That North Carolina ended up with a postseason berth isn’t that surprising. The same for Portland. The Courage and Thorns have been two of the league’s best teams since day one. Chicago, too, quickly climbed the table and that the Red Stars will be back in the playoffs is similarly unsurprising. Orlando booking a spot in the postseason, the first ever for a team that’s still only 2 years old, is perhaps the most interesting of the four, but given the second half of the season the Pride had, even that feels a little like a foregone conclusion.
NWSL Week 21 in review: Orlando and Chicago book spots in the postseason
With a week to go, all four playoff spots are locked up.
Photo by Alexandre Schneider/Getty Images
There are, of course, still some things that need to be worked out. Neither North Carolina or Portland could manage anything more than a draw this weekend — the Courage played a 1-1 game with Sky Blue on Sunday and the Thorns and Pride held each other scoreless on Saturday — leaving the question of who wins the Shield open until at least Wednesday, when North Carolina makes up its postponed game against Houston, or Saturday, when both teams close out the regular season. Similarly, Chicago and Orlando are both still close enough in points that it’ll take each of their regular season finales to determine which will finish in third, and which will be the fourth-place team.
The Courage is, of all the playoff-bound teams, the most obvious. While other teams were still shaking off the offseason cobwebs in April and early May, North Carolina came out of the gate as a fully formed team, reaching an almost Seattle-circa-2014 level of running away with the thing.
Mostly, it was through a defense that’s now become something of a feeder for the USWNT, with players like Taylor Smith and Abby Dahlkemper, in their second and third pro seasons, respectively, forcing Jill Ellis to take notice. Further up the field, McCall Zerboni and Sam Mewis have led a midfield that’s one of the league’s best. Both Zerboni, who’s been around since the WPS days, and Mewis, who was drafted by the Flash in 2015, are also key pieces in the Courage’s high-pressure game. That strategy of relentless pressure forced opponents to rely more on midfield turnovers and broken plays than building out of the back, and it took a lot of teams a while, if they ever did, to solve it. Beyond that, it allowed North Carolina to turn its own thwarted offensive opportunities into second and third chances, repeatedly forcing turnovers in dangerous areas after it looked like the threat had been handled.
It wasn’t always this way for North Carolina, of course. Just a season ago, the Courage — then the Western NY Flash — was playing in the NWSL’s title game as the first fourth-place team to ever reach the final. And before that, it was as underdog and giant killer, knocking off Portland in dramatic fashion in a semifinal that’s still — and boy did Sky Blue FC try, a lot, this season to challenge it — one of the wildest, best, straight-up entertaining games in NWSL history.
Then, the thing Paul Riley had in Rochester was this funny combination of stuff he’d inherited from the previous regime in Western NY, and some odd collection of players he’d cobbled together off the NWSL’s scrap heap. Even most of the rookies on last year’s Flash team weren’t directly of his doing — Western NY appeared at the 2016 college draft in January sans head coach and it was another month before Riley, who’d left Portland under a cloud of disappointment, was officially announced.
With that strange combination of youth and journeywomen and spare parts, it took a while for the Flash to be competitive. Even when they managed to sneak into the postseason as the four seed, it was with a lot of doubt about how much they could challenge the other playoff team. The win over Portland in extra time was thrilling, sure, but it was also hard to shake the feeling that, on some level, it was a fluke, too. Like on any other day, it goes differently and it’s Portland playing in the final. Of course, that isn’t how the story goes, and Western NY plays another crazy game that ends with penalties and a trophy and a star above the crest for a title won in a league that still exists.
This season, there was no slow start. The Courage immediately announced itself as the team to beat this year, and now, 22 games in, they haven’t really let up. North Carolina’s been at the top of the table since day one, conceding that spot only occasionally and temporarily. With two games to go and a home playoff game already guaranteed, the Courage need just two points to secure the club’s first Shield since 2013.
The only team that can still challenge North Carolina for the top spot is Portland. Currently, the Thorns are just two points back of the Courage, but North Carolina also has a game in hand (the Courage play Houston on Wednesday, a game that had to be rescheduled due to Hurricane Harvey).
Portland’s season, mostly, has gone exactly the way it was supposed to. Like North Carolina, the Thorns were one of the league’s most fully formed teams from day one. After winning the Shield a season ago, Portland made few changes for this season. The one notable difference was in goal, where A.D. Franch took over for Michelle Betos, who opted to play in Norway this year.
Franch, though shaky at times, has also been one of the season’s best shot-stoppers. Saturday’s 0-0 draw with Orlando brought her shutout total to 11 for the season, an NWSL record. Including Franch, and with a back line anchored by Emily Sonnett and Emily Menges, the Thorns have been one of the league’s stingiest teams defensively all season. In addition to the 11 shutouts, Portland’s allowed just 19 goals, tied with North Carolina for the fewest in the league, and 300 shots, which is fourth-best among the NWSL’s ten teams.
The Thorns are also, and not surprisingly even in a season where Tobin Heath just made her debut last weekend, one of the NWSL’s most dangerous teams offensively. And with Lindsey Horan, Christine Sinclair, Hayley Raso, and Nadia Nadim all on the roster, why wouldn’t they be? Even Sonnett’s gotten in on the scoring, with three goals of her own this year.
While Portland’s 0-0 draw with the Pride on Saturday was disappointing in that it lessened the Thorns’ chances of winning the Shield, it also served as something of a possible playoff preview. Though the Pride started the year looking like they were headed for another season of disappointment, no team has turned things around in a bigger way than Orlando. The Pride hasn’t lost a game since July 22, and with the draw and a little help from some other teams, clinched a first-ever trip to the postseason. Not bad, especially considering the NWSL’s only other expansion team hasn’t exactly had the best luck with finding ways to not be terrible.
That, finding a way to not terrible, is exactly what Orlando did this year. Faced not only with the prospect of Alex Morgan missing the beginning of the season as she finished out her time with Lyon in France, but also how to shake that “expansion teams are bad forever because Houston” reputation, Orlando made the one big move.
Even that move, bringing Marta back to the U.S., looked futile at first. Orlando’s biggest problem wasn’t offense, and without the kind of team behind her as she’d had just about anywhere else she’d ever played, it looked like even the five-time World Player of the Year wouldn’t be able to right the Pride’s ship.
Slowly though, things did start to change. Chioma Ubogagu, who’d been one of the Pride’s bright spots in an early part of the season where almost nothing was going well, now had some help. Orlando’s midfield got more coherent, the defense figured out how to weather the storm, and then Morgan and Ashlyn Harris — who’d missed 11 games due to injury — both returned.
And with a full complement of players, Orlando became an unstoppable force, completing the climb into the top four. Orlando, now, is the NWSL’s highest scoring team, with its 42 goals coming from 11 different players. Marta has 12 in 22 games and Morgan’s scored nine times in her 12 appearances this year, and Orlando’s also seen impressive offensive contributions from, among others, Ubogagu, Camila, and rookie Rachel Hill.
Heading into the final weekend of the season, Orlando is still one half of a two-team battle with Chicago for the three and four spots. The Red Stars, like the Pride, didn’t exactly start out the season looking particularly promising. After dropping the opener to Houston, Chicago did manage to put together a string of good results, but like everything else about the Red Stars, it was never with any consistency.
Bouncing in and out of the top four, Chicago nearly had its postseason hopes permanently ended with three straight losses in August. But just as the Red Stars did a season ago, when they finished in third, Chicago managed to turn things around in time to secure a spot in the postseason.
The Red Stars, unlike either Orlando or Portland, aren’t loaded with stars. Instead, Chicago has forged its own path in the NWSL, preferring to develop players over several seasons rather than go for the one big signing. That’s not to say that the Red Stars aren’t without a name or two. Both Christen Press and Julie Ertz have spent their entire NWSL careers in Chicago after all, and Press’ 11 goals are surely a big reason why the Red Stars will have at least one more game after next weekend, but that’s also not what Chicago’s relied on, either this season or ever, for most of its success.
In some ways, that mentality and willingness to let a team and its players develop over time has paid dividends for the Red Stars. This season marks Chicago’s third straight trip to the postseason, but the Red Stars have also never won a playoff game. Like last season, Chicago has a chance to finish in third again this year, and thanks to being the only one of the top four teams that actually managed to win a game last weekend, the Red Stars need just a draw in the season’s final regular season game to secure the third spot again.
Whatever happens next weekend, the four teams we’ll be seeing in the semifinals are set. And thanks to a little bit of serendipitous and kind of eerie scheduling, Portland hosts Chicago and North Carolina welcomes Orlando to WakeMed next weekend to close out the season. And depending on how things go, those exact matchups could be the same ones we’ll be seeing again a week later when the postseason kicks off.
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Sky Blue FC 1 - 1 North Carolina Courage
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