whether you're going to be in playoffs or not,” the centerback explained, “so I think for me, personally, it's exciting to have that kind of competition in the league. You don't really want to have a big separation between teams. And, obviously, with L.A. being so close to us, yeah, it's going to be a tough game.”
Angel City is particularly adept at one-on-one attacking and earning late-game winners via forward Sydney Leroux, according to Erceg. Additionally, forward Alyssa Thompson has scored four goals in three games and helped give the Los Angeles side a late push towards the playoffs they’d been missing in the first half of the season.
“They have players in their team who can undo a very good performance for us, so we need to make sure we stay switched on for 90 minutes because if you switch off against players like that, they’re dangerous. They have that reputation for a reason. We just have to stay focused. I think we can put in a good performance.”
Big Changes
Racing made some late, but dramatic, roster changes before returning from the Olympic break. These include trading former captain Jaelin Howell to the Seattle Reign for forward Bethany Balcer and rookie forward Reilyn Turner to the Portland Thorns for veteran forward Janine Beckie. More recently, left back Courtney Peterson was also acquired from the Houston Dash.
Erceg admitted during pre-game media on Thursday that the roster changes have been challenging for players saying that some of them were unexpected.
“There were big changes for us. We had a lot of big personalities leave, but we've also had a lot of big personalities come in as well. And I think at the end of the day, it's making that playoff push and trusting in what the staff think that that can do for us with those changes.”
A few games into the final stretch of the season, it’s now possible to get a sense of how these changes have impacted the team. So far, the results have been mixed. On the scoreline and in the standing, they’re not great. Racing has, after all, lost two out of their last three matches.
In a more nuanced look, however, this seems like a better team. Racing scored five goals in two games for only the second time all season. They scored off set pieces which they’ve struggled to do. Against both Chicago and Seattle, they held good possession and controlled the game well.
Against Bay, things were more even. Racing ended with 47% possession and 1.11 xG compared to Bay’s 1.62. They had 11 shots with two on target compared to Bay’s 15 shots with 6 on target. Both teams had around 75% passing accuracy. Notably, Racing was missing Savannah DeMelo due to yellow card accumulation and Uchenna Kanu due to injury and there’s no question these absences hurt them.
Even with these less-than-stellar results, however, it’s clear Racing is hardly doing poorly. In fact, they’re doing fine—clearly better than they were prior to the Olympic break—but the problem is other teams around them in the standings are doing even better.
“We always come in here and say that it's disappointing,” Erceg remarked after the Bay match. “I'm kind of sick of saying it's disappointing that we gave away a result when I think we should have won. And I think the hard thing is that we're playing really well. Probably the best part of the football season has been in the second half, so it's tough.”
The defender admitted that defensive errors impacted the Bay match, but that Racing’s inability to consistently score is also limiting their ability to hold onto matches.
In the same post-match press conference, new addition Balcer followed up Erceg’s comments and said: “I mean, I think for my short time that I've been here so far, that's just always been the mentality after games: We are really pleased with the style of play that we're playing, and like Abby said, how we're playing. It's just the final product that's not there right now. And yeah, the ability to put teams away like we know we can. I think all the pieces are there, and it's just that final step. And now it's kind of like there's no other option other than to get across the line, so I think it's just this mentality shift that's going to have to happen where we just don't want that to happen anymore.”
Puzzle Pieces
Racing isn’t the only team that’s brought in some big new pieces to change their roster during the break—and let’s not forget, Balcer and Beckie are big players. Balcer is in the current top three goal scorers in the NWSL and has more headers than every player in Louisville history combined. Beckie is a leading chance creator in the league—a necessity for Racing after the loss of Carson Pickett—and she’s an Olympic gold medalist with Canada and has won the league with the Thorns.
These players are big additions to Racing and bring important offensive prowess to a team that is struggling to score. So while Racing is arguably having a performance boost, why aren’t they having the big boost that, say, Bay or Utah are seeming to have after their changes? In this author’s opinion, this is partially because of positioning.
Utah added Japanese forward Mina Tanaka, Canadian forward Cloé Lacasse, and Spanish midfielder Claudia Zornoza to their roster for an immediate beneficial impact. A big part of this is because they were able to plug-and-play these players into position without having to shift anyone to accommodate them. Sure, players got benched or, in the case of Amadine Henry, left the club, but they didn’t have to move Paige Monaghan to the right side of the pitch or try her centrally where she was less comfortable. Instead, the new players made Monaghan even more effective in her preferred position as a left winger.
It will be interesting to see what they do once Ally Sentnor returns from the U-20 World Cup, but for now, the Royals were able to just upgrade without much issue. The same thing essentially happened with Bay with their acquisition of center back Abby Dahlkemper. They traded Kayla Sharples to Kansas City, so there was no question Dahlkemper would slot into her postion. No one would move to accommodate her.
That’s not quite the case for Racing. Recently, Emma Sears has been played on the left despite playing her entire career as a right back. This experiment started before the Olympic break so it can’t be blamed on the new players, however, getting Beckie who is a veteran and very established on the right side makes it much more likely that Sears’ left-side swap will be more permanent. There is no question that Sears is less effective on the left. While it is valuable for her to add that skill to her arsenal, anyone watching her can see that she’s overthinking everything she’s doing from that side and that she’s taking too many extra touches in the box to get the ball onto her right foot. Opposing defenders can read this from a mile off and consistently dispossess her. Compare this to her juggling the ball to herself in Chicago before scoring from the right earlier this season and it’s like a night-and-day player.
The necessity to play Sears on the left is increased by the fact Kanu just had a minor knee procedure and will be out for an extended time. Kanu is Racing’s most natural left winger and her absence leaves a gap. Sears is arguably still the best player to fill it. This is disappointing because Kanu and Balcer seemed to have an immediate rapport on the pitch together that Louisville won’t be able to take advantage of. With Sears unable to send in her pinpoint crosses from her right foot when stationed on the left, her service to Balcer has also been diminished. Hopefully, Beckie, a high-level chance creator, will be able to make up for a lot of that as Sears continues to grow into her new role. Savannah DeMelo’s return will also undoubtedly help as well.
DeMelo, of course, adds another conundrum. Head coach Bev Yanez has been playing in more of a 3-2-5 attacking formation since returning from the break with winger Lauren Milliet playing high up the flank as another attacker and Taylor Flint and Ary Borges as the double pivot midfielders. This formation used DeMelo off to the right where, in theory, she would drift more centrally as a double No. 10 next to Marisa DiGrande who would play in the more traditional No. 10 role. With Beckie now on the team, what do you do with DiGrande and DeMelo? The clear answer seems to be to play Beckie wider and move DeMelo in centrally to her more natural position. But DiGrande is tied for team leader in assists and has been quietly effective in adding to Racing’s offensive production.
Taking DiGrande off as a starter will be a definite change for Racing even if it is ultimately the best option and that’s the whole point. Racing is having significant disruptions due to these personnel changes and we haven’t even discussed the loss of Pickett and how that’s rearranged the backline. Even Borges is practically a new player coming in because she was injured all season and is playing next to Flint, who is in her first season with Racing, for the first time these past few matches.
The bottom line is, Racing has a whole lot of puzzle pieces and because of injuries and other unexpected changes, no one seems quite sure how they’ll slot in together yet. Balcer has already notched an assist in her first match and had more shots than anyone (4) in the game against Bay, although none were on target. If she can settle and get one in the net and if Sears can get more confident on the left side, that would go a long way to clicking everything into place for Racing.
Flipping the Switch
The final step, though, is for Racing to just truly believe they can win. Balcer discussed Racing missing that final piece and it’s hard not to feel that this is a big part of it. At least 50% of scoring goals and winning games is confidence and it’s hard to have that with a late-shifting roster and the repercussions that come with it. At some point, though, teams have to just make the conscious and collective decision to flip that switch themselves instead of waiting for it to happen.
That’s not at all meant to imply, of course, that Racing’s players don’t want to win or don’t strive to win or don’t believe in the team. It’s about the subtle change in mindset that moves from thinking you can win to absolutely believing you will win every game. That’s not an easy mindset to build—especially for a club without many wins—but it’s not impossible.
Speaking to Gotham FC players ahead of last year’s championship final against the Seattle Reign, they all collectively said that they decided in preseason that they were going to go from “worst to first” that season. It didn’t matter what happened in a match, it didn’t matter what the results were. They were going to have the mindset that they were going to be the best team and no one was going to stop them.
Clearly, it worked.
After a history of having one of the worst records in the league for almost a decade, they won the Championship in 2023 and are one of the top teams of 2024. Of course, this isn’t implying that mindset was the only thing that changed for them. Smart player acquisitions, a great draft pick, and an excellent coaching hire were all critical pieces of the puzzle, but without the players collectively buying into the idea that they would win before the season even started, it’s unlikely they would have made it as far as they did.
Hopefully, Racing can settle and come together and make a similar group decision. No one is going to flip that switch for them. They will have to figure out how to do it for themselves. That’s not an easy thing to do, but it is absolutely critical they figure out how. And Racing has made its own coaching improvements, successful draft picks in Emma Sears, and player upgrades. Even if they haven’t been as immediately impactful, they’re there and how soon they reap the benefit is in some part up to them.
Racing is performing well enough to get better results than they have been throughout the season. They’re losing on mistakes, slow starts, or inconsistent play. They are only losing by the smallest margins. The margin gained from simply believing you will win a match and holding it together as a collective should have been enough to have made a difference in at least a couple of games this season. Even turning one win into a draw would have moved them all the way to ninth place above Angel City heading into this match. Two draws into wins would put them in a playoff spot.
Even with the season winding down, Erceg said Racing isn’t yet in the desperate win or be eliminated spot, but, “it’s still very much down to we need these points. I think it’s going to come down to the last game, so if you’re dropping points five games out, six games out, it’s going to hurt you, isn’t it? So you have to get every point and I think you have to play every game like it could be the last game.”
How urgently Racing comes out in their match against Angel City, another team also desperate for points to stay in the playoff race, will say a lot about where this team is both mentally and tactically.
Pups at the Pitch, presented by Feeders Supply, takes place on Saturday, September 14, as the Racing hosts Angel City FC. Gates open at 6 p.m. before kickoff at 7:30 p.m.