I suppose a few things can be true about this game.
That Angel City got a bit of a fortunate penalty call to open the scoring, and the Reign never recovered? True. That outside of that, Angel City didn't create all that much, they just hit the flow state on a couple of the sparse chances they did have? Also true. That with all that said, the Reign created even less, and were a Sofia Huerta banger-of-bangers away from being shut out on top of humbled? True as well. That sometimes, ball simply go in but only for opponent? Alas, the hardest truth.
All in all, a bad performance on the road on short rest, something the Reign have a bit of experience with this year.
All in all, a bad performance punctuated by a rough call, a maddening failure to score on the goal line, and a couple gut-wrenching moments of magic by the opposition.
All in all, a game where one side absolutely had to win to keep their hopes realistically alive, and played much more like it than their visiting opposition.
All in all, a game I'd just as soon forget rather than be rewatching twice in two days. But soccer exists to hurt us, and sometimes you have to really wallow in that hurt, right?
Anyway, let's just do this thing.
Goalkeeper
Claudia Dickey – 4
Doom. Three shots against, three goals against. They were all well-taken shots, one of them a penalty, but Clauds has come up with the immaculate stop so many times. Would've been nice to get even one big save in three here.
Cope. You'd never know it, because the Reign did so little actually productive with it, but her choices in distribution were pretty, pretty good all match long. Me, I think she should keep doing that, and the Reign should make it matter next time.
Defenders
Madison Curry – 5
Doom. Curry was probably the second-best player on the pitch for the Reign, and unfortunately, that's not a good thing in a match like this. Effective at getting the ball forward, and then ineffective at finding the next pass, completing the cross, or creating anything remotely dangerous.
Cope. Curry was her usual wrecking machine self and Angel City was honestly more lucky than good in getting around her on the occasions they did. She racked up a ton of successful defensive actions and won a ton of duels, and you can't really gameplan for a team simply turning bad chances into screaming goals.
Phoebe McClernon – 5 (off 79' for Emily Mason)
Doom. Midfield breaking down in front of her, forwards starved for meaningful touches. When the Reign needed a back line that's killed teams with its long passing to step up and provide the service to keep Angel City's midfield a little more honest, Phoebe came up with... 1 successful attempt to break the lines. Yikes.
Cope. She seldom got beat off the ball, was good as always as the last stopper in coverage, won her challenges far more often than not. This was a blip on the chart against a charmed opponent, not a major dip in form from Phoebs.
Jordyn Bugg – 5
Doom. Normally, teams like to pressure Jordyn Bugg in possession to make Phoebe play the facilitator, but Angel City didn't have to, because Bugg wasn't facilitating either. She completed more passes than any other player, and (with obvious hyperbole) every single one of them left the Reign no better off than an incomplete pass would have.
Cope. The shockingly low-impact passing night notwithstanding, Bugg was quick reading and covering the play and about as good in the air as I've ever seen her. A lightning rod for Angel City's crosses. A machine that converted threatening passes into thunderous clearances. If only it wound up mattering.
Sofia Huerta – 6 (POTM)
Doom. Huerta was probably the best player on the pitch for the Reign, and in this case that made her merely okay for most of the match. To the tune of creating zero chances, putting in zero shot-creating actions, and completing zero crosses. You won't score many goals if your connectors aren't connecting.
Cope. ...unless one of those connectors just absolutely hits the shit out of it like that. Etsy Witch undefeated. Nothing salves rewatching a bad performance like getting to rewatch an absolute thunderbastard by an icon and a fan favorite at the end.
Midfielders
Angharad James-Turner – 3 (off 72' for Sally Menti)
Doom. The disaster flowed from the midfield, and as steady as Haz has been soaking up tough minutes over the past month, she was badly exposed here. Too many hospital balls, too many missed challenges, too many turnovers in reception. Just an all-around rough night.
Cope. Ainsley McCammon will be back soon, and Angharad will spend less time having to cover the whole pitch for her and more time providing the rotational coverage she's been great at.
Sam Meza – 4
Doom. Short rest, Ainsley out, and neither Fishlock nor James-Turner keeping up with the hard-running babies for Angel City... Meza was outmuscled, outnumbered and outdueled repeatedly. We're used to seeing her outnumbered, not so much outmuscled or outdueled. And when she had the ball, they kept forcing her to pass backwards, to a back line that was... yeah.
Cope. Most of the time, Meza's not going to be covering for two less-mobile midfield partners on short rest on the road with a twenty-year-old track team in opposition, so, I'm really not dooming too hard here.
Jess Fishlock – 4 (off 72' for Nérilia Mondésir)
Doom. Chronos is undefeated, and Fishlock can no longer run roughshod over an entire opposing midfield. She got dispossessed, bullied in the air, couldn't beat the line for pace, and – just to add insult to injury – bounced a seeing-eye shot off the post where no Reign player could quite get to the rebound.
Cope. The Fishes were just about the only players who could receive a damn ball in this one, and Fishlock's ability to receive and vision for the seam came agonizingly close to leveling the match for the Reign. She can still be an impact player, I just don't think starting her did her or the midfield any favors in this one.
Forwards
Maddie Mercado – 5
Doom. Just a single shot from nowhere important, a stack of failed dribbles, and some absolute piles of frustration building up as she could never receive the ball without Evelyn Shores and Carina Lageyre in her face to slow everything down. Mercado settling for a lot of pinging the ball back and forth with Huerta until it turns over is just not ideal Mercadoing.
Cope. All the frustration in the world would've evaporated if that pure-hustle run to save the ball at the endline and cut it back to Fishlock had ended up in the net, rather than blocked and spinning out. Mercado works hard and makes things happen, gamestate be damned, but god, things were refusing to happen for the Reign in this one.
Mia Fishel – 4 (off 79' for Holly Ward)
Doom. No shots, no shot-creating actions, no oh-my-god hip pivot to long pass moments to spring a transition. None of the particular, ludicrous skillset that makes Fishel's slow recovery of her old form so very worth it to watch. Oh, and because it was that kind of night, she both lost her mark and inadvertently cleared the shooting lane for Ary Borges' goal off the corner.
Cope. Even on a bad night, Sarah Gorden absolutely could not handle her. Emily Sams had to constantly provide extra coverage, with service frequently featuring one centerback draped over Fishel like a cape while the other jumped the pass. In a match where not everybody on the team is having a bad night, demanding that kind of attention is good, good stuff.
Maddie Dahlien – 4 (off 83' for Brittany Ratcliffe)
Doom. Racing out of her boots with no end product, perpetually covered, and managing just a single shot and a single shot-creating action, the latter mostly accidental. The disaster flowed from midfield, but Maddie didn't have her Danger hat on and could provide neither the breakout threat the Reign needed nor the palliative support that might've stabilized things in the middle.
Cope. And even still, she beat Savy King like six times. You can't teach speed, and even very fast players seem to get caught out by just how much Dahlien can burn them when she gets the zoomies on. Now once more, with finish.
Substitutes
Doom. Down 2-0, subs seemingly finally turning the match momentum in your favor, little chances opening up, so naturally the opposition subs on a deep bench winger who's played less than 10 minutes this month and she instantaneously scores her second ever goal with a ludicrous touch. Naturally. God.
Cope. But the first round of substitutes really were turning the tide. Sometimes ball absolutely insist on going in for opponent, but not usually.
Okay I feel a little bad about that. I really like Taylor Suarez as a future talent to watch, annoyance at her goal notwithstanding. It was just a very frustrating turn of events and very emblematic of the Reign's night: even when they were starting to get the little things right, it didn't matter, because Angel City was working the bad magic on us.
Sally Menti – 5 (on 72' for Angharad James-Turner)
For a little while after Sally Menti and Coco Mondésir subbed on, the Reign stabilized things and looked poised to maybe, just maybe, have an answer in the wings. Menti put together some solid work in possession on limited touches, and some great off-ball runs.
...and then Angel City made a sub and she instantaneously scored from a stupid angle, so, you know, that happened.
Nérilia Mondésir – 5 (on 72' for Jess Fishlock)
For a little while after Sally Menti and Coco Mondésir subbed on, the Reign stabilized things and looked poised to maybe, just maybe, have an answer in the wings. Mondésir genuinely brought it, not just completing passes but completing dangerous passes that put her teammates into good space. She nearly had a beautiful assist, a miss by mere inches. There were like 10 minutes of shiny vibes flowing through her.
...and then Angel City made a sub and she instantaneously scored from a stupid angle, so, you know, that happened.
Holly Ward – N/A (on 79' for Mia Fishel)
With Big Fish leaving after a hard-work / little-reward sort of shift, Holly Ward came on for a couple minutes of quality play and then Taylor Suarez hit the trick shot and it was all over. I thought Ward was pretty good, but it just didn't matter. It couldn't save us from what was coming.
Emily Mason – N/A (on 79' for Phoebe McClernon)
A rare short night for Phoebe meant Emily Mason got some actual minutes at her natural position, so naturally, she immediately got burned by Suarez for the backbreaking third goal. Which wasn't a glorious play or anything, but I'm having a hard time holding it against her. The Reign needed to be aggressive, Emily was out of position, it bit them, and a low-quality chance ended up a goal of the week candidate. Happens, I guess.
Brittany Ratcliffe – (on 83' for Maddie Dahlien)
There was no masterful late game goal to come off Ratcliffe's foot in this one. The dream of her going on a truly hilarious tear of door-slamming substitute scoring and stealing the golden boot like I boldly predicted in week 2 grows ever fainter.
Angel City POTM
Ally Sentnor / Ary Borges / Evelyn Shores
All three of them cooked against the Reign. Given how the game turned in midfield, I'd normally nod towards Borges and/or Sentnor, but I also can't overlook how Shores' defense on Mercado and service on corners impacted the match. And to be real, real honest about it... yeah, I don't want to subject myself to watching this match a fourth time just so I can try to suss out some minute detail that gives one of the three a clearer advantage over the other two.
Let’s just call it a three-way tie and close the door.
Referee
Atahan Yaya – 5
On balance, I don't think Yaya had an awful outing at the center, but I do think it was a weird, messy, inconsistent one. And I think Gisele Thompson, who was whistled for more fouls and committed more risky tackles than anybody else on the pitch, more than earned a yellow that was never forthcoming. And honestly this was very much like the last match Yaya called for the Reign. Nothing whistled egregiously wrong, but very little flow, a terrible instinct for when to let an advantage play out, and honestly just green-lighting too much physicality, too reminiscent of the NWSL of yesterdecade.
On the penalty, it's whatever. Harsh, but not really something you can overturn once it's called. I am repeatedly on the record as believing that handling is an exceedingly bad rule with exceedingly bad outcomes, and my view on that grows more entrenched every time IFAB does yet another round of attempted revisions and guidelines. It's broken at the professional level, we all know it, and we just gotta live with it. With that said, it would've been nice to get the benefit of nearly identical calls against previous opponents, as Laura Harvey started to mention postgame before deciding she'd prefer not to be fined.
And Another Thing!
Maybe it’s for the best that the team has no time to dwell on this one. And as negatively as I still feel about this match three watches later, the Reign weren't exactly run off the pitch. Angel City's non-penalty expected goals were distinctly less than 1, and they really overperformed on the chances they assembled.
It's just that the Reign were also annoyingly bad.
At least the blessing of the Etsy Witch still holds.
