Angel City FC falls behind in the first half and can't recover in loss to Orlando
LOS ANGELES The Orlando Pride and Angel City Football Club entered Sunday's meeting at different ends of the NWSL ladder.
The Pride, unbeaten in their first 14 games before Sunday, is in an early battle with the Kansas City Current for first place, while Angel City has yet to find a consistent form throughout this season.
The form held true for both teams in front a sellout crowd of 22,000 at BMO Stadium.
The Pride (10-0-5, 35 points) took advantage of three scoring opportunities, while Angel City (4-8-3, 15 points) struggled in front of goal, leading to a 3-0 win for Orlando. The Pride moves into a first-place tie with Kansas City with the win.
"It's just frustrating to lose at home," midfielder Rocky Rodriguez said. "The first goal came on a giveaway and obviously Orlando's counter attack is lethal. I still thought we created, especially in the first half, chances ...maybe not so much quality chances, but we were there. It just felt like a game we could have gone out with a little more."
Orlando was staked to a 2-0 lead at halftime on goals by Adriana.
Despite the loss, Angel City is still in the chase for a playoff berth. With 11 games remaining, Angel City is three points behind Bay FC for the eighth playoff spots. There are just four points separating eighth and 12th place in the NWSL standings.
"We just have to better at taking advantage of the opportunities that we were given and putting them on their back foot," defender Merritt Mathias said. "If we score a goal in the first 20 (minutes) before their first one ...I think they were on their heels. When we don't put, for a lack of a better term, put our foot on someone's neck and be like we're going to kill this and you're not getting any momentum, we leave ourselves open to things like that happening and that's where we have to be better. We have to sharpen up in the final third because it's really hard to defend goals in this league and when we create solid opportunities, we have to put them away."
Angel City has scored 15 goals so far this season, coach Becki Tweed talked about creating a ruthlessness in the attack.
In the late stages of regulation, Angel City had a couple of chances off of a corner kick. Megan Reid's header was on target, but Orlando goalkeeper Anna Moorhouse tipped the ball over the bar for another corner. On the ensuing attempt, Reid appeared to be taken down by an Orlando defender, but after the referee went to the video review monitors, it wasn't ruled a foul.
Then in stoppage time, Orlando put the game away as Barbra Banda scored to make it 3-0.
"If we take some of our chances, we could get to 2-1, then it's game on," Tweed said. "The longer the game wears on, the harder it is to score almost. After three minutes, we created an incredible opportunity with Alyssa (Thompson) in the box and those are the moments, if you take that chance, you push on and you gain that confidence and I think that's still something we're still learning as a group and evolving as a group.
"It (the ruthlessness) is in there, but it has to be in there consistently."
Angel City will return to action Saturday at home against Gotham FC. That will be the last league game until Aug. 24. The club will start the Summer Cup tournament, July 20.
