Spirited Away and the playoffs are set. We're KC bound!

Hello Courage Country! It’s our first-ever post season newsletter! Exciting times! The Courage are headed to Kansas City this week for the quarterfinals, and if we can get everyone healthy, it’s a tough-but-winnable match. But I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s break down the strange lineup and performance against the Spirit.

Recap: Courage v. Washington Spirit

The main story for me here is the starting XI. The Courage chose to rest a lot of starters, many of whom were returning from international friendlies. This included captain Denise O’Sullivan, Ashley Sanchez, Kerolin Nicoli (who was listed as questionable with a leg injury and ultimately not rostered), Manaka Matsukubo and Feli Rauch. So, with half of our starting lineup sitting out at least the first half of the match, it was going to be a struggle against the Spirit’s very talented squad.

The Courage played cautiously; any press from the Spirit was immediately met with a retreat to the backline, or passed to keeper Casey Murphy. Though we were testing both the right and left sides of the pitch well, we weren’t getting a lot of forward momentum. The Spirit’s excellent midfield was on point. That said, given our defensive posture, we did break up a lot of great attacks from the Spirit, including a great tackle early on from Malia Berkely.

During our attack runs, Washington frequently disrupted plays and outright muscled us off of the ball. After tackling Victoria Pickett, the Spirit scored a first half goal on a beautiful, long shot from Ashley Hatch that sailed right over Murphy.

O’Sullivan and Sanchez came in at the half, followed by Manaka and Olivia Wingate around the 66’ minute mark. This lineup breathed a bit more life into the squad, but in the end, the game ground down to a 1-0 loss, the first regular season Courage loss at home since April 15, 2023. Jason Anderson pointed out on Twitter that the person scoring the game winning goal in that match was … Ashley Hatch.

Some bright spots for this match included Dani Weatherholt, who played in the midfield and leaving us with just three in the back. She was everywhere, making some great plays and clearly enjoying her time on the pitch. There was a lot of great communication happening between her and Berkeley to make the unusual positioning work.

Standout stats

5 total shots. 1 on target. Ouch.

Look ahead: Courage v. Kansas City Current

Kansas City was dominant for the majority of the season, neck and neck with Orlando for top positioning. They slid a bit at the end to fourth on the table, but those top four teams range from 55-60 total points; the Courage at fifth have only 39 points.

As another way of looking at it, OptaJack notes all four top teams averaged two points per game this season; historically, only 1 team per season has ever achieved that. It’s a massive separation from the lower teams on the table.

Making it through the playoff season will be tough. Nobody is under any illusions there. But as Katie notes in our podcast this week, we do have the talent to stand up to the toughest squads.

We will need to set the tempo in this match and not get pushed around like we have the last two matches. Another key will be defensively keeping a balanced eye on both 2024 NWSL Golden Boot winner Temwa Chawing, assuming she’s healthy enough to play this week, and former Courage forward Debinha. I’m sure we all remember Deb’s sneaky goal earlier this season in our loss to Kansas City last may, and Chawinga’s goal against us in September, though we ultimately won that match 2-1.

Our defenders are more than up to the challenge, but we’ll need our forwards in top form and earning some goals. There’s still no official word on Cortnee Vine, who scored the equalizer against the Current in September. But if Manaka, Kerolin, Aline Gomes and Vine are healthy, we can match the Current.

Courage news and updates

• Both Casey Murphy and Kaleigh Kurtz received Ironwoman recognitions for playing every single minute on the field, a particular honor this year given the extended season. Kurtz has won this for the third year in a row, an accomplishment the Courage celebrated with a bit of Marvel style:

Around the league and beyond

• San Diego moved its final home match to Louisville, citing field conditions and concerns about player safety.

• The playoffs are here! Who do you have in the finals (besides the Courage 💪)? Here’s the NWSL’s bracket:

That’s it for this week! As always, you can get in touch with tips, suggestions, corrections and more: [email protected].

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