Racing Louisville Get Flattened 4-0 In Loss Against the Chicago Red Stars

Not Because We Lost, But the Way We Lost

As if the scoreline wasn’t enough of an indicator that it was a rough game, the fact one of Racing’s captains opened the post-game press conference by apologizing on behalf of the team for their performance pretty much says everything that needs to be said about Saturday night’s 4-0 loss to the Red Stars.

“First and foremost, I want to apologize to the fans because I think this is not good enough from all of us,” said Nadia Nadim. “It’s almost embarrassing, the performance we had for the first 45 minutes. It’s just not how we want to represent the club and I apologize for all the fans coming out tonight.”

Nadim said that what upset her the most wasn’t the fact the team lost, but the way they lost. Racing gave up three goals in the first 25 minutes, including two incredibly similar set-piece goals. They simply came out flat and stayed flat the entire match. She said that Chicago knew exactly how to break down Racing’s pressure, but Racing failed to do the same with Chicago.

For his part, Björkegren said he was “shocked” by how poorly the team played. Both he and Nadim claimed the team had very productive practices prior to this game and even had a great warm-up period. Björkegren claimed they prepared for this Chicago lineup and these Chicago tactics but once the game got away from them early on, he said it was like the team had a collective “blackout” regarding the game plan.

Co-captain Emily Fox agreed that the team’s biggest failure was in successfully applying the game plan.

“We knew what they were going to play, we knew their key players, we knew what space they were going to exploit,” said Fox. “So I think for us, it’s just kind of like we needed to apply our game plan better. Just applying our game plan better and reading the game.”

One major issue throughout the game was positioning with players straying up too high, giving Chicago too much space to exploit. In particular, Lauren Milliet played as the right full back and went too far forward which gave Pugh far too much space to operate in. There were also issues with the holding midfielders and center backs properly marking Pugh which left her open. With acres of space and no consistent pressure, Pugh was able to do whatever she wanted which burned Louisville badly right from the start.

🗣 “𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘸𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰…