Ashley Hatch's movement
Hatch may no longer be part of Washington's first choice front line when the Spirit finally reach full health, but boy, has she been good to start the season now that she's back to playing her preferred central role.
Hatch terrorized Bay's defense aerially in the first half of Friday night's match. She fired a warning shot across the Bay bow when she put a header off a Leicy Santos FK just wide in the 13th minute, before heading home from an almost identical spot from another Santos cross just 10 minutes later. By the end of first half, Hatch had headed a third Santos delivery past Bay keeper Jordan Silkowitz, giving the Spirit what would ultimately prove to be the winning margin.
Hatch's poacher instincts have always been her most useful trait, but it's been her movement in buildup that's stood out just as much this season. Hatch has done an excellent job mitigating some of Washington's injury issues simply by providing a big-bodied outlet that can make the ball stick, helping youngsters Chloe Ricketts and Makenna Morris feel comfortable as the Spirit get healthier.
Oh yeah, and this celebration:
Notes on Ryan Gareis
I don't have a whole lot to say on the Friday night rock fight between Gotham and Houston besides "no more wasting Yaz Ryan at striker pls Fabrice," but I WAS happy to see Gareis, one of my favorite under-the-radar wingers, have a nice match. Here are a few clips of Gareis having her way with Jess Carter for your enjoyment:
As evidenced by the second clip, Gareis' decision making leaves a little to be desired at times, but she's one of the most aesthetically pleasing wingers to watch in the league- I love watching a left-footed winger play on the left side of the field, and her jerky upright running style is very old-school winger-y. Fun player.
Bay's Jekyll and Hyde act in DC
Bay FC's first half performance was, well, simply not very good. Montoya's wide open 4-3-3 midfield shape struggled to defend the Spirit's attacking width as Washington stuck with the 3-4-3 debuted last week against Kansas City. Montoya has struggled to find the right players to deploy in the two eight spots ahead of Kiki Pickett. He really wants to play a classic 4-3-3 with two roving eights, but Bay really don't have the personnel to play with that sort of structure. Both of Montoya's eights on the night --Tess Boade and the excellent Taylor Huff-- are offensive-minded, creative players who want to get in attacking spaces. Last season, he tried famously-not-an-eight Deyna Castellanos as one of his midfield trio before eventually inserting the more versatile and defensively-capable Dorian Bailey to provide some stability, helping Bay make their late season push.
In the first half, Washington had an easy time with Bay's single-side midfield overloads, using their wingbacks as outlets when Bay's central midfielders collapsed on the ball. Here's one example: Trinity Rodman and Ashley Hatch drop deep, Boade and Pickett collapse on the ball while Huff jogs back into her own half, and two out-passes later Gabby Carle is delivering an uncontested ball into the box. A version of this sequence happened frequently over the course of the first half. Bay gave the Spirit a little too much respect and opened themselves up to a number of dangerous attacking sequences.
It was unclear to me why both Rachael Kundananji and Karlie Lema didn't start the match, but Montoya brought the duo on at halftime and the game changed instantly. It's alway difficult to tell how much game state influences changes in momentum, but Bay were clearly and identifiably on the front foot from minute one of the second half. Huff was immensely impressive on the night and had what would have been her first pro goal chocked off due to a rather dumb (and soft) push in the build up by Kundananji on Carle. The second half saw much more of what I'm sure Montoya envisioned in starting Huff and Boade: The duo began to get on the ball, Bay's back line pushed higher up to cut off service to Washington's wingers, and the game shifted heavily into Washington's half. Bay ultimately only generated 0.75 xG on the night, but put the ball in the net twice only for neither to count.
As a final note on this one, I'm curious to hear what Bay fans think of Asisat Oshoala's performance this season and last, especially since Lema --who has also been very impressive through three weeks-- is best centrally. Let me know!
Lilly Reale is For Real
I know I dedicated a whole bullet point to the UCLA rook last week, but she was so good this week that I 'm going to have do it again.....and hey, I don't really want to look to closely at the Gotham attack so might as well focus on the good, right?
Reale would have have been my number one pick had the NWSL draft not been abolished because of her combination of calmness on the ball, positional versatility, and physical ability. The rookie has been Gotham's best player over the last two weeks and has looked perfectly comfortable despite playing exclusively at LB in both the attacking and defensive phases. While there may be a little bit of early season small sample size theater at play here, Reale leads Gotham in total tackles, progressive carries, and successful take-ons despite starting only two of Gotham's three matches. No Gotham player has carried the ball into the opponent's third of the field more times than Reale (which, perhaps reflects just as poorly on the state of Gotham's attack as it does positively on Reale), and only Jess Carter has played more progressive passes.
Defensive counting stats can be misleading, but sometimes the eye test is enough. Reale's game film is that of a ten year veteran. Here she is comfortably dispossessing Yaz Ryan isolated 1v1:
.....here she is winning another 1v1 against another tricky winger in Evelina Duljan:
....and here she is getting forward to deliver a wicked whipped cross into the box in the 91st minute.
Don't be surprised to see Reale make the 2027 World Cup squad. She's that good and will only get better.
(And, many condolences to teammate Tierna Davidson who suffered what looks to be a bad a knee injury)
The Eidevall movement continues despite loss in Orlando
Whatever your first impression of San Diego's decision to hire Swedish ex-Arsenal manager Jonas Eidevall was at the time --there was a lot of pretty lazy "lol Jonas" thrown around due to Eidevall's unsuccessful end to his tenure in North London-- it's becoming increasingly hard to argue with the results on the field for a Wave team that could hardly have had a more turbulent offseason. I pulled a few clips of the Wave's attractive back to front build-ups last week without delving into what's actually going on, but Saturday morning's immensely impressive performance against the defending champs in Orlando spurred me to take a little bit of a closer look into San Diego's structure.
Most of the what the Wave look to do is pretty simple: They run a lot of what an old coach of mine used to call "elevator checks," where attackers drop deep to draw their marks out of position while the FBs extend up the field to keep the opposition's defensive shell from following the runners. In the clip below, it's winger Delphine Cascarino who drags Orlando LB Kerry Abello deep into SD territory while Wave RB Hanna Lundkvist takes off down the sideline after playing the ball into Cascarino. Orlando CM Haley McCutcheon follows Savannah McKaskill, which leaves Gia Corley free to check into the space vacated by McCutcheon and get on the turn (even though she screws up the initial ball and gets lucky in this particular instance).
Here's what the movement looks like on a whiteboard, with the blue arrows representing player movement and the green that of the ball. The reason this kind of build works even against Orlando's typically disciplined shape is because of how confident the Wave's double pivot of McKaskill and Kenza Dali are that those checking runs are going to be there. McKaskill looks like she has a new lease on life as a deep-lying eight, while Dali has been arguably SD's best player this season.
All in all, SD --while certainly not a perfect side-- are leaps and bounds ahead of where I thought they'd be three games in. Eidevall has done an excellent job at utilizing the versatility of Sanchez and Corley in particular: Sanchez ostensibly lines up as a left winger, but frequently rotates inside to find the ball with Perle Morroni bombing up the left, while Corley often does the inverse with Cascarino on the right. Just imagine this team with Naomi Girma!
In defense of MacKenzie Arnold
In the afterglow of Arnold's excellent performance Saturday night against North Carolina, now is as good a time as any to speak my truth. The Aussie keeper has been the target of a lot of ire from Thorns fans after since-deposed GM Karina LeBlanc signed her from West Ham last summer despite having five keepers on the roster. Arnold somehow became the poster child for Leblanc's errors through no real fault of her own, and that has only continued into 2025. Casual fans tend to conflate poor defensive and midfield performances leading to a high number of concessions with bad keeper play because it's, well, easy to blame the keeper when the ball is frequently in the back of your team's net.
But here's the thing: Arnold has been mostly quite good since arriving in Portland despite what the loud online contingent of detractors might say. What if I told you that Arnold's post-shot xG plus minus per 90 (a mouthful, I know), was literally number one in the entire league at 0.38 last season. Yes. FIRST. Level with Almuth Schult and, ahead of Ann-Katrin Berger, Kailen Sheridan, and all of your favorite NWSL keepers. Keeper metrics aren't always the most reliable, so let's get into what PSxG+/- actually tells us. The post-shot xG metric is a version of normal xG that only takes into account shots that are on target, meaning that the "plus/minus" aspect of the stat captures how many goals the keeper conceded relative to expectation. Therefore, a positive PSxG+/-, in theory, means that the keeper is either very lucky, a good shot stopper, or a combination of both. So, not a perfect measure of shot stopping ability, but comfortably the best we have.
Arnold is not a perfect keeper by any means and is as prone to the odd handling error as anyone, but she's been above average at worst --and a legitimately great shot-stopper at best-- since joining the Thorns. Get off her back!
Kansas City 's sharks bait Utah
There isn't a better team in transition than the Current. No team gets on the counter faster, no team forces more turnovers, and no team has a more terrifying threat in behind than Temwa Chawinga.
It was, therefore, a little funny to watch Vlatko Andonovki's team attempt to bait Utah for the first 30 or so minutes of Saturday night's demolition in Kansas City. The Current press in a 2-4 shape, meaning that the double pivot of Claire Hutton and Lo Labonta sit behind the pressing line of Chawinga, Debinha, Vanessa DiBernardo, and Michelle Cooper. Hutton patrols the middle third of the field like a shark: Here's a screenshot of KC's shape. Look at Hutton (circled) just waiting for Utah's Ana Tejada to try to force the ball into Dana Foederer.
Here's a full clip with the same general idea. The Current WANT Mandy McGlynn to try that split ball into Macey Fraser (Utah's number 6) because Hutton is just waiting to pounce.
There isn't a better clip to show Utah's frustration and KC's shape than this one. Watch Royals CB Kate Del Fava try to jam a ball into the feet of Ally Sentnor who is then dispossessed by a swarming KC midfield. The ball ends up back at the feet of Del Fava seconds later, who is noticeably frustrated and tries to direct traffic before playing the ball backwards.
Moral of the story? KC is still an absolute beast to play against.
Utah's misadventures playing out from the back, Part III
Well, Conraets kinda followed my advice from last week and McGlynn very rarely tried to force balls into midfield like she had been over the first two weeks. Utah generally did a pretty good job not playing directly into KC's hands, even though it muted their ability to progress the ball effectively.
.....well, until they did, and this happened:
Ah well! Nevertheless!
Angel City play their best match of the season
Me when I got home to see Angel City finally started Katie Zelem:
Angel City fans when they see a striker score a goal for their team:
Seattle fans when they see AMC start another match:
Shea Groom is back baby
I'm not sure anyone asked for the 2018 vintage of Shea Groom in 2025, but Chicago's dilapidated roster means we're getting it. This feels like something straight out of Groom's FCKC/Sky Blue days I had stored in my cupboard for a rainy day :)
Goal of the week: Week 3 didn't quite have Week 2' supply of top tier goals, but this week's winner is a classic, flowing, Current move for their first against Utah: