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In the first half, the Orlando Pride were able to create more chances in attack than Angel City. Adriana’s shot went wide, and the attacker was eager to score rather than passing it to her completely unmarked teammates. In the 23rd minute, Julie Doyle is subbed out due to injury. Messiah Bright came in. Inmediately after, off a counter-attack, Kyle Strom struck a shross and came close to putting Orlando 1-0 up. The ball hit the post. 34th minute, Adriana came close again but lost the ball in transition. Angel City started to counter with some danger and Emily Madril stood tall and neutralized Angel City’s chances singlehandedly. Fantastic first half by the Pride CB that had a great first half, despite the yellow card and the PK. The Pride defender played with with more grit than in the game against Portland. In the 39th minute, Angel City went up on the scoreboard off a penalty kick. It was Emslie who scored a wonderful shot. Despite the Pride being down 1-0 before the half. That penalty was the only chance in attack they had the whole first half. Pride needed to finish the attacking play, they created a few chances but were not able to score one. Before the end of the half, Ally Watt had the chance to score off a rebound in the box, with an open goal but hit the ball far wide. The Pride went to half time down 1 goal to nil.
In the second half, Orlando Pride came on the attacking onslaught and created plenty of attacking chances. The Pride were clearly the better team throughout 90 minutes. In the 53rd minute, Messiah Bright scored after a wonderful assist from Erika Tymrak. It was her first goal in her second career game. The Pride until this point dominated and showed massive improvement compared to the Portland game. The Pride held possession but were not able to finish their chances and that bit them back at the end. As well, great game by Haley McCutcheon. The whole backline had a great game overall. Amy Moorhouse with the tremendous penalty kick save, that ignited the whole team to push forward. In stoppage time, pretty much at the death, Katie Johnson scored a goal that stunned Exploria and the Black Swans, the Pride’s solid backline did not see Johnson coming. Angel City won the game 2-1 at Exploria Stadium, everyone left disappointed, not so much with the team but how things play through. The referee had also a lot of bad calls for the Pride throughout the game. Orlando Pride were the better team but they could not capitalize on any their chances. For being such a young squad, the Pride showed resilience and character to face a tough opponent like Angel City with no fear in their eyes.
Orlando Pride Head Coach Seb Hines
On the next game against Gotham
“There’s always pressure any time you step onto the field. Pressure is a privilege, that’s why we’re all here. You want to feel the pressure, you want to feel that you need to win a game. We wouldn’t be in this industry, we wouldn’t be on the field if we didn’t want to win. It builds character, you have to build character in these moments and our players will build character. Every moment that they go for, every minute that they spend on the field is going to build them to be the players that we all believe in at the end of it. You have to go through these moments to really identify who you are as well. It hurts and that’s a good thing. It hurts to lose a game at home. It hurts to lose in front of your fans, but they’re going to learn from it and they’re going to get better for these moments. Listen, as I told him after the end of the game don’t get used to this feeling because the better moments are ahead of us. They’re going to stick together. They are a young team. We all know that and these moments here will define us throughout the season. We’re two games in as well so there are still a lot of games to play and I can never fault their effort. Their efforts are first class, you can see it. They’re putting pressure on, they’re putting players in uncomfortable positions and when we get the ball we have to capitalize on that and when it comes down to end product, the game is built on goals so we have to score at that moment and we have to obviously not concede as well.”
Orlando Pride Forward Messiah Bright
On her first professional goal
“Yeah, I think just through the run of the play. Erika [Tymrak] played the through ball and at first, I didn’t really see it, but I think I saw it in a good enough time to where I could make contact with the ball and really just keep my body steady and just driving through, doing what I do best. Being strong on the ball, holding it, and eventually creating a path for myself and I saw the keeper not really set and I just toe-poked it pretty early.”
Orlando Pride Midfielder Erika Tymrak
On thoughts of the game
“Yeah, obviously, we’re really disappointed with that result. I thought we controlled the game and we thought we had a lot of chances and that’s on us to finish them. But the positives are that we did possess the game and we did control the game and we had the chances, but we have to be ruthless in front of the goal and both boxes. To get scored on the last play of the game, hurts, but we got to learn from it, we got to grow. It’s super early in the season, this is a long season so we’ve just got to keep moving forward.”
The Orlando Pride will be back at Exploria on April 15th against Gotham FC.
Until then, Pride or Die!
All video footage is thanks to Orlando Pride Communications
