Tag: Chicago Red Stars

Just like that, the NWSL regular season is halfway over after the 11th round of games finished up Sunday night.

As is typical for this particularly wild league, the top of the table is comically close. The North Carolina Courage, in sixth place at the time this article was published, have multiple scenarios in which they could end up in first place by next Sunday night. Next weekend’s games feature the top six against the bottom six, and there’s one set of results that could see three teams tied on 20 points, followed by four more on 19. Last year’s potential seven-way tie for first could once again loom over us in September, and that doesn’t even account for improving teams like Racing Louisville or the Orlando Pride.

That’s the big picture. Getting more granular on the week that was, it was a great week to be a Brazilian attacker, and a not-so-great week if you happen to play for a team in the bottom three.

Here we go:

The NWSL’s halfway line is in sight, and not far beyond it we can make out the faintest outline of what this year’s playoff race is going to look like.

After 10 games, the lucky teams are starting to be found out, and the tiers that have started to form broadly conform with the vibe around each of the 12 teams in the league.

For the Take-Off at least, this is what is appearing on the distant horizon:

• Contenders: Portland Thorns, San Diego Wave, Washington Spirit, NJ/NY Gotham FC, OL Reign
• Hopefuls: Houston Dash, North Carolina Courage
• Still in the mix: Racing Louisville
• Time to get moving: Orlando Pride, Chicago Red Stars, Angel City FC, Kansas City Current

There’s still wiggle room in here, of course, and through a weekend that extended out into a weird Monday night match, we saw teams threaten to move up and down the ladder. The Reign, mired in about a month of very inconsistent performances and results, may only be in the Contender tier based on past results and the quality of their roster. Kansas City and Chicago, meanwhile, are showing a pulse.

We’re both a long way from the playoffs (summer hasn’t started yet!), and yet also, teams have a dozen games to get the job done. Grab your lucky pine cone while we figure out where things are headed.

When people talk about the NWSL being the world’s most competitive league, this is what they’re talking about.

Parity is back in a big way. The top five teams are separated by one single point — shout out to still league-leading NJ/NY Gotham FC for having that one-point edge over four teams on 16 points — while the Chicago Red Stars got a massively needed win to hopefully put themselves back on course.

Qualities like focus and intensity kept coming up in press conferences, with some teams not quite having it until the late stages, and others seeing it slip away as their game went on. As we drift closer to the midway point of this 2023 season, with the newness of the season wearing off, summer’s heat increasing, and team leaders and stars in many cases heading off to the World Cup, the mentality monsters are going to be the ones getting the results.

Here’s your Take-Off for week nine.

Ask anyone about NWSL and they’ll probably tell you it’s the world’s most competitive league.

This past weekend’s results are exactly what they’d have in mind. Racing Louisville came in winless, yet came up with a dominant 3-0 win. The Houston Dash and North Carolina Courage beat title contenders, the San Diego Wave broke out of a mini-slump with a back-to-basics win, and the Washington Spirit overcame a three-game week to pick up three points on the west coast. Even the lone draw in the set saw the Orlando Pride, a team that entered the weekend in 11th place, go on the road and outplay a Gotham FC team that sits in third place.

Sometimes the truisms are actually true. As we’ll get into immediately after this paragraph, this week showed that to win in NWSL you need world-class mental and physical toughness to go with outstanding skill (we see you, Ebony Salmon and Abby Smith).

Let’s jump into the crucible.

This past round of NWSL matches saw an abundance in glorious goals and outstanding individual play.

Trinity Rodman set one of those goals up but won’t win the league’s player of the week award for reasons, while Alyssa Thompson bolstered her credentials as some kind of sorcerer and the Portland Thorns hit the absolute heights of what a team working in concert can do, only to end up with a draw after being Kerolin-ed. If you live for highlights, you could have easily over-indulged.

On the other hand, it was a rocky day at the office for the Chicago Red Stars, while the Houston Dash and San Diego Wave were left frustrated once again on the attacking end.

What’s right? What’s wrong? Let’s get into it:

Even by NWSL standards, this past weekend was truly outlandish.

It’s perhaps fitting that this weird, wonderful league’s 1,000th game came mere hours after a weather delay of over three hours resulted in a match being called with fewer than 90 minutes played for just the third time ever. It just feels right that the sequence of events here was a 52-minute game in which a lack of a clear process seemed to be a problem, then a major league milestone in terms of longevity, with both followed by the league’s second-ever goalkeeper goal. That’s just the NWSL for you.

In the midst of all that chaos, though, some of the league’s best young stars produced incredible moments, and the Orlando Pride authored the shock result of the season thus far. Settle in as we look back on what could stand as the league’s wildest weekend of 2023.