Wingate stuns Angel City with last minute equalizer; next up: Breaking Bay

Olivia Wingate clinched a 1-1 draw in the final seconds of the home matchup against Angel City, easily this week’s highlight. We’ve sealed our fifth-place finish on the NWSL table. And The Courage are on the road next for our rematch against expansion side Bay FC.

Former employees of the San Diego Wave filed a harassment lawsuit against the club and the league, and the details are bad. It demonstrates the league still needs better mechanisms for whistleblowing, investigation and enforcement.

And Boston’s clunky rollout of their new name, Bos Nation, and initial marketing campaign, has left a lot of fans scratching their heads, and sparked some outright complaints.

Let’s get to it.

Recap: Courage v. Angel City

It was a fun back-and-forth match! Angel City was clearly pushing their own players outside of their comfort zone, to exciting effect. As Katie notes on this week’s podcast, the outside backs were coming pretty far forward, pressing Courage defenders Ryan Williams and Feli Rauch in new ways.

The Courage were adapting well, especially in the first half, turning in a dominant performance, even though we didn’t score.

Angel City, having just had three points docked by the league for salary cap infractions, needed to earn those three points back this match. They came out in the second half setting the pace, playing hard and keeping the Courage mostly in defensive formation. In a scary moment (at least for me), Christen Press and Sydney Leroux subbed on at the same time. I had flashbacks to the Racing Louisville match when the subs increased the squad’s intensity and the Courage struggled to match it.

Thankfully, in this match, the Courage played well into stoppage time. And then Christen Press got her comeback goal at 90’ + 7. It was equal parts thrilling to watch Press do her thing, and crushing to think there was almost no time left in the match with the Courage one goal down. She made a left-footed kick past four defenders, and past Casey Murphy and a fifth defender, into the net.

And then we also did our thing. Rauch and midfielder Riley Jackson each had a light touch getting the ball to captain Denise O’Sullivan. Sully didn’t hesitate, booting a smart, well-placed kick to chaos muppet extraordinaire, Olivia Wingate. Wingate bolted toward the goal and had a perfect, patient stutter-step against keeper DiDi Haračić. She scored at 90’ + 10. End of match. Crowd goes wild. Draw secured.

This is what late season soccer is all about.

Standout stats

Look ahead: Courage v. Bay FC

I’ll keep this relatively short, since we just played Bay.

There are some things stacked against us: it’s a very late away match, against a team that turned in a surprisingly strong performance against us in our 1-1 draw last month. Bay was one of the first teams to openly disrupt our play style this season, and it seemed as though Louisville and Angel City took notes.

Even so, Bay has struggled since then, with losses to Kansas City, Orlando and a 5-1 pummeling by Gotham. Their only win came against Seattle.

Opponent quality plays into those scores all the way around, but it’s a team that is struggling heading into the final stretch of the season. It’s normal for an expansion side to struggle late. They often don’t have the roster depth to make up for players taking knocks or dealing with fatigue.

Meanwhile, the Courage are hitting top form at the right time, and we dealt with so many injuries early in the season that between recovery and the acquisitions of Maycee Bell, Cortnee Vine and Aline Gomes, we’re playing a strong, deep bench.

I haven’t mentioned this in a couple of issues, but Kaleigh Kurtz and Narumi Miura remain on yellow card watch, with four cards each, so we can expect them to continue to play conservatively.

Early subs and a fresh mix of players should keep Bay on their toes while they fight to retain the coveted final spot for inclusion in the playoffs.

Courage news and updates

It was a light week on the Courage front, which was good because it was not a week where we want to be in national conversations around the NWSL …

Around the league and beyond

• A deeply sad, frustrating and disappointing story came out of San Diego, where five former staffers have filed a lawsuit against the club and the league alleging an abusive and hostile work environment. The claims include disability discrimination, racial discrimination, sexual harassment, failure to investigate and prevent discrimination and harassment, retaliation, wrongful termination, and retaliating for engaging in protected activity. Katie and I talk about it on this week’s podcast in the context of this being such a harmful failure of oversight juxtaposed against the strides the league has made elsewhere. Even though it’s a difficult read, I encourage you to spend time with Diana Moskovitz and Lesley Ryder’s story on Defector, linked above.

• Also … Boston. We have a team name! And it’s a name that seems to be resonating with very few people: Bos Nation, an anagram of Bostonian.

  • They also launched a disconcerting marketing campaign called, and I never thought I’d have to type this phrase in an NWSL newsletter: Too Many Balls. I’d link to it, but the URL is now dead, and merch looks pulled as I’m getting ready to set the publication time, so perhaps they are actively pulling the campaign. Sandra Herrera broke the story at CBS.

  • What should have been a celebratory event was marred by negative reactions, including their supporters group, former Courage player Sam Mewis calling out the promo video for not including any of Boston’s women’s teams, and Quinn noting the campaign comes off as transphobic, and then having their comment hidden on Instagram.

• Finally, former Courage player and current ACFC defender Merritt Mathias will retire after the 2024 season, another legend stepping down. We wish her the best!

That’s it for this week!

We’ll take a break next week, and return with a Bay recap and look ahead to the final regular season match against the Washington Spirit in two weeks.

As always, you can get in touch with tips, suggestions, corrections and more: [email protected].

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