San Diego Wave lose 1-2 against Orlando Pride extending winless streak to six
San Diego Wave FC players shake hands following their 1-2 loss to Orlando Pride. The Pride was on a nine-match winless streak before their match against the Wave. (Emmanuel Alonso/Sandiego.futbol)
The struggles seem to only be getting worse.
San Diego Wave FC lost 1-2 against the Orlando Pride at home, extending their winless streak to six matches and ended the Pride’s nine-match winless streak in the NWSL regular season.
“I know it’s been a lot of focus saying, ‘we don’t score enough goals,’” Eidevall said. “I think that’s fair to say that, we work hard without scoring goals, but if we look at the games and say what we need to win games, the consistency in the way that we play defense, and doing that better as a team. That's the number one thing for us.
We need to improve that, and we’re not there in the season where we can expect us to win games if we are not playing really good defense. It’s just as simple as that.”
The defense was made up of its typical contributors of Trinity Armstrong, Kennedy Wesley at center back and Hanna Lundkvist and Kristen McNabb as fullbacks.
The Wave gave up a goal early on to one of the newest stars in the NWSL, Jacquie Ovalle. It came in the eighth minute with Ally Watt running down the right wing with a long ball while being covered by Kennedy Wesley. Wesley gave too much space to Watt and the defense did not run back in a timely or organized manner leaving Ovalle wide-open in the corner of the box.
Ovalle took a light initial touch with her left foot before burying a shot toward the back post and into the back of the net to make it 1-0.
The Wave responded quickly with an equalizer by taking advantage of an error by the Orlando goalkeeper.
Anna Moorhouse tried to play from the back and send the ball forward, but she made a poor pass to an open area toward none of her teammates in the area. Dudinha was perfectly positioned and intercepted the ball easily and sent a shot right back to the goalkeeper. Moorhouse tried to smack the ball away, but was unable to push it away before it fell into the back of the net to make it 1-1.
Orlando’s right back, Oihane Hernández, brought the ball from the right side of the midfield and just managed to send a perfect cross that curved behind the Wave backline. Carson Pickett made a run in the middle completely unmarked which allowed her to smash it in to make it 2-1.
The Wave had one more great opportunity in the 74th minute thanks to one of their substitutes, Jordan Fusco, but couldn’t finish the job with a goal.
“We’ve been working on crosses the past few weeks, so whether it was an early cross behind the backline or in front of the line,” Fusco said. “When I saw that there was space I knew I could play it and then we had people in the backpost which is what we’d also been working on and did create a bunch of really close opportunities.”
Jordan Fusco sent in a good cross toward the back post for Hanna Lundkvist making a run. Lundkvist paused and made a short pass to Kimmi Ascanio who rifled a shot right at the goalkeeper, but the ball bounced away to different Wave players resulting in three separate blocks by defenders inside the box. Finally, Kenza Dali had a chance running in from the midfield, but the goalkeeper just managed to save the shot.
The Wave play their next match on the road against the second-place Washington Spirit who could clinch a playoff spot this weekend with a victory against the Houston Dash.
