WAVE SEEKING TO STEAL ANOTHER VICTORY ON ROAD

Winning on the road was a bridge too far for expansion teams that preceded the Wave into the world’s top women’s soccer league.

See last year’s Kansas City Current, who today in Missouri will face the Wave. Twelve road games yielded no victories.

Louisville and Orlando, for their part, brought home only one victory from their travels as National Women’s Soccer League expansion clubs, meaning that heading into this year, Houston’s 3-7-1 mark, in 2014, stood as the league’s road standard for an expansion team.

Not wilting on the road, the Wave (4-2) have split four away games — a big reason they own the 12-team league’s best record.

So, in retrospect, Alex Morgan’s sunny comments were, like her three left-footed penalty kicks for goals thus far, on target.

Three days before the Wave won their season opener at Houston, the NWSL veteran said “the club already is not operating at an expansion-club level” and implied rare success was coming for the San Diego newbies.

She lauded team management for putting together a first-rate support system. It would sand rough edges off the 22-game season, road challenges in particular, she asserted.

“This club is doing everything they can do,” said Morgan, who played for the Orlando expansion team whose road games produced a 1-8-1 record in 2016. Commending two fitness coaches, a nutritionist, coach Casey Stoney and staff, Morgan said the main thing, therefore, would remain the main thing.

“For us,” she said of players, “it’s just making sure that all we have to worry about is what we put on the field.”

Along with road essentials, the Wave have taken with them a reliable defense and physical style that, notwithstanding two fouls that led to goals allowed, produced 1-0 victories in Houston and North Carolina and kept them close in 1-0 defeats in Louisville and Seattle. Veterans Jodie Taylor and Morgan scored the road goals, off assists from Katie Johnson and Taylor Kornieck.

“It doesn’t feel like a new team,” said Christen Westphal, a sixth-year defender with her fourth NWSL franchise. “I definitely feel like I’ve been a part of the team for longer than a couple of months.”