NWSL week 6 preview: Boston may finally score a goal this weekend

Except better isn’t what happened all. Instead, the Breakers have been on the decline, finishing every year somehow in a worse position than the one before. Boston is the only one of the league’s original eight teams that’s never made a playoff appearance. Even Sky Blue and Western NY, two perennial under -- or maybe just right -- achievers have made at least one trip to the postseason since the NWSL started play in 2013. Only two more of the league’s current 10 teams haven’t played a playoff game: Houston, which is now in its third season of existence, and Orlando, which hadn’t ever played a single game before six weeks ago.

The 2014 Breakers were supposed to build on the fifth place finish of the season before, but instead landed in eighth, with only the then-expansion Dash lower on the table at season’s end. Perhaps this was some kind of red flag we should have noticed. Maybe we should have seen the signs. WARNING! WARNING! Boston maybe thinks this is golf and fewer points are better! STOP! HELP! But alas, we did not, instead so involved in our own lives, simultaneously explaining Facebook to our moms and trying to understand as a teen explains to us what’s going on with the Snapchat.

And because we were so busy with all this, we let the Breakers board Ms. Frizzle’s magic school bus and take it right to the center of the earth. 2015 was the worst-ever finish for Boston. Dead last, just four wins in 20 games, an almost bafflingly bad considering they still had Alyssa Naeher back there minus-21 goal differential. At least there would be hope for 2016 though, because the phrase “things have to get worse before they get better” exists and the Breakers had already gotten to the place where isn’t any additional worse to be had, right?

Oh, you poor, naïve soccer-watching people. You want worse? What if, and stay with me here, for 2016, we double down on that last place thing? Not only will we not win games, but -- and this will maybe sound ridiculous but hear me out -- we also won’t score a goal. Not a single one! Imagine. We’ll come close, yes, but we won’t ever actually put one in. Plot twist!

It still feels funny to refer to FCKC this way, as a team that could finally be the way Boston breaks through, but with the two-time NWSL champion Blues going through a bit of a rebuilding year after the offseason loss of eight key players due to either trade, retirement or pregnancy, Sunday’s game will be the best chance the Breakers have had this season to bring something good to the Jordan Field faithful.

To be fair to Boston here, it’s not as though they haven’t been trying. For one, three of the Breakers’ five games have been against top four opponents. Against Portland in week three, the Breakers held a very good Portland team scoreless for 79 minutes while also keeping even with the Thorns in offensive chances. In fact, Portland registered only one more shot than Boston through the entire game.

One of those 1-0 losses came last week against Sky Blue, and it was only an own goal, a deflection off Kassey Kallman, that was the difference between Boston coming away with at least a point and the Breakers ultimately losing the game. And the Breakers came very close to not losing that game, even with the own goal. Boston had several good chances to equalize, including one that was cleared off the line and a possible missed PK call.

Boston’s already had some bad luck this season, losing goalkeeper Abby Smith to a season-ending knee injury in a game against Chicago on May 7, just a week after making her professional debut, an impressive performance in the Portland loss. And watching that loss in New Jersey last week, that’s what it felt like through long stretches of the game; the Breakers aren’t necessarily bad so much as they’re just incredibly unlucky. The Breakers have taken more shots than all but four teams, so it’s not as though they’re not getting chances.

It’s just that those chances aren’t always that great -- Boston’s 16 shots on goal are the fewest in the league. Even here though, the Breakers aren’t significantly worse than everyone else. Sure, there are some teams that are far better -- 33 of Chicago’s 56 shots have been on goal, for example, but mostly the Breakers aren’t that far off the pace of most of the rest of the league. Seattle’s only managed three more shots on goal than Boston has, and three teams have only nine more.

Boston’s already made one big move to help their offensive cause, using their last international spot on German forward Eunice Beckmann, who was signed two weeks ago. Beckmann spent the past two seasons with Bayern Munich.

The Breakers already have most of the pieces. There’s a solid back four with Julie King, Whitney Engen, Mollie Pathman and Kallman, and rookie Christen Westphal getting some time off the bench, a good midfield that includes McCall Zerboni and Kristie Mewis, and an offensive corps that’s already got Kyah Simon and Stephanie McCaffrey and that will soon have Beckmann, too.

Boston’s already looked more cohesive in each game they’ve played, and facing a struggling Kansas City team on Sunday may be just the thing the Breakers need to finally break through. Even Ms. Frizzle’s class came back from inside the earth, eventually.

All times ET