- When: Thursday April 15th, 7:00 PM ET
- Where: Audi Field (Closed doors)
- Watch: Paramount+
Scouting Report: Racing Louisville FC
- The expansion side is coming off a 2-2 draw against the Orlando Pride, with goals by infrequent/never scorer Cece Kizer and a 93rd minute equalizer by former Washington Spirit player Brooke Hendrix. A thrilling opening game in front of their fans in their new stadium, Racing have made a great first impression on the league and are looking forward to continuing that momentum against the Spirit.
- With not a lot of tape to analyze, you have to look to the players recent past with other teams. Keep an eye out for Savannah McCaskill and Yuki Nagasato, both previously on the Chicago Red Stars, to provide the offensive threats for this young team. McCaskill is in more of a deep lying playmaker role for Racing while Nagasato is expected to shoulder the scoring load, with 7 goals in her last complete season in 2019 for Chicago.
- Racing have a number of former Washington Spirit players, including Hendrix, Katie Lund, Cheyna Matthews, and Katie McClure.
Spirit Notes
After a 3-2 loss against perennial superpower NC Courage, Richie Burke and the Spirit look to balance the demands of pre-season fitness building, new formation implementation, and giving opportunities to new players with trying to be competitive in the Challenge Cup. Goalscorers Kumi Yokoyama and Trinity Rodman got a great start on season, with Yokoyama quickly converting on a goalkeeping mistake and Rodman scoring her first professional goal in her first appearance, taking down a great ball by Natalie Jacobs with a deft first touch and slotting it home.
While Andi Sullivan, Kelley O’Hara and Emily Sonnett are on international duty, the Spirit look to continue to implement a new defensive system without two of their best defenders. The team should be welcoming back Saori Takarada and Mariana Speckmaier from Japan and Venezuela duty, respectively. This was on display against NC, with the backline getting pulled out of position a number of times and Courage players getting behind the backline with impunity at some times.
Speaking about his expectations for the game on Thursday, Manager Richie Burke said,
“The emphasis for us is to get back to being us. Regardless of what formation or system we play, our basic tenets of ball retention and ball recovery are the two pieces of identity that we want to get back to. We keep the ball as much as we can, we share as much as we can, and then when we don’t have it, we try and get it back as quickly as we possibly can. They are the foundation of what we try and do. So making sure, they play a little bit of a 4-3-2-1, they’ve got a flexibility with McCaskill, who’s a good footballer, who floats off all kinds of different shapes and gives you a bit of an unconventional look. We’re dealing with that aspect out of possession is important for us. But just getting back and making them chase and making them try and get the ball off of us, make it very difficult for them to get the ball off of us in certain areas will be a big key for us going into Thursday’s match.”
Burke was also asked about the challenges of preparing for a regular season, a pre-season tournament and a 10 week preseason, saying,
“You’ve got to be getting results to advance and win the Challenge Cup and finish top of your group. But in preseason
most of the time, they are purely for preparatively purposes. You’re advancing the loading levels, you’re looking on your tactical periodization, you’re looking at making sure how your team’s effectiveness is in certain areas and certain zones of the field. So the preseason process is purely that. This Challenge Cup’s got a little bit of a balance. You’re preparing all those aspects but you’re also trying to get a result too. We played five players on the weekend who were making their Spirit/NWSL debuts. We played four players who were completely in uncustomary roles, unfamiliar roles for them. So we would not have done that if we’re trying to win every single match, but we were forced to do that. So it’s a real tough balance for us to go after results and also use this for the benefit of the players.“
Injuries
Burke also noted that because of the quick turnaround time between matches, they haven’t been able to follow their normal procedure of player evaluation and roster selection. Ashley Hatch, Paige Nielsen and Tori Huster are managing slight injuries, and are uncertain for Thursday. New acquisition Julia Roddar, who returned from international duty with Sweden to play against NC, is anticipated to play a full 90 minutes against Racing.
Prediction
Washington Spirit 2, Racing Louisville FC 1