Soccer

NWSL week 4 in review: North Carolina looks unstoppable

With a 1-0 win over Boston on Sunday, the North Carolina Courage cemented themselves as this season’s team to beat.

May 8, 2017, 7:47 PM UTC

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Before kickoff, Sunday’s meeting between North Carolina and Boston would be concerning if you were a Breakers fan, or just a fan of competitive games in general. History hasn’t been kind to Boston in these games — last season the Breakers suffered one of the worst losses in league history courtesy of the Courage (then the Western NY Flash).

In four games against the Flash in 2016, Boston got a result just once, a 2-2 draw in early September that was every bit as much as an anomaly as it seems when you read it now, both because of the season Boston was having a year ago, and because the scores of those other three games were 4-0, 7-1 and 4-0. For the less mathematically inclined, that’s the Flash outscoring Boston 17-3 through four games. So, yeah, coming into this season’s first meeting between the two, some trepidation would be more than reasonable.

These though, are not the Boston Breakers of a season ago. Boston’s playing with a new kind of confidence, thanks in large part to some very good rookies and a new kind of defensive cohesion. The Breakers are still a mid-table team, but they’re also a team that has, four weeks into the season, already won twice. A year ago, Boston didn’t get its second win until the last day of July, and then won only once more all season.

The problem for Boston is that this isn’t the Western NY Flash of a season ago, either. For one, an offseason sale sent the team south from Rochester to North Carolina, where it was re-branded as the Courage. Oh, and then there’s this whole thing about how now they’re also the defending NWSL Champions.

Western NY’s run to the NWSL title is itself an unlikely story, one maybe even less expected than the one about how Boston isn’t going to be terrible this year. The Flash may have been this unstoppable force once upon a time, but the team of recent years was hardly that. Since winning the NWSL shield in the league’s inaugural year, Western NY had been on the decline, and as the results got worse, just about everyone hightailed it out of Rochester. By the 2016 draft in January, the Flash didn’t even have a head coach.

Of course, the story of the season Western NY had in spite of all that is one that’s been told a dozen times by now. All that unexpected offense, a kind of swagger a team with a roster like that had no business having, the extra-time semifinal win over Portland, the last gasp goal to send the championship game to PKs, the calm cool of making saves when you’ve got nothing to lose, the MVP season Lynn Williams had.

Still, what Western NY did in 2016 seemed at times like a fluke. The Flash was a young team, and one that wasn’t particularly good technically. They found results where they needed to, but it was often by running lesser teams. Western NY rarely got results against other top-four teams, relying instead on beating up on the little guys. The semifinal win over Portland was the first time the Flash beat the Thorns all season. There were similar struggles against Washington and Chicago, the only one of 2016’s playoff teams the Flash actually beat during the regular season.

And even in the semifinal win over Portland, the Flash’s game still wasn’t particularly pretty and often felt one-note and like on any other day things would definitely go differently. It was all long throw-ins, physical play, and holding on tight.

But fast-forward to now, four games into this season, and the Courage look anything but one-note. There is still the same spirit of the physical game that’s long been a trademark of Paul Riley-helmed teams, but there’s also now a lot behind that that just wasn’t totally there before. On Sunday against the Breakers, the Courage again did what they’ve become so adept at through the early part of this season: They flat-out dominated the opposition everywhere on the field.

Through the first 10 minutes of the game, the Courage played so high as a team that the Breakers couldn’t get the ball past midfield. Boston has, in large part because of the season that Rose Lavelle is having, become much more adept at breaking out of their own defensive end. But on Sunday, North Carolina’s high-pressure game effectively and repeatedly shut down whatever attack Boston was trying to build. The Breakers couldn’t play through the way they have been this season, and the chances they did get were mostly of the nonthreatening variety.

This new element of the Courage’s game is one that’s been almost impossible for anyone they’ve faced so far to figure out. Through four games, North Carolina is the only team in the league with a perfect 4-0-0 record, and perhaps more impressively, they’ve allowed just a single goal. Two weeks ago, the Courage limited second-placed Portland — last year’s NWSL Shield winners — to just three shots as they beat the Thorns, 1-0. Last week, they let Orlando have a few more offensive chances, but managed to score three goals to the Pride’s one. This week, the Courage rarely even let Boston build up to having a chance offensively.

McCall Zerboni, who played with Western NY in the WPS days and in the NWSL in 2013, and who played under Riley in Portland, rejoined the team midway through last season. On Sunday against Boston, Zerboni repeatedly made her presence felt as one of the focal points of the Courage’s high-pressure game with seven tackles — a stat she’s currently the league leader in.

There’s this kind of confidence everywhere for the Courage. Williams and Jess McDonald are still one of the most dangerous scoring tandems in the league. McDonald scored the game’s only goal on Sunday, the 33rd of her career, and is now the NWSL’s all-time leading scorer. And new addition Debinha has added another dimension to that already-dangerous attack. Sam Mewis’ solid positioning and possession play are the perfect complement to Zerboni’s aggressive style. Sabrina D’Angelo hasn’t had much work to do in goal so far this season, but when called into action she’s looked as cool as she did when she was saving three of Washington’s penalties in the final last season. Abby Dahlkemper is quietly becoming one of the league’s best defenders. Basically, pick any player on this team, and they’re better than they were a season ago.

Overall, the Courage is a much more complete team than even the one that won the title last year. And considering how good that team tuned out to be, it’s probably not just Boston that should be worried about facing them now.