ACFC 0-0 San Diego Wave

For me, this felt like what could be a season defining performance, and it wasn’t even a win. It actually wasn’t even a very good performance in my opinion, though not a bad one either. But it did feel to me like Angel City might have turned a corner. We made things happen in this match, and really forced San Diego onto their back foot at times. Time will tell if this game actually was a turning point. In fact, I think that the timing is pretty bad, with an international break coming up, and then two games on the road before we’re back at BMO. It’s a shame that so many players are leaving for their national teams, and that there is this time off, because I really felt like there was momentum at the end of this match, and that it was something to build on.

Obviously, I feel like statistics are an important window into the game, but I think that narrative can play a key role, as long as the narrative doesn’t ignore any underlying realities. And from a narrative perspective, I don’t know that Haračić has ever made a better save than the one she did at the end of the game. Technically, maybe she has, but in the final moments of stoppage time, against one of the best goalscorers the league has ever seen, on a point blank shot, well, it just doesn’t get any better. A save like this, statistically is just one save, but it can inspire teammates, build trust, rally fans, and make opponents second guess just a little bit. Some moments just do take on a life of their own, and I think that this is one of them. If you can name a better save that Haračić has made, let me know, but for me, this is the one I’ll remember. I’ll discuss the stoppage time in more detail at the end, but there are a few other aspects to the game I wanted to get into first.

First 9 Minutes

Starting from the kickoff. Le Bihan takes it, with Leroux, and the Thompson sisters lining up along the left side all in a group, and Emslie all the way on the sideline at the right. This looks like a designed play, meant to overload the left side of the field. Le Bihan passes back to Rodríguez. The three runners on the left all make basically straight runs, though of different speeds to spread out, and it looks like Rodríguez is trying to get it out to Gisele, but San Diego reads it the whole way and intercepts the pass. Rodríguez gets it right back, and then gives it away again and the game’s under way. This may seem like a small thing, and ultimately it has no bearing on the match. Really, it’s very rare for teams to score right off the kickoff. But there is this continued emphasis on keeping possession and yet off of a designed play, when it’s literally impossible for the opposition to pressure the ball, we can’t actually string together two passes. And we’ll see this trend of players being too expansive continue.

Moving forward, at around the 4’ mark, Angel City gets pushed all the way back to giving it to Haračić. She passes out to Curry, playing the right centerback spot. When Curry gets the ball, Spencer starts to make a run up the right side, but she has a marker so Curry tries to turn back inside, but now she has a defender on her. She tries to play the ball across, but it ends up being a bad giveaway to Elyse Bennett that leads to a shot straight at Haračić. Frankly, Bennett should have done a lot better with this chance, but it ends up as not much.

At the 6’30” mark, Haračić takes a short goal kick to Curry again. She gets it up to Hammond, who’s immediately under pressure and gets dispossessed. Every single Angel City player falls back into the defensive third to snuff out the danger, and they succeed in doing so. In the end, no danger.

In all three situations, I don’t really blame the passer for any of these giveaways. Teams play out of the back to keep possession of the ball, but for that to work, the players off the ball need to provide support. Whoever has the ball should have at least two options to pass to, but in all of these giveaways, there’s maybe a half option, or the target is so far away that becomes an easy pass to pick off. Possession just doesn’t work if teams are too spread out. It is not a coincidence that North Carolina, the team with almost 5% more possession than anyone else (58.4% to 53.9%) also has almost 500 more short passes than anyone else (2503 to 2031). Becki Tweed actually spoke about this in her post-game press conference, saying that in the first half especially the team was too expansive and that the passes were too long. But our players need to do a better job off the ball, providing passing options. That third scenario really stood out to me in that regard, as everyone ended up coming back anyway. If more players had just stayed in support, it wouldn’t have been a situation at all. The stats also illustrate this really well. Angel City’s passing percentages are: Short 84.6%, Medium 80.8%, and Long 37.8%. There’s a huge dropoff when players get too spread out. I would also expect defenders and defensive midfielders to be handling the bulk of long passes, but it was actually Emslie who had the most Long Passes amongst outfield players, going 1 for 7. Now, I’m not actually in the camp that says there shouldn’t be any long balls; I think that they do have a place in the game. But it should be players like Hammond and Rodríguez making those passes (they were both 1 for 2). Emslie was also only 2 for 11 on Medium Passes. I don’t think that anyone is going to say that she’s actually a bad passer, but I think that those low percentages for Medium and Long Passes show that she’s too isolated when she gets the ball. And one last side note on passing, but crosses into a box defended by Girma, Dahlkemper, and Sheridan never seemed like a great plan. Yet we tried it 22 times and sure enough, not a single one ever found an Angel City player. But going back to the three scenarios I mentioned, I think that they are all very illustrative of some of the deep lying issues in the team. In these three situations, I would expect all eleven players to know exactly where they’re supposed to be, but in all three, the team looks too spread out, and they result in almost immediate turnovers.

Final 9 Minutes

I’m sure I’m not the only one who felt a little nervous when stoppage time began. In our last two home matches, we’ve conceded the game winner in the 89’ or later, and this didn’t start off great. For about the first 90 seconds of stoppage time, it was all San Diego, with the most dangerous moment being a cross to Morgan that Megan Reid perfectly intercepted. But then in the second minute, Alyssa Thompson gets the ball at midfield, and drives all the way to the box, where she lays off a nice pass to Vignola. She takes the cross first time, but Sheridan kicks out a boot that just gets a piece of it, and the ball goes all the way across the face of goal without anyone able to put it in. Still, great run by Alyssa, and great overlap and cross by Vignola. It leads to a corner that Emslie takes, putting an inswinger right into the box that Reid gets flicks on, and Vignola collects at the back post. She gets a shot off that San Diego blocks, out for another corner. At this point, I’m curious what it was like for everyone else in the stadium, but the crowd really started to get involved. My section was on the far side of the field from San Diego’s goal, but we were all on our feet. Usually, I think that the crowd is reacting to the team, but this time, I thought the crowd was saying, “The team needs some support for these last few minutes. Let’s get them over the line.” I can’t remember that happening before, but I thought that it was a really great sign. Over the next four minutes, Angel City keeps sustained pressure and generates four corner kicks and one free kick. Unfortunately, we don’t have a great record converting corners, as I covered in the comments section of my last article. We’ve now scored only one time from 58 corners. However, I do like that we kept that pressure on for such a long period. It wasn’t goals, but it was asking questions of San Diego’s defense. But the game wasn’t quite over, and San Diego got one more chance. Rocky Rodríguez fouled Carusa right off the corner of the penalty box, giving the Wave a free kick. Jaedyn Shaw puts the ball into the box and van Egmond rose above everyone to get her head on it, and put it onto the crossbar. it comes back to Morgan, who gets above Nabet to head it from about 7 yards out. This was a shot with a Post-Shot xG of .41, but somehow Haračić gets her fingertips to it to keep it out, and Rodríguez puts the ball out of play. Again, for me, that’s the best save I’ve ever seen Haračić make. There’s a foul on San Diego off the ensuing corner, and the game’s over. Considering how vulnerable we’ve been to both corner kicks and late goals, I thought that this was a tremendous reaction. It felt like the team and the crowd both fought to get over the line through sheer will.

The other thing that I want to point out from that sequence is just how much Angel City is crying out for a tall, target player. It looks like Van Egmund beats Fuller on the first header, and Morgan beats Nabet on the second. Someone who can win the ball in the air, or preferably two or three players, could have scored the winner from any of Angel City’s five stoppage time set pieces or prevented either of the final shots from San Diego. Just one player with aerial presence could easily add six points in the standings by the end of the season. I would have really liked to see us go after Taylor Flint in the offseason, but as things stand now, I’d like to see us target a Centerback as the position to add some height. A Centerback didn’t make as much sense to me before, because I thought that Nielsen and Gorden made a good partnership, so no reason to target someone new. But, that’s not really an issue now, and we could really use some extra depth at the position.

Other Thoughts on Player Selection and Strategy

The thing that I really hope Angel City takes away from this match is trust. In her post-match press conference. Becki Tweed talked about how we need to be a little bit more patient in the final third, and not necessarily take the first shot that presents itself, i.e. shots from way outside the box or from bad angles. I’ve spoken before about how I feel like the defense panics at times, and it occurs to me that this is a symptom of the same thing, only from the offense. On the defensive side, it looks like there is a lack of trust in any one player to make a stop, resulting in multiple Angel City defenders converging on one player (Sarr’s goal in the game against Washington is a good example of this). But I think it’s the same for the offense. There doesn’t seem to be any real trust that a teammate is going to be able to make the pass, or that there will be better opportunities. In the San Diego game, there were six shots taken with less than .1 xG. This game was the first time that I felt like we actually forced our opponents into things they didn’t want to do, and if we come away from it with stronger belief, then I think that will translate into more wins in the rest of the season. I also think that belief needs to extend to Tweed’s tactics. In basically every interview she gives, I feel like she understands what the problems are, but the team just doesn’t seem to implement them. Maybe that’s communication on her part, but I feel like it’s at least partially that some players are not completely buying into the plan.

At the start of the season, it looked like we were playing more of a 4-3-3, with a No 6 and two No 8s. Now, it does feel like it’s more of a 4-2-3-1, with two No 6s and a No 10. I think that the players do feel more comfortable in this configuration. It also seems to correspond with the return of Le Bihan, and I don’t know if that’s a coincidence or not. There have been a couple of interviews by both Tweed and Le Bihan saying that Le Bihan hadn’t been giving enough in training at the start of the year, but that she rose to meet Tweed’s expectations. I wonder if a similar thing is happening with Messiah Bright. To me, Leroux hasn’t done enough to make the No 9 spot her own, but at the same time, her minutes don’t really seem to be in danger. If this is the case, I hope that Bright can follow Le Bihan’s lead to getting more playing time.

Conclusions

There really were plenty of things that I found frustrating from this match. Actually a lot more things than I realized once I started breaking it down, but that stoppage time performance gave me hope. It felt like we weren’t just repeating mistakes, but that we were actually learning and growing. I think that we saw a new level of fortitude in those nine minutes. Sustainability is always the thing for me, and most of our wins have not felt sustainable, but this performance did. And if we play like that in every match, we’ll be hard to beat. It’s entirely possible that I am putting too much emphasis on nine minutes, but hope dies last, and that’s especially true in football.

Angel City’s next game is Saturday June 8th at 9:30a Pacific, away to Gotham. I’ll have an article out next week, though, on European players from relegated teams. And one last note: if anyone wants to see what a .97 xG Shot looks like, find the highlights for Ella Stevens second goal for Gotham against Bay FC.