If Ainsley McCammon puts a little more elevation off the set piece, and tucks it just out of the keeper's reach...
If Maddie Dahlien gets her whole foot to it clean, rather than scuffing her first touch and having to settle for a non-chance...
If Mia Fishel sinks that sublimely clever chip shot, rather than adding it to Kailen Sheridan's highlight reel...
If the Reign find some way, any way, to put that second goal on the board during their protracted period of control...
So often, footie is a game of what-ifs. And for the Reign, sixty minutes of almost, sixty minutes of being the better side by some distance, fell apart when Madison Curry gave up a penalty on the Courage's first real look of the second half. While referee Cristian Campo initially waved play on, VAR rightly interceded, Riley Jackson made no mistake from the spot, and the Courage had the lead against the run of play.
And from there, the Reign crumbled. Sixty minutes of taking the game right to North Carolina no longer mattered. The Courage were buzzing, the Reign were rattled, and 2-1 became 3-1 just seven minutes later, and but for some heroic intercessions by backup goalkeeper Cassie Miller, could've easily become 4-1 or 5-1.
The penalty call was a gut punch, but those happen. More concerning was seeing the Reign so categorically unable to respond to it, seeing the Reign fall apart as they've seldom fallen apart even in the direst days of 2024. The vibes were bad, the morale seemed broken. And while much is made of mentality, there is probably some truth to the cliché that when something always seems to go wrong for a team, it can become habit-forming: the expectation that something will go wrong, and the self-fulfilling nature of that expectation.
It also makes for a challenging match to rate: do 60 good minutes balance out with 30 disastrous ones? Does a goalkeeping clinic mean good attacking play didn't happen? Does a comedy of bad bounces indict an entire back line? Is it scabbing to cross a picket line that, by way of organizational structures and negotiating technicalities, you haven't specifically agreed not to cross? I grappled at length with these questions and came to some largely inconclusive answers.
The Reign can be dynamic, and they have talent that could really shine with the right moves. They can also be fragile and could use the confidence that can come from the right reinforcements at the right time. The window for making those moves before 2026 becomes another lost season grows ever narrower.
Goalkeeper
Cassie Miller – 6
The opening goal against was a series of errors and unfortunate bounces, none of them Miller's fault, capped off by a deeply unlucky deflection that left her no chance to make the save. The second was a penalty. The third was basically unsavable, struck too sweetly and placed too well. The best keepers might get to one or two of those a season, if that.
On the whole, Miller did what she needed to do to keep the Reign in the game, including looking confident coming off her line, cutting down angles, and going up to claim the ball. Unfortunately, the bounces were profoundly not with her, and the defense fell apart in front of her.
Defenders
Sofia Huerta – 6
God, what a sweet assist that was. It was nice having the lead on the road, even for just a few minutes. It was nice seeing Sof extend her record just a little bit more, give herself a little more room to hang on to it before one of the brilliant youths in the league makes a hard run at it.
When things were going well for the Reign, for the beautiful first hour, Huerta was a maestro from the right side of the field, orchestrating attacks and driving possession. When things started falling apart, though, she was unable to contain Ashley Sanchez and Shinomi Koyama as a resurgent Courage ran rampant all over the pitch.
Phoebe McClernon – 5
It was a busy night for McClernon, who put in 114! touches, with 11 passes into the attacking third and 5 defensive contributions among them. Only Jordyn Bugg was more active on the ball, and for sixty beautiful minutes, the Reign's patient buildout and ball-confident centerback pairing gave the Courage nothing to work with, leaving them searching for desperate long passes and losing out constantly on challenges.
Unfortunately, it got messier after the penalty gave the Courage the lead, the momentum, and the belief. The backline was under siege, and the mistakes added up. McClernon gave up dangerous options to Evelyn Ijeh and Lauryn Thompson in the closing minutes, disconnected from the rest of her line and suddenly struggling to make anything land.
Jordyn Bugg – 5
Leading the field in touches (121), passes completed (95), and passes into the final third (14), Bugg flaunted her vision and calm under pressure for sixty-plus minutes, getting forward to help the Reign in buildup and providing a fulcrum to leverage the ball into danger repeatedly. There was a dynamism the Reign have often missed these past two years, and much of it flowed from Jordyn's foot, the first pass in the sequence to unlock something new.
The center didn't hold. The midfield collapsed in front of her, and Bugg went from orchestrating play to losing out to well-worked Courage overloads. For thirty minutes, she scrambled to find the game and find the defensive moment. The Reign were lucky not to concede a fourth in the dying embers of the match after Bugg got rinsed and lost her player.
Madison Curry – 4
The thing about Madison Curry is that she loves to tackle people, and along with Sam Meza, she's one of the best on the team at doing so. She had 4 tackles won, 4 clearances, 6 of 8 duels won, and only committed one foul in another night of winning position, demolishing her marks, and separating people from the ball with extreme prejudice. Curry's overwhelming surplus of eau de give me that ball is one of her greatest strengths, and she's not the player she is without it.
It's just – that one foul she committed was in the penalty area, in a situation she probably didn't need to go to ground, probably would've been better off bodying up and limiting Ally Schlegel's shooting options and giving Miller a chance to come up with it. Instead, she got stuck in, Schlegel went down, VAR intervened, and the Reign conceded the go-ahead goal and never came back from it. About as high-impact a moment as one player can have. Not in a good way.
Midfielders
Sam Meza – 6
I've done this bit before, but – it becomes rote, looking at a Sam Meza stat line. Oh, 11 defensive contributions, but what's she done for us lately. 90% passing, sure, but it could've been 92%. 6 tackles, 10 duels, and 2 free kicks won, but I mean, who hasn't done that, really? The upshot: in Meza, we are looking at generational brilliance at the defensive midfield position. There may not be a single player in the world you could offer me to replace her there – Meza is already one of the best to do it, still getting better at it season by season, and still only 24 years old.
Of course, she also had a pretty, pretty bad error in the 22nd minute that gave the Courage life, really the only blip of life they had in a first half that was dictated by the Reign. That it also took three more unlucky bounces to end up caught in Cassie Miller's net notwithstanding, Meza had the position and the opportunity to prevent it from ever happening. And, well, scuffed it. Happens to the best, shake it off and exorcise those demons against Portland.
Ainsley McCammon – 6 (off 76' for Angharad James-Turner)
Perhaps no player was more emblematic of the Reign's highs and lows than Ainsley, who was incisive and expansive in the opening 60-plus minutes, covering ground defensively and crashing high when the opportunities arose. She had two good looks at goal, a shot off a set piece that forced a strong save out of Sheridan to close out the first half and a hit from the top of the area in the 66th minute that she put into the nosebleeds. She also had 6 defensive contributions and won all three of her duels, and laid out some absolutely peachy passes in the Reign's long spell of occasionally brilliant buildup.
And if I were to level one critique at McCammon's performance, holistically, it's that she really faded in the last ten minutes or so of her shift. An initial run of decent pressure after North Carolina took the lead – crashing forward and getting one of the last chances the Reign would assemble on the afternoon – dissolved into nothing. The Courage had taken a lead they would not relinquish, and Ainsley no longer had answers or energy to search for them.
Sally Menti – 7 (POTM) (off 65' for Brittany Ratcliffe)
This was one of the Freshmaker's best outings in a Reign kit. Possibly the best, outright. The strike for the opening goal was beautiful and worth admiring all on its own, of course, but it wasn't just that. Sally Menti offered a tantalizing glimpse of what the Reign can be when a midfielder seizes the creative role by the yoke and flies. She had just 25 touches and 10 completed passes, but her movement disassembled the Courage's lines to the tune of 5 touches in the attacking penalty area, 5 chances created, 2 shots, 2 key passes, and the game's opening goal. It wasn't, exactly, a vintage tempo-setting number 10 performance, but it was one sort of dynamism in the middle of the park, something the Reign have often lacked this season, and it unlocked so much more around her.
I genuinely did not understand the comparatively early Menti sub, and the Reign lost a ton of field influence after she left the pitch. The running, pressing, and relentless get-forward-and-make-it-happen energy was not suitably replaced, and North Carolina seized the initiative and didn't surrender it.
Forwards
Maddie Mercado – 6 (off 76' for Nérilia Mondésir)
There is something to Mercado on the wing. Honestly, Mercado just looks comfortable at any of the forward positions. She was an effective marauder ahead of and overlapping with Huerta, and also dropping central to cover for Menti's forays forward or to switch with Fishel to create different looks. The work won't show up on a shoresheet, but her movement created chaos and her interplay in the front four set the stage for chances. She had two touches in the penalty area, both of which went down for decent looks at goal, and she completed 21 of 26 passes, seldom turning over possession and usually finding the right pass to prolong the play and push the attack into a more dangerous position.
After the penalty, the Menti sub, and North Carolina's tactical shift, Mercado's effectiveness was far more limited, as the Reign were unable to keep the long, probing spells of possession going and unable to replicate the movement and high pressure that had served them so well previously. She left for Mondésir in the 76th minute, with the Reign desperately in need of new energy.
Mia Fishel – 6 (off 87' for Holly Ward)
The distillate of that first half by Mia Fishel is something special. And, sure, she didn't keep up the extreme level of quality through the entire match – like most of the team, she was a mess after the Courage found their lead – but she showed up with a level of quality that calls to mind some of her best moments with Tigres. While there's no hockey assists in NWSL, the opening goal does not happen without Mia's classy touch, take on, and layoff to Sofia Huerta. Getting into it with North Carolina's centerbacks, she pulled their defending shape all out of whack and gave Mercado and Dahlien room to work. Finding a streaking Maddie Dahlien with a rainbow flick over the defense. And finding the ball in the penalty area with absolutely no room to use it, she flicked it backwards to herself and chipped it with the same motion, floating it to the far corner of goal. That Kailen Sheridan recovered to make that save remains the most unbelievable play of the match. It deserved a goal, and if she keeps showing that quality, it will get goals. The Reign just need to, as we saw here, provide her with opportunities to do good things on the ball.
And... then the penalty happened. And then the Courage took over the game. Mia didn't find a lot of joy after the 60th minute. She worked hard, but the Reign never really threatened again, and working hard with none of the ball is an exhausting and thankless job that yielded no rewards.
Maddie Dahlien – 6 (off 76' for Emeri Adames)
One number: 10. Maddie Dahlien had 10 touches in the attacking penalty area. Put dynamic movement in the middle of the pitch, put a menace on the opposing central defenders, and Danger Maddie finds space like clockwork. She cut into the area repeatedly, created 3 chances for her teammates, and found 4 shots of her own, including a 2nd minute fast break opportunity that, with a little more quality, could've set the tone for the match right out the gate, and a brilliantly timed 56th minute tear that pantsed the entire back line to get on Fishel's flicked delivery, unfortunately ending with a scuffed ball caught a bit under her feet.
Maddie was one of the only players who kept running at full pace even as North Carolina seized the game from the Reign, kept trying to get into space and provide the outlet. It amounted to nothing, though, and in a few transitions was an active impediment, leaving Curry with acres of space to defend and a Courage attack on the hunt.
Substitutes
Brittany Ratcliffe – 4 (on 65' for Sally Menti)
7 touches, 2 completed passes, and so little influence on the game I nearly forgot she was there during the segment of my rewatch when I was specifically focusing on Ratcliffe. I mostly think the substitution cost the Reign too much of what was driving them to that point, and put Brittany in a hard position where she was unlikely to succeed.
Nérilia Mondésir – 5 (on 76' for Maddie Mercado)
6 touches, 1 completed pass. With the 76th minute triple sub, the Reign made big changes to try to fight their way back into the game, but couldn't get a foothold. Coco did fight hard, winning 3 of 4 duels and winning 2 free kicks in her relatively short runout, but she was unable to stem the bleeding in a match that had already gotten away from the team.
Emeri Adames – 4 (on 76' for Maddie Dahlien)
6 touches, 4 completed passes. The 76th minute triple sub, with the team down 3-1 and in desperate need of a response, gave Emeri a lot of freedom to try to do something audacious, and she kept fighting for that moment until the final whistle, even managing to charge into the attacking penalty area and take a shot from a sharp angle in the 96th minute, but effort notwithstanding, her influence in the other 20 minutes she played was limited at best.
Angharad James-Turner – 5 (on 76' for Ainsley McCammon)
9 touches, 7 completed passes: of the players who came on with the 76th minute triple sub, Haz was the most active and involved, but ultimately had very little influence on a match already out of hand and that she was unable to pull back into control. She did deliver a beauty of a long ball to try to find Adames some space.
Holly Ward – N/A (on 87' for Mia Fishel)
While Holly Ward didn't play or do very much, she did have a sweet dribble along the way, and has some intriguing ball skill.
Courage POTM
Kailen Sheridan
The attention's all going to be on Ashley Sanchez for the brace, and I don't want to discount that Sanchez had a great game, but... the context matters. Sheridan kept the Courage in it for an hour-plus while the Reign took the game to them, absolutely robbed Mia Fishel of a goal as time ticked out on the first half, and then came up huge again on Ainsley McCammon barely a minute later.
If the Reign score one of those, let alone both, is the game even in a state where Sanchez can make a difference? Sheridan kept the Courage in the fight under pressure of some very good chances until something went right for them and changed the narrative.
Referee
Cristian Campo – 6
Yes, I one thousand percent hate it when VAR rightly makes a game-changing intervention against my team, but I can't deny that the call was, indeed, correct. I look forward to this bold new era of Maddie Dahlien winning that call when she gets taken out in the penalty area.
In general, Cristian Campo made no egregious errors and managed the game such that I was able to rewatch it without being blisteringly angry at him, which is really what you want out of a referee. I wish he had been more proactive about yellow cards for tactical fouls, but he was at least consistent in not caring to show them. He, sadly, listened to his crew when it was warranted, and tried to get the calls right.
Whether or not he's a scab is a nuanced discussion (though he did, to be clear, work MLS matches during the strike two years ago), but he was largely up to the challenge of handling this match, in Cary, for better or worse.
And Another Thing
Notwithstanding Menti's performance in Cary, the Reign need an agenda-setting creative midfielder, and while I'm sympathetic to the difficult nature of Lesle Gallimore's tenure as GM – this is the second season under new, ostensibly deep-pocketed ownership. She needs to either make it happen or make way for someone who will.
