It was the second game of the 2016 season when Carli Lloyd casually walked off the field in Orlando. A few minutes before, she’d made what seemed like awkward, though pretty inconsequential contact with the ball, kind of tripping over it as she tried to block a Pride clearance. Though Lloyd immediately went down, she was back up and playing again almost as quickly.
NWSL Week 1 in review: The Houston Dash will be just fine without Carli Lloyd
Losing Lloyd to Manchester City seemed like a big blow for Houston, but they looked great with a different style on Saturday.
Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
Unless you were specifically looking for it on the YouTube broadcast of the game, it would be easy to miss her strolling off the field, almost too casually, a few minutes later. It’s another two minutes before the cameras in Orlando spot her getting treatment on the bench and the commentary team mentions it. It’s nearly seven minutes after she leaves the field that Houston finally makes a substitution and the fact that Lloyd’s injury might be serious becomes something real.
Lloyd had come to Houston the year before, the second season for the NWSL’s first-ever expansion club. She’d spent 2013 and 2014 in Western N.Y., and though she’d had enough success in Rochester, it wasn’t until Lloyd arrived in Houston that she started to truly look on the club level like the player she was for the national team.
The Dash’s inaugural season, in 2013, had been a rough one. The NWSL’s newest team finished, perhaps not surprisingly, dead last in the then-nine team league. Lloyd, already the owner of game-winning goals in two consecutive Olympic gold medal games, was the Dash’s great hope for getting out of the basement in Year 2. Despite missing a good chunk of the season due to the World Cup, Lloyd delivered on whatever that promise was.
Of course, the Dash didn’t make the playoffs, falling six points short, but the team’s fifth-place finish was a massive step in the right direction, and Lloyd, playing with a new kind of freedom under head coach Randy Waldrum, was a huge reason why. Lloyd scored four goals in 12 appearances that season, and more importantly, filled the No. 10 role in a way the Dash desperately needed.
The following season, last year, was supposed to be the one that Houston finally got over that last hump, worst-to-fifth-to-postseason, as the saying goes. Almost immediately though, the Olympics wreaked havoc on the Dash’s roster, with seven players from four different countries revolving in and out of the lineup.
And there was the injury to Lloyd, a sprained MCL, all but completely wiping away whatever hope a season opening win against the Red Stars had brought. Between the sprained MCL, the Olympics and some kind of personal commitment, Lloyd wouldn’t return to the Dash until Aug. 31, four months after suffering the injury that was supposed to keep her out just 3-6 weeks.
Without Lloyd — and the six other players gone to play in Rio — Houston struggled mightily. In the time Lloyd was gone, Houston went 2-7-4, including a run of six straight 1-0 losses. With Lloyd back, the Dash won three of the final five games of the season, with Lloyd registering at least a goal or assist in each. It was, of course, too little too late, and the Dash ultimately finished the 2016 season in eighth, above only the expansion Orlando Pride, and whatever it was the Boston Breakers spent the season doing.
This season, without an Olympics or a World Cup, things were finally starting to look up for Houston. Kealia Ohai had emerged as one of the league’s best forwards through the second half of the 2016 season, ultimately earning a call-up to the USWNT that fall. Janine Beckie and Rachel Daly both had standout rookie seasons a year ago. All three would be back in Houston for 2017, and that combination, plus Lloyd, would surely, finally, and like, for real, make the Dash a contender.
It was, then, a seemingly big blow when Lloyd announced she’d be starting this season in a light blue shirt that was very different from the ones the Dash sometimes wear. In mid-February, Lloyd signed with Manchester City of the FA WSL, a move that will keep her in England until June. After that Lloyd will return to Houston, sure, but it’s hard to ignore the alarm bells, a flashback to last summer and a return that came too late. So much for the full season thing.
When the season kicked off this weekend, it was with Houston sitting in that strange place, one confusingly both post- and pre-Lloyd. And it would be easily to have pegged the Dash’s strategy for April and May as the same one many teams have employed with varying levels of success through assorted players absences over the years: hold on tight and hope for the best until whoever it is returns from wherever they are. The Dash’s schedule through the next three months, an almost bizarrely favorable one, made this option seem even more viable.
Houston doesn’t play Shield winners Portland until July, and 2016 champions Western North Carolina until the end of August. There are meetings with the other two top four finishers, Washington and Chicago, before that, but the Hold On Tight And Hope For The Best strategy is one that takes such occurrences, and what might be not great results in those games, into account.
But if all that — holding on tight and hoping for the best until Lloyd returns to save the day — seemed like Houston’s best hope at finally cracking the barrier between playoffs and not, the Dash’s performance this weekend told a different story. Houston pulled off a convincing 2-0 win over the Red Stars on Saturday, with goals from Ohai and Daly.
More importantly than the win itself though, is how impressive so many aspects of the Dash’s game were. The first goal came after Chicago hit the post. A quick Houston counter and a perfect ball over the top from Amber Brooks gave Ohai plenty of time to nail the placement on her first of the season. That the Dash was able to recover defensively and breakout so quickly is something that’s a definite improvement from a season ago.
And where the entire sequence that led to the Dash’s first goal was impressive, the second, from Daly, was a pretty nice piece of individual skill. Inside the 18, Daly was able to turn Casey Short before unleashing a curling shot that went upper 90.
There is, of course, one obvious comparison to draw here. The Dash played Chicago in the season opener last year, and Houston won that one, too. The difference, though, is that they needed to come from behind after giving up an early goal to Christen Press. In that game, which finished 3-1, Daly netted the equalizer, Lloyd had the eventual game winner, and Beckie added the insurance. That was maybe where the Lloyd as savior storyline kicked off, and why losing her a week later seemed like such a huge blow for Houston.
It’s also what makes this year’s game one win feel different. This time, there was no Lloyd to save them, no midfielder who’d made her name scoring big goals in big moments to help pull the thing out. And, sure, maybe it’s some week one dumb luck. But for the first time since she came to Houston two years ago, the Dash looked like they weren’t holding on tight, and like they didn’t need Carli Lloyd at all.
Scores
Saturday
Seattle Reign FC 1 - 1 Sky Blue FC
Sunday
Highlights of all games can be seen here, on NWSL’s YouTube page.
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