Racing Louisville FC is now 5 games into the NWSL season and there is plenty to recap and analyze.
It’s hard to believe that Racing Louisville FC is only 5 matches into their NWSL regular season, yet also difficult to believe that almost a quarter of the season is over. If you read my quarterly updates on Racing last year, you will recall that the season evenly divided into six-game sections which made it quite simple to give an update on a “quarterly” basis.
This year the schedule is “balanced” with the teams playing against each other home and away, and the addition of Angel City FC and the San Diego Wave creates a 22-match fixture list. Therefore, the season doesn’t divide up as evenly. I decided to go with a 5-6-5-6 format for giving updates due to how the schedule breaks down. The first 5 match stretch ends with a match against NJ/NY Gotham and so does the next 6 match stretch. The following 5 match stretch ends at the start of a 13-day break in the NSWL schedule. With those logistics out of the way, let’s dive in.
How is Racing performing?
I think the consensus is that Racing Louisville is playing a pleasing, pressing style that in increasing doses is giving their opponents fits. In each of Racing’s five matches (which in order of occurrence yielded as loss, two draws, and two wins) there have been long stretches of play where Racing has dictated the style of the match and been the better team on the pitch.
Last year at times it was difficult to see if there was on overarching philosophy to how Racing was intending to play. The team said it wanted to play a high-energy, pressing style, but that style was rarely a consistent sight during matches. Racing’s positive early returns last season were a bit of a false dawn. Racing defeated the eventual champions the Washington Spirit at home in their second league match of last season, but it was result of two goals completely against the run of play.
The team ultimately found itself trailing in most matches last year, and until very late in the season that meant doom. There is no such doom and gloom this year. Racing fell behind in its first three matches this season and clawed 2 points out of those and in the Chicago match won just about every statistical category bar the score line. In their last two matches they have grinded out 1-0 victories. Racing has yet to face a multiple goal deficit this season, and that in and of itself is a huge step up from last year.
Catch up: Early regular season predictions for Racing Louisville
As I mentioned earlier, Racing is a pressing team, just like their Lynn Family Stadium co-tenant Lou City. The pressing philosophy comes from the top led by team president James O’Connor. It is a fun style to watch in my opinion, if sometimes inherently prone to quick counters. I will return to how Racing protects against this later. This high-pressing style has worked well with Coach Kim Björkegren’s philosophy.
Many times, when a new coach is hired, fans (including myself) want to get wrapped up in talks of formations and tactics. When I first started to talk to Coach Björkegren on a semiregular basis, I would often ask him about formations, squad rotation, and specific players. After observing the team and its performances over the first few months of the season, I no longer feel the need to ask about such banalities because Björkegren’s match day actions and decisions tell you all that you need to know. Upon his hiring I found him a bit difficult to read, but now I think at least from a footballing perspective he is easy to understand.
His philosophy is simple:
- Formation is secondary to effort.
- If you give 100% effort, you will play and play often.
- If you play often, you will be preferred out of your “natural” position over other players.
- You never know when an opportunity to play will arise, so be ready.
It is a really simple and clear philosophy for both fans and players. Of course, Racing still has positional forwards, midfielder and defenders. However, he wants and expects 100% effort out of each line. Pressing only really works when the team is fully committed.
LISTEN: Vamos Morados Podcast featuring Michael Show
Which players are contributing the most to Racing’s performances?
The short answer is almost everyone. However, let’s focus on three new and two returning players, starting with the new additions.
She came as advertised: a great player for club and country and a great person. She has lived up to her huge reputation and has 2 goals and an assist in 5 league starts where she has played all but 15 minutes. She has captained the team twice on the pitch (she is one of four named club captains) in the absence of Gemma Bonner, and perhaps most crucially doing so at the last minute when Bonner was a late scratch against the Houston Dash at home. She often is a central target when Racing recover possession, but rarely at the expense of isolating herself. She is the consummate professional. It will be interesting to see how the team uses her once Nadia Nadim returns to the lineup. It could go a couple of different ways as both of them are certainly comfortable in multiple areas of the pitch (McDonald often finds herself in a wider position when CeCe Kizer is on the ball, and Nadim is equally comfortable as the 9 or the 10 but does tend to play more centrally.) Racing is deep with talent at the forward spot, but McDonald is surely the first name among the forwards on the team sheet.
Howell fell into Racing’s lap when San Diego drafted Naomi Girma (who is having a fine season) ahead of her and allowed Jae to fall to number 2. Her development at Racing might have been slowed a bit by an unexpected call up to the USWNT due to injuries, but she has made up for lost time recently. I commented after her first match in the Challenge Cup that she appeared to have some first match jitters. She quickly got over those and is now looking comfortable in her deep lying midfield role in front of a back four. There will continue to be huge expectations heaped on her shoulders, but she appears up to the task. A relatively late developing trend for Howell has been her ability to marshal the middle of the field on an island. When Freja Olofsson missed a couple of matches due to illness, Howell lost her most consistent midfield partner especially on the defensive side. Jaelyn stepped up and her control of the space in front of the back four has allowed Sav DeMelo (more on her in a bit) to play further forward and a bit wider. Howell does much of the dirty work you don’t find in the highlights but is already a valuable addition to the midfield.
Racing drafted Savannah DeMelo in their natural spot in the college draft at 4. Early in the preseason she showed flashes of brilliance, but even as the number 4 overall pick I think most fans expected to be patient with her development. On the contrary, she has forced her way onto the team and is probably the non-Emily Fox MVP for this team so far. She leads the team in the advance metric “goals added” (a measure of a player’s total on-ball contribution in attack and defense) through the first 5 matches. She has also shown herself to be an excellent free kick specialist, even though she gives the nod to her teammate Emina Ekic for being slightly more skilled. She scored on a free kick to nab the winning goal vs. San Diego and had been really close to scoring from a free kick twice in the league season prior to that. Midfield was a glaring weakness for Racing Louisville last year, but it has quickly turned into a strength. DeMelo is also very good in her defensive efforts and is very quick to shut down opponents in transition. She has national team level talent, so a call up at some point seems inevitable.
Now on to the returning players…
Sometimes when you watch Emily Fox, you wonder if it is somehow unfair how much better she is at the game than even some of the best players in the league. Her quickness is easy to see, but it is also matched by her toughness. As great as she was in her rookie year, she did have some ever so slight growing pains. If she never developed her game anymore than it has developed today, she would still be an all-time great. She is a complete player at the age of 23. I regularly give out player ratings after matches, and while most players’ default value is 6, I almost always start her at 7. Her baseline is a full point above the norm. She does need to shoot and score and assist more, but she scored an almost angry goal against Chicago after Racing fell behind early in that match. Perhaps her most valuable skill for this team is her ability to almost miraculously bail Racing out of trouble for any one-on-one counterattack. Several times this year I have believed an opposition player to have a couple of steps on her in a dangerous postition only to see her easily recover and win the ball. In addition, she has the ability to single-handedly dribble her way out of trouble past multiple defenders. The advanced soccer metrics are moving toward the ability to measure “dangerousity”-essentially the measurement of a player to get into dangerous areas in dangerous situations. Fox has the uncanny ability to get Racing out of dangerous situations.
Even though Milliet has played in every Racing match to date, she was a bit overlooked last year. She led the team in appearances but logged only the 8th most minutes on the team. The coaching staff never quite seemed to know what to do with her, which also impacted Savanah McCaskill’s season last year as well. Coach Björkegren simply puts her name into the lineup and tells her to play hard on the wing. She has played at forward, midfielder, and defender, but almost always one-sided in a match. A quick look at few of her heatmaps show some matches where she is almost exclusively on the left, some where she is almost exclusively on the right and some where she spends time on both wings. Sometimes I think soccer fans get stuck thinking too horizontally. If you divided you position groups into verticals, Lauren Milliet would make perfect sense as a box-to-box winger which is basically what she is. Alas, she is often referred to as the dreaded “utility player” for her flexibility. That isn’t a knock necessarily, but it implies that she doesn’t do one thing especially well, for which I would highly disagree. What she does well is find the right moments to get involved in attack, the right moments to maintain possession, and the right moments to defend. And she can cover anywhere when you need to make a sub, which might be her most valuable asset.
What does Racing Louisville need to do to continue to improve?
Racing Louisville is playing really, really well at the moment. Part of this I believe is that the other teams aren’t really familiar with much of Racing’s squad or comfortable playing against their high pressing style. If you look at the league results against opponents outside of Racing’s Challenge Cup group, you will see that their record is 2 wins and a draw out of 3 matches. I think unfamiliarity may also be driving the early season success of San Diego and Angel City at 12 points and points respectively.
The other teams in the league will figure out how to play more effectively against Racing Louisville (and San Diego and Angel City) at some point. The telling thing will be how Racing adjusts when its opponents make their adjustments. Racing like to possess the ball. The team is 2nd in the league in possession at 53.8%. It should be noted that the North Carolina Courage lead the league with 56.8% but have only scored 2 goals and are at the bottom of the table with 0 points, so obviously possession isn’t everything. For Racing however, their possession numbers mean that they are not spending the majority of the match on defense.
Much of Racing’s opponents’ possession is in their own half. Sooner or later teams are going to start playing more and more long balls out of the back to bypass the defense. The key for Racing will be how they begin to deal with a change in strategy by their opponents. Racing spent 2021 as a sparring partner in most matches and win, lose, or draw, the match was dictated to them. Racing has done more than their fair share of dictating the matches this season. They will run into stretches where the other team is in the ascendency, so how they weather those parts of the match will probably define their season. To date, they have done an adequate job when their opponents have punched back. The lone exception was the OL Reign match where the team led 1-0 only to have that score line quickly move 2-1 in favor of the Reign, but Racing got its equalizer and drew the match.
The other area where the team can improve is to figure out how to use all its talent when it isn’t enforced. Kirsten Davis is highly regarded and was used frequently in the Challenge Cup, but really hasn’t gotten much of a look in the league. Ebony Salmon, who was the leading scorer last season has been relegated to substitute appearances. Emina Ekic has gotten a start and has logged a decent number of minutes but will need more to continue to develop. These are good problems to have only if stellar play is keeping them on the sideline, which seems to be the case so far. The defenders who have been called upon like Addy Merrick and Erin Simon look up to the task, so it’s up to the midfielders and forwards to do the same.
Moving into nitpicking territory, the team probably needs to start putting away matches in which they get an early lead. It is the nature of the NWSL that no 2-goal lead should be considered safe. Björkegren famously promised more goals and he has delivered on that, but I feel like goals are being left on the pitch. The defense is still prone to errors as well. Racing scores beautiful goals and give up ugly ones. A little more discipline at the back on set pieces would be a good thing.
What does Racing Louisville need to achieve in the next five matches?
I am one of those irritating people that always reminds you that you can’t put too much stock into early season tables. I do this not to say that you shouldn’t win as many points as possible, but to remind you that where the team is in the table is less important at this point in the season than how many points the team is accumulating. There is a pretty simple measure for success in this league’s current playoff format. If a team wins more than 50% of its points available, then that team is in good shape for the playoffs. That metric is as good after match 5 as it is after match 20. However, by match 20 the table tells the real story. As a rule of thumb, I would say that by time that every team has played 7 total matches the table is a pretty decent reflection of the league. For now, the only number that Racing Louisville fans need to care about is 53% which is Racing’s percentage of points taken number. It is too early in my opinion to worry about that number for the teams above and below Racing in the table, because those teams may or may not ultimately be the ones that Racing is competing against.
Therefore, Racing needs to keep accumulating points, so how does the team do that?
- Keep forcing their will on the other team. It may sound odd, but it is sometimes easier to dictate the style of play when your team is trailing in the match. Racing has done a really good job recently of dictating the style when the match is level. They have started to show signs of dictating the style while in the lead. If Racing can dictate the style more and more in matches, the points will continue to flow.
- Figure out how to integrate different players into the Starting XI. Nadia Nadim will almost certainly find herself in the starting lineup upon her return which should only be very soon. That means that a forward is going to move to the bench. If I had to guess, that player is going to be CeCe Kizer. However, the European championships will run from July 7 to August 1st and Nadim will almost certainly miss two games for that completion and potentially miss 5 depending on how Denmark perform. Salmon and Sh’Nia Gordon deserve to get a start at some point, but how do you do that without disrupting chemistry? Racing Louisville is also getting crowded in the midfield and have 4 quality starters (Olofsson, Chidiac, Howell, and DeMelo) for 3 spots. Lauren Milliet deserves a day off, but you might have to physically restrain her to keep her off of the pitch. Depth is a nice problem to have, but only if you can ride that fine line between keeping your starters happy and getting enough minutes for your squad players. There is only one more stretch of 3 matches in 8 days, so enforced rest isn’t really going to be an issue.
- Defend set pieces better. Your opponent is always going to get chances to score, but the further apart those chances occur, the better off you are. Racing has conceded multiple times from a rebound. That is either a) back luck, or b) poor defending. Honestly it is probably a bit of both. The best way to avoid giving up second chances is to win the first ball. If you watched the set pieces that Gotham had on Saturday, I think you would agree that Racing Louisville didn’t really distinguish themselves on that front.
- Don’t dig holes. Racing Louisville has shown a great ability to respond when they fall behind, but there hasn’t yet been a match where they have trailed due to the other team outplaying them. Against Chicago, the dug an early hole by having few sloppy passes at the start. In Seattle, they got caught flat footed in transition and against Houston were a bit unlucky but did let in a rebound from a corner. Inevitably the team will let in a rough goal from time to time, but they have shown the ability to play less than their best and win. Now they need to move toward playing their best and winning comfortably. Again, that is easier said than done.
Do those things well and they will be top of the league. That is patently unrealistic, so the goal should be to improve in a couple of those areas and see where you are. Unless Racing Louisville has an absolute collapse, it’s hard to picture them at midseason anywhere but firmly in the hunt for a playoff spot.
