On Sunday, the Orlando Pride earned their first win of the season at Orlando City Stadium against the North Carolina Courage. North Carolina sits at the top of the NWSL table, but sneaking up closely behind them is the Seattle Reign, who the Orlando Pride will face on the road this Sunday.
The Pride are hoping to use the momentum gained from this victory against the Reign. Seattle has some of the best players in the league, but Head Coach Tom Sermanni feels that some of the lessons learned against North Carolina, as well as the confidence gained in the win, will help carry the Pride to their first victory on the road.
“I’ve had a look at Seattle play. So, it’s a matter of going in there with a definitive game plan. I have a couple of thoughts in my head at the moment as to how we should play against them, whether we go and press them or whether we sit off and try to hit them in the break,” Sermanni said. “They’ve got a team of very, very good footballers. Next week’s challenge is the opposite challenge to this week. This week was a real physical challenge against the physically strongest team in the league. Next week is a real football challenge against a team of very intelligent players. So, we just need to make sure we get our defensive structure set up and sorted properly. If you look at our backline, four out of our five defenders are internationals. We’ve got a decent backline, and if we can get our tactics right, I think we have the players that can exploit the lack of mobility that Seattle has.”
The defense seemed to click in the match against North Carolina, and Ali Krieger believes that the same strategy of compactness and communication can help prevent the Seattle offense from finding the back of the net. If they can do that, she said, the door opens for the Pride’s offense to create scoring opportunities.
“We want to keep a clean sheet, and I think if we keep a clean sheet, that helps the attack. It gives them opportunities to score goals,” Krieger said. “Once again, they’re great on transition and they’re coming off a couple of good wins so I think that we need to just take this momentum and carry it through the next game, but obviously we need to be compact and composed defensively… we’re going to take one week at a time, one training at a time, one game at a time, but I think we have confidence now going into this game and this exactly what we need. But once again, any team can win on any day and that’s what’s really great about this league.”
There are many questions about how the Pride will seek to shut down the versatile offense in Seattle, which consists of players like Jess Fishlock and Megan Rapinoe. But Krieger said at the end of the day, the Pride need to focus on how they are playing. If they focus on their team and their goals, everything will fall into place.
“You have great players in this league all over, on every single team that you pay attention to,” Krieger said. “But you can’t lose sight of how we play as a team and how we move forward.”
