Soccer

NWSL Week 3 preview and fixtures: Marta makes Orlando Pride better, but she can’t fix everything

Orlando finally has Marta, but without much support, can she save the Pride from another disappointing season?

Apr 28, 2017, 6:26 PM UTC

Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

Expansion teams, historically, don’t have very good first seasons. The rosters of first year teams are often these weirdly cobbled together things, like making a meal out of whatever you find in the cabinets after not going grocery shopping for a month. You take a few fresh start seekers, some other teams’ castoffs, a couple draft picks and maybe someone who’s been playing in Europe, throw them all in the pot and hope for the best. Sometimes, it ends up okay. Usually though, you’ve got the sports equivalent of something a drunk college freshman whipped up in the communal kitchen at 4 a.m.

When the Orlando Pride entered the NWSL last season, it was with the hope that they’d at least be competitive. Orlando had managed to bring Ashlyn Harris, a Florida native, back home from Washington, and they’d signed Alex Morgan, who’d spent the three previous seasons on an overcrowded Portland team. Harris and Morgan were supposed to be the cornerstones which the Pride was built around, but while both were fan favorites, Morgan in particular came at a very high price. Orlando traded the top pick in the 2016 college draft to Portland to acquire Morgan and Kaylyn Kyle.

Morgan, ultimately, had a less than impressive first year in Orlando. In and out of the picture due to Olympic-related USWNT commitments, Morgan scored just four goals in 15 appearances. The Pride finished ninth in the 10 team league. And while that’s not really that surprising given the whole expansion team thing, that Morgan didn’t come in and immediately make the Pride at least kind of great did raise some questions about whether the price they’d paid for her and Kyle, who became more of a liability than anything else, was worth it. Orlando finished the 2016 season with a minus-10 goal differential, while the Thorns used that No. 1 pick on Emily Sonnett, a talented young defender.

A season later, Kyle is no longer playing (she announced her retirement last week), and Morgan is playing in France, on loan to Olympique Lyon until June. But despite Morgan’s temporary departure, and last season’s disappointing finish, the Pride did little in the offseason to change things. Orlando did acquire Ali Krieger from Washington to shore up some of the defensive troubles that plagued the team a season ago, but otherwise, the Pride just didn’t do much.

There were, of course, rumblings that Tom Sermanni and Co. were cooking something up down by the base of Space Mountain. Those rumblings often included the name of the five-time FIFA World Player of the Year, Marta, but because of her history with teams she’d played for becoming, well, history, they were often met with skepticism.

Then, a week before the 2017 season kicked off, Orlando made it official, confirming the rumors and announcing they’d signed Marta from FC Rosengard in Sweden. After missing the season opener, Marta made her Pride debut last weekend, coming in the second half of Orlando’s 1-1 draw with Washington.

Having a player like Marta on your team is certainly an improvement, and if there’s anything you want to do shed that expansion image, signing one of the biggest names in the game is certainly a good way to go about doing it. But image aside, how much does bringing in one superstar player really change things on the field? Orlando’s performance in week one, a 2-0 loss to Portland, left a lot to be desired. A week later, and with 30 minutes of Marta time, the Pride did at least manage to get a point, but they still didn’t look great.

Through two games, Orlando is still making too many mistakes defensively, forcing Ashlyn Harris into all kinds of sometimes unnecessarily highlight reel worthy saves, there’s little cohesion between anyone, and the offense hasn’t looked particularly threatening. Chioma Ubogagu, who spent last season with the Dash, has been the Pride’s best player so far this season, but she’s also too often looked alone in trying to do anything.

It leaves a lot of questions about just how much of an impact Marta can have. She’s one of the best players ever, sure, but she’s also historically been on teams where she’s had quite a bit of help. In the WPS days, she played first on the LA Sol in 2009, where she had a midfield that included Shannon Boxx, Camille Abily and Aya Miyama behind her. Then it was FC Gold Pride, where Boxx and Abily also were, as well as Christine Sinclair and Tiffeny Milbrett. In 2011, the last year of WPS and the last time Marta played in the U.S., it was on a Western NY Flash team that included not only Sinclair, but also Morgan and Caroline Seger. All of that is a far cry from the current Pride lineup.

There is, of course, the wait and see aspect of all this. When Morgan returns in June, a front line that includes her and Marta could be one of the most dangerous in the league. The question though, is how the Pride get through things until then. Bringing in a player like Marta will certainly up the game of everyone around her at least a little bit, but it’s hard to see how she’s going to singlehandedly fix every problem the Pride’s got right now.

All times Eastern