Soccer

NWSL Week 16 preview and fixtures: Chicago Red Stars push for the top of the table

Chicago may have had a shaky start to the season, but heading into the homestretch, the Red Stars are firmly one of the league’s top teams.

by Lauren Barker

Aug 11, 2017, 5:28 PM UTC

Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

In 2015, tasked with writing a preview of Chicago’s upcoming season, I described the Red Stars as “streakier than a window washed with Pledge and a pineapple.” This is both terrible cleaning advice — pineapples are inherently messy — and a waste of perfectly good fruit. It is also not entirely inaccurate.

Inconsistent has always been Chicago’s style, from the early NWSL days when the team could never get its act together long enough to crack the top four, to the beginning of this season, when Rory Dames was rolling out formations and lineups by, apparently, putting tiny versions of each player into one of those red cups you use for Yahtzee, giving the thing a good shake and then just going with whatever rolled out onto the table.

The “streakier than a window washed with a pineapple…” thing was, specifically, a reference to Chicago’s 2014 season. Then, the Red Stars made a habit of following up month-long winning streaks with winless ones at least the same length, some kind of strange consistency wrapped up in the opposite. In those days, Chicago had the potential to be a top-four team, but whatever climb they’d make towards a postseason berth would always be undone just as quickly. In 2014, Chicago missed out on the playoffs thanks only to tiebreakers, and a lot of questions about how different things could have been if they’d followed up an unbeaten May with something other than a winless June.

The following season, it seemed like Chicago had, maybe, solved the consistency problem. Chicago, thanks in large part to a very strong draft, lost just three times in 2015, and for the first time in the team’s NWSL history, the Red Stars were in the playoffs. By 2016, a little of that old shakiness had started to creep back in, but still, it was enough for a third-place finish — the club’s best ever — and another trip to the postseason. There, at least, Chicago has been totally consistent: two semifinal appearances, two losses. Small [non]victories, I guess.

The way Chicago started this season felt something like a throwback to those more inconsistent times. The Red Stars lost twice in the first four games. Since then though, Chicago’s lost just once more, 2-1 to the Reign, in late June.

However inconsistent Chicago’s results were in those games, at least it made some kind of sense; this is who the Red Stars are. What the team was doing on the the field was another story though, and it was a straight up, True Detective season two-level confusing one. Through the first four games of the season, the Red Stars used four different lineups and formations, like they’d solved the puzzle correctly and made it look like the picture on the box, and then decided they should take it apart and try to solve it again but this time from Pablo Picasso’s point of view.

All of that, combined with a more general ineptitude from every team that wasn’t North Carolina, left the Red Stars, and everyone else, playing some strange game of musical chairs in the table. Through the first two months of the season, the Courage were consistently in the top spot, and no other team was doing anything consistent at all.

Now, of course, we’re well past the halfway point, and midway through August, the playoff picture is starting to take on a more definite shape. The bottom of the table has mostly sorted itself out, with Washington stuck in a permanent #tbt to 2013, Kansas City still waiting for the permits to come through on the rebuilding they started following the 2015 season, and Boston just kind of Bostoning around with Rose Lavelle injured. A little further up, Orlando got a big boost from Marta and the Pride have been slowly climbing into the postseason conversation and Houston, though still not able to consistently compete with the league’s top teams, has started to string together results, too.

Three weeks ago, the top half of the table saw a little shakeup, and though the teams — Chicago, North Carolina, Portland, Seattle, Sky Blue, and now Orlando — are mostly the same, their positions are not. The big story from those games was, of course, the wild 5-4 thing that Seattle and Sky Blue did. And yeah, that game, with nine goals, the Megan Rapinoe vs. Sam Kerr Golden Boot race and the Reign knocking Sky Blue out of the top four with the win, was surely a big and important one in the playoff race, but it wasn’t the only thing that happened.

While Rapinoe and Kerr were lighting up the scoreboard in Seattle, the Red Stars were, much more quietly, climbing into first. Of course, part of Chicago’s landing atop the table was because North Carolina’s game against Kansas City was suspended due to weather (it was replayed Thursday night, a 1-0 win for the Courage), but mostly, the Red Stars became the league leaders, at least temporarily, because they quietly turned in another solid performance, beating the Pride 2-1.

Since then, with the Courage playing three games in two weeks and the Red Stars earning only a point in another game against Orlando last weekend, Chicago’s slipped back into second. Still, North Carolina’s lead, one that once seemed insurmountable, is now only four points, and the team that’s right on the Courage’s heels is, of course, the Red Stars.

Beyond ruining Seattle’s perfect season in 2014, Chicago’s never done much that’s particularly flashy. The Red Stars have never made some huge signing from overseas somewhere, or been part of some blockbuster trade. Instead, Chicago’s mostly relied on building from within, drafting smart, and giving young players time to develop within the Red Stars system.

Casey Short, who’s starting to break into the USWNT picture, was originally drafted by Boston, but never played for the Breakers due to injury. Short joined the Red Stars last season, her first in the NWSL, and quickly became an integral part of Chicago’s back line. Julie Ertz, who’s been a mainstay on the USWNT for several years, was drafted by Chicago in 2014 and has spent her entire NWSL career there. So has Christen Press, who joined the Red Stars the same year, after spending two seasons in Sweden.

The story’s the same for just about everyone on Chicago’s roster — players who’ve spent their entire NWSL careers as Red Stars, growing up — and in some cases, like Short’s — getting shots at a spot on the national team because of what they’ve done in Chicago. In fact, of the 11 players that started in the 2-1 win over the Pride, nine have spent their entire NWSL careers in Chicago. It was a similar story in the draw with Orlando a week later, and that was without Press, Ertz, and Short, who’d all just returned from the Tournament of Nations.

Perhaps the biggest trade Chicago’s made over the league’s now five-year history is also one of the only ones the team’s ever been a part of. But even that, bringing Alyssa Naeher to Chicago, was a move out of necessity more than anything else. Karina LeBlanc, who’d backstopped the Red Stars through the first three seasons of NWSL play, retired following the 2015 season. Though Naeher is now the USWNT’s de facto no. 1 with Hope Solo disappeared and Ashlyn Harris injured, when Chicago traded for her in late 2015, she was still way down on Jill Ellis’ depth chart and known primarily as Boston’s long-suffering but reliable goalkeeper.

Beyond the Naeher move, Chicago’s strategy of building from within is one that’s kind of unique in the NWSL. This is a league that still only has ten teams, and that means limited roster spots. With a seemingly endless supply of talent, it’s not unusual for teams to bail on young players who don’t immediately click in the pro ranks. This hasn’t ever been how Chicago’s operated though, in part because the Red Stars have done extremely well with integrating new players into an already established system.

Perhaps the most notable example of this is Chicago’s 2015 draft. Due to the World Cup, Chicago’s rookies suddenly became massive parts of the team, and all of them were up to the task almost immediately. Beyond that, of the seven selections the Chicago made that year, four — Arin Gilliland, Danielle Colaprico, Sofia Huerta and Stephanie McCaffrey — are still integral parts of the Red Stars (McCaffrey was traded to Boston later on draft day, but traded back to Chicago midway through the 2016 season). Huerta scored the tying goal against Orlando last weekend, her fourth of the season.

This year, the Red Stars had just three draft picks, and two of them — Morgan Proffitt and Lauren Kaskie — are on the team (the third, Michele Vasconcelos, announced she was pregnant in February). But Proffitt and Kaskie have both seen only limited time this season. That’s the other part of the equation, and the good problem Chicago has. With so little turnover from year to year, there’s just not much room for new players to get consistent minutes right now. Still, Chicago’s kept both Kaskie and Proffiitt around, and though neither has been thrown into things in quite the same sink-or-swim way the 2015 class was, it’s not impossible to imagine that if either was called on, they wouldn’t be able to fall seamlessly into a bigger role.

On Saturday, Chicago will host Portland, the second meeting of the season between the two teams. The Red Stars and Thorns head into this weekend separated by just a single point, and though North Carolina’s win on Thursday will prevent either from taking the top spot in the table, the Red Stars could move back within a point of the first-place Courage by Sunday night.

The first time Chicago played Portland, it was in Portland in Week 3. Then, the Thorns came away with the 1-0 win. But that was also when Chicago was still in one of its fits of inconsistency. Since then, the Red Stars, have lost just once, and that was way back in late June. For however messy and ill-advised it might be to use a pineapple and Pledge for cleaning, for the Red Stars right now, it’s creating all the right kinds of streaks.

All times Eastern