We aren't quite yet in the domain of must-win games – every team in the playoff picture still has space to make mistakes or make a run. And, helpfully, the Reign's competition for a spot in the top eight and a ticket to the big dance keep on dropping even more points than the Reign have.
But with the standings as close as they are, the line between home field in the first round and missing the playoffs entirely as thin as it is, the remaining schedule as tough as it could be, playing a North Carolina team the Reign know they can beat, at home... this was about as close to a must-win game as could be had.
And though it looked dire at times, though it had some real aroma of the sufferiest of Laura Harvey sufferball, the Reign completed the season sweep of the Courage with a gutsy-ass come from behind victory. A victory that said we are not settling for a sad fade into obscurity to end the season. A victory that said get back in that locker, stats nerds, we're too busy winning here. A victory that said what the FUCK is an "expected goal", and why do I care about it?
Are there problems? Yeah, obviously.
Difficult questions about what the best lineup for this team even is, about what next season even looks like? Without a doubt.
Reasons to believe this isn't a sustainable or replicable season, and that the offseason will be commensurately brutal? Oh, you'd best believe it.
But for now, the Reign are back in the dub column, sitting pretty in fourth place, and could finish the week as high as third and all but guaranteed of a playoff berth. Take your advanced analytics and bin 'em. Are you really betting against the scrappiest team in the league to scrap their way across the finish?
Goalkeeper
Claudia Dickey – 6
Plus. Claudia made a big save in the 6th minute, denying Manaka Matsukubo from close range to keep the Reign in it early. She also made a relatively routine save in the 77th minute, preserving the lead as Riley Jackson took a... fairly speculative shot at her goal.
Minus. Hannah Betfort's header was brilliantly taken and Ryan Williams' cross approached perfection, but Dickey was also slow to read the coming danger, and might have given herself a chance at it otherwise. I'm starting to genuinely wonder if her big numbers stopping and contesting crosses the first two seasons were an anomaly, or she's being coached to leave them to the defense, but it's another game where she faced double digit crosses through her area and got a hand to none of them.
Quiet. Other than that, Claudia had remarkably little to do against the Courage, who took 10 shots but only four from good positions, and only three that required her to so much as move her feet.
Defenders
Sofia Huerta – 6
Plus. Huerta was the most active player on the field for the Reign, running the length of the touchline and getting on the ball repeatedly. To the tune of 60 touches, 82% passing, 3 progressive passes, 3 progressive carries, 2 successful dribbles, 2 free kicks won, and delivering a very good corner to Sam Meza for a decent chance in the 14th minute. Most of the Reign's buildup for most of the night went through Huerta, and she was competent enough at keeping and progressing the ball for the Reign to show flashes of danger.
Minus. She got pretty skinned on Ryan Williams' early cross for North Carolina's goal. And while she was the most active and influential Reign player on the ball, it's important to contextualize that: the Reign had just 36% possession and were credited with just three shots the entire match.
Jordyn Bugg – 6
Plus. With the Reign playing a back four for much of the match, Bugg – in a little change of pace – played the part of furthest-back defender, cleaning up behind a more advanced McClernon. She mostly did well in that role, leading the match with 7 clearances and adding a blocked shot, an interception, 4 recoveries, and a tackle won to her counting stats. She was clean as heck in possession, with a consistently excellent touch to give her time to pick her passes, and an 82% passing rate to go with it. There were some nervy moments with Tyler Lussi breaking free and Bugg scrambling to find the right defensive positioning. Ultimately, the nervy moments came to nothing, Lussi couldn't find a clean look, and Bugg's match playing cover went relatively well.
Minus. With the Reign often looking to break fast and wide, Bugg's soft touch on long passes could've paid real dividends, and she attempted them infrequently. There were some nervy moments with Tyler Lussi breaking free and Bugg scrambling to find the right defensive positioning, and on another matchday, Lussi might make her pay for those.
Phoebe McClernon – 5
Plus. With the Reign playing a back four for much of the match, Phoebe – in a little change of pace – played ahead of Jordyn, taking more responsibility for creative passing and less for last-gasp defending. She mostly did well in that role – she helped to break North Carolina's first line of pressure with decisive passing and a quick touch a number of times, and had 6 progressive passes and 5 passes into the final third to go with her 3 clearances, 3 recoveries, 2 big-time recovery tackles, and blocked shot.
Minus. The big one, of course, is the Courage goal; Williams put in a beauty of a cross, but McClernon got beaten cold by Betfort on the aerial, and even just bodying up more effectively might've left the chance wanting. McClernon attempted 11 long passes with the Reign looking to break quickly, and completed just 3 of them. She was also dispossessed twice by the Courage press, but did well to recover and snuff out the danger of her own turnover both times.
Madison Curry – 6
Plus. She won't get any counting stats for it, but the Reign's first goal starts with her throw-in, and the throw-in doesn't happen without Curry's ferocious tenacity in trying to keep the play alive. Pinning herself high and wide up the field, Curry was a consistent option for shuttling the ball forward, and her 5 progressive passes and team-leading 14 touches in the attacking third speak to that; her 2 blocks, 2 interceptions, and 3 clearances also speak to her commitment to defensive recovery. Which was especially important because...
Minus. ...she was matched up with Tyler Lussi throughout the match, and to be gentle about it, Lussi is a handful and absolutely cooked her several times, leaving Bugg scrambling to cover the angles. With that said, Curry's also incredibly tenacious about following the play and getting back into position to fuck shit up, which contributed to Lussi's inability to put a shot on target despite that. While she led the side in touches in the attacking third, her commitment to getting forward sometimes saw her lost in transitional moments; she seems more comfortable as a very aggressive wingback than as a traditional right back.
Annoying. Also, she should've won a penalty, but referee Elijio Arreguin invoked the little-known "it's not a foul if I'm afraid nobody would listen to my whistle anyway" rule.
Midfielders
Maddie Dahlien – 7 (POTM) (off 83' for Ana-Maria Crnogorčević)
Plus. Danger Maddie scored a goal! A real beauty with a strong run, a sharp cut, and a slick far-post finish. And then the damn fun-stealing VAR took it away for something as trivial as her probably being off her side. God. Let us have nice things for a change. Anyway, not to be dissuaded, Danger Maddie simply scored ANOTHER goal, mirroring the first one, this time a real beauty with a strong run, a sharp cut, and a slick near-post finish. Starting higher up the pitch saw her in more consistently dangerous positions, and Dahlien had a lot of quality touches in dangerous places, and as good as she's often been as a marauding wingback, for a team that struggles to score, well... easier to score if you put Maddie closer to goal.
Minus. Damn fun-stealing VAR rightly took her first goal away because, indeed, she started her run a bit too soon. It was close, but offside is a binary value. A quarter-second pause in her stride or an extra step at an angle and the Reign open the scoring, rather than having to come from behind.
Jess Fishlock – 5 (off 67' for Ainsley McCammon)
Plus. No matter the game and no matter the game state, Fishlock brings the effort, and she brought it again to an opening frame where the Reign were lacking in just about everything. She also read a mishit pass to perfection and immediately attempted a shot from 55 yards out, and while it didn't find the target and wasn't hit with enough power to beat an adventurous Marisa Bova back to the net, I'm just saying, it would've been legendary and I give her points for how funny it almost was.
Minus. Other than that admittedly almost hilarious sequence, Fish had a hard time finding the match, with just 15 touches and seven completed passes. North Carolina dominated possession and gave few opportunities for her pressure to convert into transition, and she doesn't have the legs to run down every loose ball for 90 minutes until one of them breaks for you anymore. It wasn't bad from Jess, really, but it wasn't all that effective either.
Sam Meza – 7
Plus. She won four tackles and eight of nine duels, had the Reign's best chance of the first half, and had more defensive contributions than anybody else on the field. This is another Sam Meza POTM if Danger Maddie doesn't run wild in the second half; without Meza's frankly irreplaceable defensive gravity, the Reign likely don't make it to the half without conceding. I'm running out of ways to express my excitement about Meza. The quality is big, the consistency with which she puts up these big, big performances in her first real year playing at this level is a whole other game. Harvey was effusive in her praise post-match while assuring us Meza's not even close to her ceiling. Me, I just plan to enjoy the Mezazoic Era for as long as it lasts.
Minus. That 14th minute corner was a big chance to flip the script on the game, and Meza had time to settle the ball and at least put that on target.
Sally Menti – 6 (off 90' for Lauren Barnes)
Plus. Second-Half Menti showed up and balled out, especially after the Fishlock / McCammon substitution. With Ainsley covering deeper, Sally was free to run riot at the Courage back line, harassing defenders, pressing, and creating mismatches and bad choices all over the place. She got the assist on the Dahlien goal that counted, and had a couple near-misses in the second half that required big interventions to stifle the danger. It's fair to say Dahlien did the hard work on the goal, but Menti's cutting through the attacking third relentlessly laid the groundwork for it even discounting the assist. The Reign had very little possession, but Menti repeatedly gave the Courage one too many players to think about when they did, and it eventually paid dividends.
Minus. That 20th minute yellow card is not the first time Menti has taken a yellow in transition specifically because she lost track of where she needed to be in recovery defense. I salute the willingness to take the yellow, but she's finding herself forced to foul tactically with alarming frequency early in matches, and that has compounding effects.
Nuance. Menti reminds me intensely of 2023-edition Ary Borges, with both the attacking intentionality and willingness to crash from her own half to the attacking penalty area at a moment's notice, and her occasionally... questionable tracking back and defensive awareness. I think there's a real there there, but I'm really not convinced of her as half of a DM pairing.
Nérilia Mondésir – 5 (off 66' for Emeri Adames)
Plus. Coco fights hard for the ball, and offers a dynamic the Reign sometimes struggle for – she's hard as hell to take off it. While she didn't get much going in the attack, Mondésir was very good at preventing the Courage from going through her at speed. She was willing to scrap for it with the also-physically gifted Tyler Lussi, and her holdup play was a plus for a Reign side really struggling to connect or hold on to the ball, providing moments to breathe and reset in the midst of an opening 25 minutes of relentless pressure.
Minus. While she's been on the receiving end of some egregious uncalled fouls the past few matches, in this one, she gave at least as good as she got, and probably deserved a yellow card before the halftime whistle. While hard to take off the ball and hard to get around, she wasn't able to link up effectively with her teammates, completing just six passes in 66+ minutes. The connection still isn't there, unfortunately.
Ambivalence. What is a foul? What isn't a foul? Whomst among us can truly be said to deserve a yellow card? If Nérilia Mondésir is involved in an overly physical play – one way or the other – and PRO doesn't see it, did it even really happen?
Forwards
Jordyn Huitema – 6
Plus. Jordyn Huitema scored a– wait, no, Jordyn Huitema didn't score a goal. She did, however, force an own goal, timing her run and attacking space at the far post that forced Ryan Williams to desperately, and ultimately disastrously, intercede. Air Canada won every single one of her contested headers and was the Reign's most consistent threat to receive the ball upfield; she bodied up her defenders and made life hard for them in the area. A gritty, gutsy forward performance that somehow turned zero shots into a goal anyway.
Minus. Another zero shots performance from your starting forwards is not, exactly, ideal, nor is one touch in the attacking penalty area, and getting Jordyn into more attacking positions more frequently has to be a priority if the plan is to continue making her a focal point of the attack.
Substitutes
Emeri Adames – 6 (on 66' for Nérilia Mondésir)
Part of a double sub with Ainsley McCammon, Emeri Adames came on and the Reign kicked it up a gear. She obviously won't be credited with the assist on the Ryan Williams own goal, but it was her clever run in behind to receive the ball and quickly placed pass across the face of goal that forced the desperate intercession and, ultimately, tied up the scoreline for the Reign. Adames makes things happen when she can get involved, and this was as involved as we've seen her in at least a few matches.
Emeri's game is still a work in progress, and she's faded in effectiveness as the season has gone on, but there's just nobody else on the roster who makes that run and that pass in that moment.
Ainsley McCammon – 6 (on 67' for Jess Fishlock)
Part of a double sub with Adames, Ainsley McCammon came on and the Reign kicked it up a gear. This was a really solid showing by McCammon, who provided a wrecking ball in the defensive third that allowed Sally Menti to maraud higher up the pitch and demolished some of the inside-out buildup to Tyler Lussi that North Carolina had feasted upon in the first half hour of the match, denying the Courage the ability to get back into it after falling behind.
The three recoveries, blocked pass, interception, and clearance may not be jump-off-the-screen counting stats, but every loose ball she scooped up was high-leverage, and the efficacy of her partnership with Meza was remarkable; the Courage created nothing dangerous but a single chance off a corner after the midfield shift.
Ana-Maria Crnogorčević – N/A (on 83' for Maddie Dahlien)
AMC hit the pitch again to spell a brilliant but exhausted Maddie Dahlien, and was present while soccer was played. She touched the ball three times, created a lot of pressure, and tried to take the ball to the corner to kill clock. No real notes.
Lauren Barnes – N/A (on 90' for Sally Menti)
The final sub of the night, Lauren Barnes checked in for Sally Menti and, in stoppage time, touched the ball once, completed one pass, and took a late, late yellow card for time-wasting on a set piece.
Referee
Elijio Arreguin – 4
I... don't even know what to make of it, to be honest. Like, okay, the big stuff – Madison Curry should've won a penalty, and didn't. Maddie Dahlien was probably offside, and her first would-be goal was probably rightly disallowed. Mondésir likely deserved to be shown a card and given the protection of one, and wasn't. But like, top-level, that's not a disastrous performance, really. Pretty average, pretty standard, about what PRO tends to offer us.
But beyond the big stuff, this was just an utterly perplexing day at the office for Arreguin, who on more than one occasion whistled something, watched the players simply ignore his whistle, and... just let them keep going after ignoring his whistle. Who allowed the teams to line up for kickoff as VAR was reviewing Dahlien's goal, to the point that North Carolina actually kicked off the ball to resume play before he, apparently, finally, informed the players that a review was underway. Who repeatedly lifted his whistle then thought better of it in moments that definitely warranted a whistle.
We've seen Arreguin be confidently wrong in disastrous ways in previous appearances. This time, he barely seemed to have the confidence to assert that he had actually blown his whistle. Just a strange, strange match by a referee I really cannot get a bead on.
And Another Thing!
One shot on target, two goals. Harveyball is evolving to forms prior unthinkable to mere footie punditry.
