Sermanni says wheels came off
ORLANDO PRIDE AT SKY BLUE, SATURDAY, NOON, NWSLSOCCER.COM
Orlando Pride coach Tom Sermanni isn’t shy when saying the 2018 season has been a disappointment for him.
The Pride (8-9-6, 30 points) are out of playoff contention and will do their best to simply end the season on a positive note when they face Sky Blue FC on the road on Saturday.
For Sermanni, the most disappointing aspect of the season has been watching the team struggle to put together a 90-minute performance.
“Not much else I can say,” Sermanni said. “I think six games ago, we were in a great position and then looking to sort of, as we did last year, really kick on. The team was all back together. I think everybody was healthy. We were really confident of getting in the top four, and the wheels came off.
“We’ve all scratched our heads to try and find reasons. We’ve tried numerous ways to fix it. Changing formations, changing personnel, changing training, changing meetings — just doing things to try and turn things around and we haven’t done that successfully.”
Sermanni said bouncing back from this season comes down to three things: looking at the training methodology, looking at the tactical methodology and then looking at the personnel. The Pride came into the season with a talented roster and high hopes, but the things never clicked on the field.
Before listing those three things, Sermanni said with a laugh, “I don’t know if coaches ever do recover from these kinds of seasons.”
The Pride are winless in their last five matches and have lost three in a row. The disappointment of the season has made it hard to come up with Sermanni said.
“I think this is where you’ve got to step back and look at things in perspective,” he said. “You’ve got to step back and look and say, you know, we’ve just finished our third year. When, as a team, you come into an established league, it’s much, much more complex that it is when you’ve a team that’s been in there from Day 1.”
Still, Sermanni did take some good from this season — and there’s a match remaining.
“I think in some ways we’ve achieved a lot,” Sermanni said. “In some ways we’ve still got a long way to go. I think we’ve put together a team and a squad that’s really competitive. I think we’ve put the team on the map in some ways, despite this blip that we’ve had this season.
“I think we’ve now really got ourselves much more established as a club, on and off the field and in this community. We’ve got great, loyal support within the town. We’ve got a group of players together that a really proud to play for the team. We’ve achieved all those things.”
Veteran defender Ali Krieger said the season has been a chance to grow.
“I don’t think it’s a disappointment,” she said. “I think it’s more upsetting, because we all expected to be in the top four. We have a great team. If you look at our roster, it’s shocking that we aren’t in the top four. That’s more the disappointing factor.
“I don’t think the season as a whole is disappointing, because you do learn, and you do grow, no matter if you’re successful or not and I think that that is the process that we’re in right now. We can kind of look back and think of what we can do to be better next year and to grow in these challenging moments and seasons.” takeaways,