Pride seek ‘high level’ effort
Entering one of the busiest weeks of the season, the Orlando Pride were hoping to have a top-four record in the National Women’s Soccer League. After losing at home to the Houston Dash on Saturday, Orlando finds itself in seventh place and must once again attempt to climb back up the table.
“When you look over the frustrations over the weekend, we went into the weekend, a home game, which is really important to win,” coach Tom Sermanni said. “The key thing is making sure that you don’t start to go drift or not being in contact with the top four, so we need to keep picking up results, whether it’s at home, not at home, so we keep in touch.”
Given how tightly packed teams are, the Pride will have a chance to jump back into the top half of the league standings when they take on Sky Blue FC today at Yurcak Field in Piscataway, N.J., at 7 p.m. Orlando suffered a 2-1 loss in New Jersey earlier this season, but Pride players felt that they were the better team during that matchup.
“We went there last game, we played them and I think we were unfortunate not to win,” Orlando defender Toni Pressley said.
“I think we dominated pretty much the whole game, and I think that’s gonna give us some confidence going into this game.”
While they Pride (3-4-3, 12 points) are sure they are capable of picking up their second road win of the season, they will have to shut down one of the league’s better offenses. Sky Blue (5-5-1, 16 points) has scored 16 goals this year, the thirdmost in the league, and feature dangerous forward Samantha Kerr.
Kerr has had several big games for Sky Blue this year and scored a goal and recorded an assist against the Pride the last time the clubs met.
“She’s one of the best forwards right now, obviously in the league, and contesting to be one of the best in the world,” Pride defender Ali Krieger said. “We gotta limit the amount of minutes that she has on the ball and hopefully just get good pressure, close her down early and make her play backwards and passively instead of actively.”
This will be Orlando’s second game in four days and, with another match on Saturday, the Pride will likely have to go deeper into their rotation to help keep their players fresh through the weekend.
“We’ll be freshening up the team, looking at both our tactical perspective, our performance perspective and just, as I say, the perspective of getting fresh legs in there,” Sermanni said. “What those changes are, we don’t know at the moment, but we’ll look to do that and try to utilize the squad as best we can over these seven days.”
While Sky Blue is several spots above Orlando in the table, the team is coming off a 2-1 loss Sunday to the Chicago Red Stars.
Despite both teams having little time to prepare for the game, Sermanni said his players must find a way to play at a high level to win.
“We’ll need to be really on top of our game Wednesday to get a result and I think the key thing is that we first and foremost need to match the energy that they have, the enthusiasm that they have and the work rate that they have,” Sermanni said.
“If we don’t match that, it will be a long night for us. If we match that, then I believe that we’ve got the quality and the ability in this team to go and win the game.”