neat sh!t: nwsl week 1 edition

I love goals. The ball hitting the back of the net is the ultimate punctuation in a game as fluid as soccer, and it’s one of the main reasons I became a soccer sicko. But they aren’t the only things to watch. Listen to any soccer skeptic and they’ll complain about the infrequency of goals and claim the sport is boring. To that I offer my most Bridgerton-esque pshaw.

A lot of fun stuff happens around and in between the ball finding the net. Some of these moments are worth noticing and reliving, because they are fun and neat. So I’ve taken notes on five things that happened during the NWSL’s first week of action so that we may all enjoy some of this truly #neat #shit.

Overall the Spirit dropped a rather stinky performance to start the season, but there was one main standout, and that was new left back, Lucia Di Guglielmo. Usually players who’ve spent most or all of their careers in Europe—like the 28-year-old Di Gugliemo has—have a lot of adapting and adjusting to do when they get to the NWSL. This is usually most true with defenders, as the barrage of athletic attackers is something no other league in Europe offers.

Di Guglielmo said kill all that noise, she’s got this. She was incredible in her first start, often finding the right spaces and using the right touches to escape pressure with the ball. The move above made me yelp out loud, because what’s Italian for audacity? In her own defensive third, in a brand new league, with a lot of high pressure and she just casually hits a backheel meg to help the team play through it??? Absurd.

(There was also another extremely satisfying turn she made along the sideline that elicited a noise from me. This is why I watch most games alone.)

The best way to describe the role of a center midfielder for a ‘Merican is that they are the quarterbacks of a team, except they also have to play defense too. It’s their job to understand where everyone is on the pitch, identify the angles and coverage (defensive shape), establish tempo, and deliver accurate passes.

There aren’t too many midfielders in the league who do all of this better than Kenza Dali. What I really love about this pass is how she hit the playground ‘point where you want a teammate to go’ before delivering this absolute dime.

I routinely marvel at how much this game forces the human body to contort and react. To get this pass where it needed to go, with the right angle and weight, Dali had to completely open her body and twist her right foot so its toes were pointing to the opposite sideline. She also had to strike the ball with enough power to beat the defenders in between, but enough spin to roll into Ludmila’s path.

Watch how she stumbles backwards to regain her balance after hitting the pass, that gives you an idea of how hard it is to execute a pass like this in 11v11 competitive play.

Former BK Häcken head coach Mak Lind was on the right side of some peak NWSL’ing in his first match in charge at North Carolina Courage. Louisville feasted on the openness of the game and used the gaps they found to rack up the highest expected goals (xG) total of the weekend. Courage keeper Kailen Sheridan and an Ashley Sanchez brace kept Rahsing from spoiling his debut, instead securing a 2-1 win.

Beyond the dub, an encouraging aspect of the match was the Courage pulling off this move 23 minutes into his tenure. I particularly loved the patience to setup defenders and give teammates chances to find optimal positions to receive passes. The little stutter step Dani Weatherholt (#17) does along the sideline before passing and running forward froze a potential pressing defender and gave Riley Jackson (#16) time to drop into free space below her.

Once the ball was played by Jackson to Carly Wickenheiser (#14), she drove centrally and did a good job of keeping the ball on the outside of her body until she attracted enough defenders to open space, and a window, to send it through to Shinomi Koyama (#20). From there, Shinomi takes all the space and carries the ball to the top of the final third before laying it off to Payton Linnehan (#15), who again used patience to wait for Ryan Williams (#13) to overlap, receive the ball, and drive it low into the box back to Shinomi.

Unfortunately Koyama skied the first time shot, but in my opinion that’s fine, scoring from this would would have been a much too powerful thing to do week 1.

As a Day One Jaedyn Shaw Believer I have been flabbergasted, bewildered, gobsmacked and befuddled at several coaches refusing to let her cook. That’s changed now that she’s at Gotham, and Shaw has rewarded them with filth, assists, and goals.

Boston came into this match ready to scrap, and Gotham’s Stay Ready All Stars duly obliged. The game was won because Jaedyn Shaw found a moment within the chaos to do Jaedyn Shaw things. I loved to see her using physicality to drop toward the ball while keeping a defender pinned on her back like a target forward. Then, once the ball was received, the quick feet get activated and tears Boston apart.

Shaw suddenly rolls the ball backwards mid-180 and drops her defender, the other coming to help was immediately taken out of the play by another quick touch as Shaw tapped the ball into space and ran to meet it. From there there she spots Lilly Reale in front of her marker and plays a throughball into space for her to run onto. The rest of the move led to the only goal of the game, but no one ever gets in position to contribute to a goal without Shaw doing what she does to receive the ball and leave two defenders behind in the blink of an eye.

Given how poorly the NWSL handled Savy King’s medical emergency last year, they don’t deserve this moment, but King surely does. She collapsed during a match on May 9^th last year and had to be resuscitated on the pitch. In an awful bit of league leadership and decision making, Angel City were forced to play the rest of the match while King was on her way to the hospital in critical condition.

Thankfully, the medical care King received allowed doctors to diagnose the problem, an anomalous left coronary artery, described as ‘a rare condition that fewer than 1% of people are born with.’ After surgery and rehab, she was cleared to return to play this season, and subbed into her first match since the traumatic incident that nearly saw a budding career and young life end tragically.

King, not being satisfied with merely a return to the pitch, immediately snapped back into prime defender mode and chased down a Chicago player to make a perfect sliding tackle in the box. Yeah, Savy King is back, and remarkably so. ■