2021 NWSL Season Previews: Chicago Red Stars and Orlando Pride
/We’re publishing two team previews every day this week until the NWSL regular season begins on Saturday. You can find all of them here.
Today we have two more teams that disappointed in 2020 and are hoping to improve in 2021.
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Chicago: The Truth Ertz
By Lydia Vandenbergh Jackson
Despite winning only one game in the 2020 Challenge Cup Preliminary rounds the Red Stars found themselves doing just enough to earn wins all the way to the finals. They weren’t so fortunate, in the end, to hoist the trophy despite solid performances from Chicago’s defense. The Fall Series was a mixed bag of results where they recorded one win, one draw, and two losses.
Chicago was busy in the offseason, making moves that sent Savannah McCaskill and Yuki Nagasato to Racing Louisville FC. Nagasto, a fan favorite, was loaned out by the Red Stars last season to play for men’s club Hayabusa Eleven in the Kanagawa Prefecture League in Japan. In 2019, Nagasto had a phenomenal season leading the league with eight assists and notching eight goals. McCaskill on the other hand hasn’t lived up to her goal scoring college days with the Red Stars, only adding one goal in 2019 and two goals and two assists in 2020. In terms of additions, the Red Stars acquired Sarah Woldmoe and Mallory Pugh from Gotham FC and re-signed Nikki Stanton. Adding these players seems like an upgrade to last season’s team but will it be enough for Chicago to be a top team this season?
Red Stars head coach Rory Dames enters his ninth NWSL season with the team. No other coach has been with the same club as long as Dames. In the 2015 and 2019 seasons, the Red Stars lost in the finals, finishing 2nd overall, the highest finish in their history.
If you read anything from American Soccer Analysis contributor @TiotalFootball and the Absolute Unit you know how important “marginal goal difference” is. To win the league you must earn the most points and in order to accumulate points, you need to score goals and not concede them. The degree by which you do the first and not the second, or some combination of, will determine your place in the standings and ultimately whether you win trophies or not. Chicago’s best season finishes had the greatest difference between goals scored and goals conceded.
Now, the question is how and who will help Chicago accomplish that this season.
Let’s break this down a little more. Chicago’s defense is led by USWNT goalkeeper Alysa Naeher and the formidable Julie Ertz, although we’ve seen Ertz slide into more of a midfield role and creating more in the attack. Tierna Davidson didn’t play much in 2020 despite playing almost every minute in 2019. She will need to take on more leadership in the backline in 2021. They also have creativity in the back, which makes their attack fun to watch when Casey Krueger or Bianca St. Georges go forward. Last season both Krueger and St. Georges scored goals and looked dangerous with the ball at their feet. The big question in defense will be who suits up in goal when Naeher is gone for the Olympics. Assuming Emily Boyd is still recovering from her knee injury, Casey Miller will need to get some minutes and to adjust to the level of the NWSL quickly. The bigger question then is who replaces Sam Kerr who is going to score goals for the Red Stars? Veteran Kealia Watt looked better in the Fall Series than in the Challenge Cup last season and finished 6th in the league with 0.43 xG. However, if you look at her goals per game compared to xG (G-xG) she very much underperformed, -0.14. Is she the answer? Regardless, Chicago needs her to have a stellar season.
Mal Pugh comes into the season having struggled to put her stamp on the professional game. Hopefully, Chicago will be the place for her to find her confidence and remain healthy. She has the ability to be dangerous with the ball and will definitely help Chicago, but she hasn’t proven herself yet. Katie Johnson, another attacking player who was really only good in flashes last season will give the Red Stars depth coming off the bench. Danielle Colaprico, Vanessa DiBernardo, and Morgan Gautrat are all seasoned veterans the Red Stars have relied on regularly. Gautrat had the highest Goals Added (g+) per game on the team and finished in the top 15% of the league for players who played over 500 minutes above average in 2020. Here you can see the Goals Added (g+) broken down into the various metrics which measure the player’s total on-ball contribution in attack and defense.
Also, over the years, DiBernardo, Colaprico, and Gautrat haven't really produced the points you’d expect. DiBernardo has contributed the most points per season of the midfielders across their careers, according to fbref.
Chicago almost has all the ingredients needed to be a very successful team. There are some big unknowns as it all comes together mainly how they will find the back of the net. Overall, the squad will rely on their experience and their commitment to defend. They will be tested most when the Olympics come around, leaving Chicago to rely heavily on their depth. They still lack at least one more quality attacking player in my opinion to be able to win it all. However, it will be fun to watch as Dames always has a way of getting more than expected out of his team.
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TL;DR: The Pride in 2021
Orlando: Orland-Oh No, Not Again
By Arielle Dror
To understand the state of the Pride heading into this season, we need to begin with the 2019 season. A new coach, Marc Skinner, arrived from Britain with his philosophy of wanting to “create art rather than football.” Whatever Skinner created was not a masterpiece. The team finished at the bottom of the table and conceded a league record 53 goals on 46.11 xGA over 24 games. The team’s G+ differential per 96 minutes in 2019 was -0.58, second from the lowest in the league that season, meaning their opponents created far more value than they did when they played one another. And in this case, the team didn’t just struggle to create value in a few areas--they struggled everywhere. Across the pitch, the Pride ranked near the bottom of the league in value created, particularly down the right flank and up the middle of the pitch. Skinner was clear that the team needed a massive culture shift in order to be successful, and he set out on a club rebuild. He signed veteran players like fullback Ali Riley and midfielder Jade Moore, and traded the number one draft pick for defender Emily Sonnett. He also picked up seven players -- mainly defenders -- in the college draft. The rebuild was in full force and it seemed like we’d maybe see a new Orlando Pride come opening day.
Redder values indicate zones where the difference between the value the team creates and the value their opposition creates is above average when compared to other teams. Bluer values indicate zones where the difference between the value a team’s opposition creates and the value a team creates is more than average.
But then, the Pride somehow managed a more disastrous 2020. The potentially new and improved side had to pull out of the Challenge Cup last minute due to several positive COVID cases traced back to a visit to a bar. And while it turned out that several cases were ultimately false positives, it was too late for the team to fly out to Utah. By the time the Fall Series began, most of the team went off on loan or signed short-term contracts in search of playing time greater than four games. The team cobbled together a smaller roster with local players on short term contracts so that they could compete and unsurprisingly left without a win.
Of the thirteen players who went abroad last fall, only six ultimately returned for 2021 preseason. The remaining players either opted to sign long-term contracts in Europe (Shelina Zadorsky, Alanna Kennedy, Emily Van Egmond, etc.) or were traded away (Emily Sonnett, Carson Pickett). When full strength Orlando finally took the field for the first time against Louisville in April, their lineup looked nothing like the last place team in 2019. Only a quarter of the minutes (seven players) from that 2019 team were still on the roster. But those players that remain are veteran players like Marta, Ali Krieger, and Alex Morgan whose leadership will be key to the Pride’s success.
In some ways, it feels as though the majority of the Pride’s roster is split into two groups: the superstar veterans and largely unproven rookies that have sat around for over a year waiting for their NWSL debuts. And if Challenge Cup performances are anything to go by, Skinner seems to be keen on giving his new recruits significant responsibility, while expecting big time performance from those established players. If the team wants to be successful this season, it’s likely that they’ll need strong performances from these players, in particular:
Taylor Kornieck
Drafted in the first round of the 2020 draft, Kornieck skipped the Fall Series and went on loan to Duisburg in the Frauen Bundesliga last fall. Kornieck was a standout midfielder in college, scoring twelve goals, tallying six assists, and winning 268 aerial duels (78% success rate, no one else won more than 165) in her senior season. In Germany, Kornieck continued to play in a midfield role. In her 700 minutes over 10 games, she did not have much to show in terms of offensive production, but she had a whopping 23 aerial challenges per 90 minutes according to InStat, with a 71% success rate on a relegation-threatened team. If she plays in the midfield, the Pride is likely to rely on her ball winning ability to gain possession in the previously subpar midfield. Last season, Skinner said he planned to convert her to a target forward, akin to Alex Morgan, but she’s shaping up to be a utility attacker of sorts, having played in various spots over the Challenge Cup. Kornieck scored on her debut, but has largely been quiet since then, only recording three shots on target in 377 minutes. She’s just getting started, but this can prove problematic as she’s likely to share much of the goal scoring burden with Sydney Leroux, especially during the Olympic Break where powerhouse players like Marta and Alex Morgan will be gone as well. Regardless of where she ends up on the pitch, Kornieck will be the tallest player in the league at 6’1, so the team will undoubtedly expect goals off of set pieces from her.
Phoebe McClernon
Skinner has rotated his backline across the first four matches (granted, some of this was due to injury), but 2020 draft pick Phoebe McClernon has started all four games and played alongside three different centerback partners in four games. The Pride started off the season atrociously defensively, but once the team swapped out Plummer for more experienced partners in Ali Krieger and Toni Pressley in subsequent games, the team felt a bit more solid. Modeled metrics still could admittedly be noisy at this point in the season, but McClernon accrued 0.45 g+ above the average player in the Challenge Cup. Notably, most of this comes from her interrupting g+. Of concern, however, is McClernon’s passing thus far. Passing accuracy alone isn’t a great indicator, but McClernon has completed 66.2% of her passes on an expected pass completion of 71.6%. That combined with a below average passing g+, could be a cause for concern as the regular season begins. If paired with the proper partner, McClernon can be relied upon to break up plays, but the team will likely be more dependent on another player for consistent distribution.
Ashlyn Harris
On a team with so many new players, Ashlyn Harris is likely to be key in holding the team together defensively and she’s been able to do that in the Challenge Cup. Harris’ shot-stopping ability was outstanding, conceding three goals on 4.93 xG, the best in the tournament. It could probably be argued that her play kept the team in at least one game over the past month, particularly the team’s win against Washington. Whether Harris will be around all season is still a bit of a question mark. She could be named to the Olympic roster, though she has not received call ups into the most recent camps. Orlando’s backup keeper, Erin McLeod is also in roster contention with Canada, so Orlando will likely turn to their third keeper in Brittany Wilson should both head to Tokyo. Regardless, so long as Harris is in net for the team, she will need to continue to put up the outstanding performances she has so far to keep the team in any sort of playoff contention.
Sydney Leroux
Incredible news, everyone: Sydney Leroux is back. Leroux missed nearly all of 2019 after giving birth to her second child, and then fell victim to the COVID chaos, and she hasn’t played consistent games in nearly two years, so her return is long, long anticipated by both her team and anyone that watches the league. In the Challenge Cup, she scored one goal on 1.65 xG and also created five key passes as she played various roles across the front line. But the responsibilities are going to be high for Leroux this season. With both Alex Morgan and Marta certain to be gone for large portions of the season, she is the lone returning veteran attacking talent on the roster, and much of the goal scoring burden is going to fall directly to her. If she can score consistently, the team will probably be in decent shape. If she can’t, then we might see shades of the Orlando Pride of seasons past.
After two seriously disastrous seasons, it probably can’t get much worse for this team (and for the sake of everyone involved I really hope it doesn’t). The Challenge Cup results were actually alright in the sense that the team somehow remained in the mix to move to the finals throughout the tournament thanks to their first win in over 600 days against the Washington Spirit and a draw with the Courage. But there are major question marks about how this team will function over the course of a season, the largest one being the Olympics. The team is going to lose anywhere between three and six players to the Olympics and could likely see huge impacts across all lines. At the very least, Morgan, Marta, and defender Ali Riley will be gone for the tournament. In them, they’ll lose key attackers as well as a solid verteran defender in Riley. Should they lose Harris, McLeod, and Krieger as well, the team quickly becomes a defensive liability. Really, on a team that’s not only so new, but also has so much young talent, it’s likely to be up to the veterans of the Pride to keep the team together and competitive over the course of the season. If they can’t, it’s likely to be the tale of Pride’s past: full of individual talent, with not much to show for it.
In the best case scenario, it feels like this team might be able to slip into the last expanded playoff spot. In a worst case scenario, we’re going to have to watch a team struggle to create anything particularly positive (but hopefully still COVID free), Marc Skinner will be sent packing, and the rebuild continues. Several of their 2021 draft picks, including high touted midfielders Viviana Villacorta (UCLA) and Mikayla Colohan (BYU) will stay with their college teams until 2022 preseason, leaving something for the team to look forward to. And at the very least, they have incredible jerseys.