Back to basics: OL Reign score four unanswered to beat Angel City
By Charles Hamaker
Seattle, WA – Nearly a week after their ugly 4-1 loss at the hands of NY/NJ Gotham FC, the OL Reign defeated Angel City FC by the same score in a comeback effort. Angel City got on the board first on an olimpico, but the Reign didn’t waver in their response as forward Elyse Bennett equalized just seven minutes after. The Reign went on to score four goals unanswered following Angel City’s match opener, securing a crucial three-point bounce back victory. Following a tough loss like the one to Gotham where the club seemed to self-implode, having the week of training at home helped the club get back to their basics and their principals to find themselves once again. With the result, the Reign move into second in the NWSL table, tied in points with Portland for first.
“Going into this game this week, we just kind of stripped it all back, back to the basics and focused on what the foundation of the Reign is. And that is how hard we work defensively. Just kind of like, falling back on that. The first goal, everybody just had the mindset of, we’re not losing this game. We just kept putting our foot on the gas. I think that you guys could see that. ”
Pregame scenes ahead of the OL Reign win over Angel City FC (Photos by Liz Wolter)
Staying resilient
The start of the match for the Reign wasn’t all good despite going into halftime level, as the home side conceded first on an olimpico by Angel City’s Claire Emslie on their third corner kick in a row. It was a tough opening for the home side considering what happened last week, but after a week of training where the Reign had honest and vulnerable conversations within their group, they were ready to remain focused. The Reign heavily pride themselves on playing strong and stout defensively, and outside of the olimpico, they were able to do that which also set up their offensive attack. Despite having the blazing young speedster that is Alyssa Thompson on the wing, Angel City couldn’t get much of anything going and failed to create any big chances on the match.
“I said to the players after the game, you make a choice when things are going bad. You either dig in and you collectively try to solve it, or you focus on the things that we’ve not been doing well, and forget what makes us great. I felt like we decided to decide we wanted to make ourselves great. This league is hard. There’s no easy game, there’s no easy opponent, there’s no game where you can turn up and give 80% and honestly that’s what I thought we did last week. We weren’t giving 50%, we were giving 80%, they were 100%. You get punished and when we give ourselves the best possible chance of winning games, when we show up and we put in the defensive effort to then go in, provide ourselves with the attacking opportunities and we did that. Thought we could have scored a lot more goals and we did we have way more opportunities than we took today. But again, I honestly blackout in games, but I feel like a lot of it came from defending, that was the way it felt. ”
Despite allowing the first goal of the day, the Reign had the first few chances of the game and could’ve easily been the side on top. The home side didn’t let this bother them, though, as Megan Rapinoe finally got a service into the box that found Elyse Bennett on a hop. Bennett, with a defender on her hip, redirected the ball towards goal just enough to get past Angel City keeper DiDi Haracic and equalize the game in the 34th minute. Bennett nearly added a second in the 38th minute for the brace, but couldn’t sneak her shot past Haracic for a second time. Once again, opportunities were numerous for the Reign, they just had to be better at converting them. And that they did, in the second half.
OL Reign forward Veronica Lastko recorded a brace in the victory (Photos by Liz Wolter)
Latsko gives the Reign a lead
Forward Veronica Latsko has often featured as late match energy substitute for the Reign, but has really shown out so far to begin the 2023 season. That includes a goal and an assist effort in an impressive victory against the Houston Dash on May 6th, but today’s match may have been even better. As the Reign pressed forward, Latsko had taken a few shots that weren’t quite on the mark but it was apparent that she was getting around the goal in a good spot to strike. In the 52nd minute, Latsko struck a ball from just outside the box that blazed its way into the cop near corner to beat Haracic and give the Reign the lead. It was a brilliant goal to give the club the lead, but Latsko wasn’t done with her great match just there.
“Completely new mindset. When there are games like that, you can’t dwell on it. I took my time to do all, and then came back to training and I was ready and prepared to go for Angel City. That’s just the way you have to go about it.”
“Honestly, I didn’t know that it was within three minutes; once the sun came out, it felt pretty long, that second half. Honestly, just happy to get our team out of the tying zone and into the winning zone. And honestly, Pinoe put everything on a dime. So, it was pretty easy.”
Just three minutes in the match later, Latsko had another excellent opportunity to find the back of the net. Because of the Reign’s strong defensive effort that rendered Angel City’s attack relatively useless, the club was on the attack once again with traffic in the box and Megan Rapinoe sending a cross in. A bouncer, just like the ball in to Bennett, found Latsko in a wide-open pocket of space for an easy punch in to extend the lead and give Latsko a brace. The month of May has been somewhat up and down for Latsko, but with more positive than negative considering this brace and the goal and assist match against Houston. After the giveaway against Gotham for their fourth goal last week that Latsko took personally, it was very good to see her have a strong and effective performance like this.
“V has been so good for us, so good for us this year. Having to adapt a lot, play a couple different positions, play kind of new things that we’re asking. Scoring goal, putting pressure on the defense, getting assists. Just always being there, super professional. Obviously you don’t like stay in this league if you’re not good, smart, professional, and show up the way that we need. I think in an environment where we kind of have some older players, but a lot of younger players as well, Ronnie always keeps the bar really high and pushes everyone. Makes sure that we have a lot to Laugh with Ronnie about. Wild shit always happens to us, it’s so funny, her car got stolen earlier this year. Good energy and a good vibe, just a good person, then on the field obviously making a huge impact in so many ways.”
OL Reign forward Megan Rapinoe tallied three assists in the win, becoming the fifth player in league history to achieve that feat (Photos by Liz Wolter)
Rapinoe continues to rewrite history
Reign forward, USWNT legend, and international icon Megan Rapinoe simply continues to push the needle as her career continues. Despite some odd calls over the past few weeks for Rapinoe to retire or get less minutes. Granted that Rapinoe’s minutes as of late haven’t been particularly incredible, the calls that were going around on social media were ridiculous but it wasn’t as if she was playing out of her mind. Even in some of the first half, Rapinoe’s services didn’t appear too great and she seemed to be missing the mark at times, but a switch was flipped as the match went on and Megan generated a whopping nine chances in the win. While she didn’t score a goal in the Reign win, Rapinoe factored into three of those goals.
“I think in the previous games and a lot of this season, I haven’t gotten into the pockets as much as I normally do. That’s just kind of my bread and butter. So dangerous, puts a lot of pressure on the defense, we can get moving a little bit and get a little bit more fluid. Feel like I was just able to find those pockets and get into those a little bit more. We talk a lot about near post runs, and it just opens everything up. Obviously, Elyse’s goal came off a near post run. But, if we don’t have that, Ronnie doesn’t score that goal. We don’t have people threatening in behind, we can’t find people at the top of the box. I think just in general; our movement was a lot better today and our exploiting of different spaces and whatever they want to leave open, we’re gonna find that. I think that’s kind of what I was, what I was trying to focus on, put a lot of pressure on their backline and on their goalkeeper. And then obviously they do all the hard work in getting in front of people or hitting bangers from from outside, we had a couple of bangers today, like Quinn. On the eve of Pride Month, big gay goal? I just love it, like, just too good. Just try to be dangerous in those pockets, and always put pressure on the defense, whatever they want to give us. ”
OL Reign’s Quinn scored the fourth and final goal of the match after coming on as a substitute (Photos by Liz Wolter)
Rapinoe was able to find different pockets in the Angel City defense as the match went on and after a few of her balls in just simply weren’t on the mark. As she settled in, her service’s in were getting into space for her teammates to put them in the best possible spot to score and they did, three times as mentioned previously. It was a historic effort for the forward, as she became just the fifth player ever in NWSL history to tally three assists in one match and became the all-time leader in assists for the Reign. While Rapinoe dealt with the same sorts of doubts and complaints last season, she answered those as well as her second half of the season was incredibly strong and was a huge impact for the club down the stretch to secure the NWSL Shield. While there’s still plenty of season to go, seeing Rapinoe have efficient and effective matches like this is a huge boost to a Reign club that continues to work on its finishing.
“I think that’s really, really important. You’re gonna have periods in the season that are just tough. Sometimes you eke out a win, we’re not playing well, tie or lose a couple games or give up like we did. You got to be able to weather that like V said, you can feel it. The quicker you get over it, and figure out where things went wrong, what we can do better? I think the better and just having that next one up mindset is really important. To your point, these games come in fast and fast and thick, always, it seems like and obviously a huge, huge rivalry game coming up, but another game midweek. It’s important for us to have this good feeling as well. It’s tough. Just in in general, there’s been a lot swirling around the club for a number of weeks and months, obviously, with the sale and the news of Michelle Kang. It’s hard not to let it seep in somehow and in some ways, so I think for us to be able to get back into just a good feeling and a good vibe, you know, have people scoring goals and scoring really good goals that’d be a good locker room fodder, I think for the week and just kind of lift our spirits a little bit when it was a tough, tough moment, especially at home to lose like that last weekend. To be able to rebound from that and the only silver lining really is that we don’t have to ever see that shirt Laura was wearing because it was terrible. So that’s a plus, it was terrible. It is so bad. Oh, no wonder we lost Laura. ”
OL Reign forward Elyse Bennett scored the first goal of the match, Megan Rapinoe’s first assist of three (Photos by Liz Wolter)
Where they stand now
With the victory, the Reign move up to second in the NWSL Table and are tied with the Portland Thorns for first. It’s a tight race at the top of the league, as four clubs are tied with 16 points but because of tiebreakers the Reign sit at second. In addition to that, the Washington Spirit are just one point off those four clubs. Those top six are just about Houston, who sits at 12 points and then there’s a general drop off. At this point in the somewhat earlier part of the season, everything is still up for grabs and nothing is decided quite yet, so it’s important that the Reign push forward and continue to stack points. This big next week is going to be big for both standard regular season table and Challenge Cup, considering the battle with San Diego on Wednesday and the huge doubleheader against the Thorns on June 3rd.
“After, not really the North Carolina result, but more last week’s game and performance. We had a very good vulnerable, honest chat, when we got back into training. The sound foundation of this team has always been structured off being defensively good as a team. That leads us into good attacking moments, and I felt like we’d come away from that. Our tactic was nothing to do with Alyssa Thompson, not because she’s not a good player, because she’s an excellent player. It was more of a collective effort to make sure that it was as difficult for the opponent as possible, to play through us, play around us, to play over us, whatever they wanted to do, we have to match it and be better at it. I felt we did a really good job of that even before they scored. We set the tone really well on that. We continued it throughout the game. I think we got the rewards for that which we haven’t been doing. We needed to get back to that, and today we managed to do that.”
Scenes after the OL Reign victory over Angel City FC (Photos by Liz Wolter)
Quick notes
OL Reign finished the match with 24 total shots (ex. blocks), their most shots in a single game since the 2016 season.
OL Reign extended its unbeaten streak to seven games against Angel City FC (6-0-1), having never lost to the second-year club across all competitions.
Reign forward Elyse Bennett scored the team’s first goal in the 34th minute to tie the match, 1-1. The goal marks the second-year forward’s first with the Reign and fourth all-time. Bennett finished with a career-high five shots.
Bennett is one of four players on the Reign to record at least one goal and one assist in 2023.
Reign forward Veronica Latsko recorded her first-ever brace since entering the league in 2018. The goals were 2 minutes at 16 seconds apart, making her the second-fastest player to record a brace for the Reign since Nahomi Kawasumi in 2014 (2:13). Latsko finished the match with a career-high six shots.
Latsko has three goals in 2023, which is tied for the most on the team. The fifth-year veteran has 11 goals all-time.
Reign midfielder Quinn recorded their first-ever NWSL goal to close out the game, 4-1. The Canadian midfielder scored within five minutes of entering the match.
For the first time in her career, forward Megan Rapinoe recorded three assists in the same match. The last time the veteran recorded multiple assists in a game was in 2018. Rapinoe is the fourth player in league history to record a three-assist game in regular season play and the second player in club history, joining former teammate Nahomi Kawasumi (2017).
Rapinoe has 25 assists all-time, which is the most in club history and the fifth most in league history.
The win brings the all-time series to 6-0-1 between the Reign and Angel City FC.
What’s next?
The Reign begin a busy and hectic week with a victory, as following this result they’ll have two more matches within the next seven days. The first of those two matches comes on Wednesday, May 31st as the club heads out to California for a UKG Challenge Cup battle with the San Diego Wave FC. Through two matches so far, the Reign haven’t dropped points yet and sit atop the Western division of the Challenge Cup, looking to continue that stretch when they clash with San Diego. That matchup has a kickoff time of 7PM PST, and the match will be broadcast on Paramount+. It won’t be an easy battle for the Reign, as the Wave sit at third in the NWSL table at this point of the regular season and won the only Challenge Cup matchup that they had.