Racing Louisville: 2022 Midseason Review

A sophomore slump hit Racing Louisville hard in the 2nd quarter of the season.

Although there were some clear individual bright spots, Racing Louisville struggled and only secured 2 points from 6 matches while getting outscored 7-13. That isn’t a huge goal differential for six matches and Racing has been in every match, even the 0-3 home loss to the North Carolina Courage, but the alarming trend has been the number of goals allowed.

During that 6-match span, Racing allowed an average of 2.17 goals per match compared to a 1 goal per match rate in the previous 5 matches. For the last few matches, it really has felt like the team knows that it has to score multiple time to have a chance at points.

What went wrong?

It is really difficult to pinpoint a single issue, but if you had to pick one would say that it has been instability. Since the summer transfer window opened, there has been a revolving door of players in and out. Here is a quick summary:

OUT

CeCe Kizer (the club’s all-time leading scorer)
Addisyn Merrick (the club’s top pick in the expansion draft)
The rights to Tobin Heath
Ebony Salmon (the club’s leading goal scorer in 2021)
Erin Simon (released by mutual consent)

IN

Satara Murray (2-year contract, 0 minutes played, unavailable for selection until Jamaica is eliminated from the CONCACAF W Championship)
National Team replacement players Isabella Beletic, Allison Whitfield, Zaneta Wyne, and Hannah Addler (87 minutes played, all by Wyne)
$150,000 in allocation money and an international roster spot in 2022 and 2023 (for Kizer and Merrick)
$50,000 in allocation money and a 2nd and 4th round draft pick in the 2023 NWSL College Draft (for the rights to Tobin Heath)
$150,000 in allocation money in 2022 and $25,000 in 2023 (for Salmon)
Thembi Kgatlana for an undisclosed transfer fee to Atletico Madrid on a 2-year contract

Kgatlana is an excellent player but may never set foot in Louisville in 2022 as she injured her Achilles tendon on Sunday only days after her transfer. There has been nothing official from the club, but reports are that it will require surgery which would end her season. Kgatlana was going to likely be Racing’s right sided forward in Coach Björkegren’s attack.

Hindsight being what it is, this doesn’t appear to be a great transfer window (which runs from June 1 to August 25, so there is still time to change things). Maybe even more puzzling is the overall transfer strategy. Racing Louisville seem to be resistant to or unavailable to find players with NWSL experience.

Why is this important? I can’t prove that is absolutely critical, but I have a hunch. My limited experience with the NWSL has led me to believe a few things about the league. First, any team can really step up and win a single match. I know that is theoretically possible in any league, but Barcelona and Lyon didn’t lose a single league match last year, Chelsea and Arsenal (1 and 2 in England) lost a combined 3 matches, and Wolfsburg and Bayern (1 and 2 in Germany) lost a combined 4 matches. The point being that these leagues are really top heavy. The last five NWSL teams to finish the regular season at the top of the table lost 3, 7, 1, 5, and 6 respectively. Even the league embraces the “chaos” brand and really anything can happen.

Second, it is probably the most physically demanding league in the world due to the style of play and the amount of travel. Third, its season runs on a different calendar from most of the rest of the world. This last point means that the transfer window that allows for the most player movement from other teams around the world occurs right in the middle of the season.

If Racing were bringing in world class international stars, I don’t think the adjustment period would be a concern, but after adding Jessica McDonald in December 2021, every player that Racing Louisville has added to the squad (and that are still with the team) until Kgatlana was added, has had less than 10 matches of NWSL experience. Here is the list:

Jae Howell – 0
Sav DeMelo – 0
Hillary Beall – 0
Jordyn Bloomer – 0
Kirsten Davis – 0
Parker Goins – 0
Taylor Malham – 0
Sh’Nia Gordon – 0
Julia Lester – 0
Rebecca Holloway – 0
Alex Chidiac – 0
Satara Murray – 9
Allison Whitfield – 0
Isabella Beletic – 0
Zaneta Wyne – 0
Hannah Adler – 0

Howell, DeMelo, Beall, Bloomer, Davis, Goins, Malham, Whitfield, and Beletic are first year professionals, so they have to start somewhere. You could air drop DeMelo into any team in the world and she would succeed. Howell has been good as well and she and DeMelo will be starters in the league for a long time. The group of Gordon, Lester, Holloway, Chidiac, Murray, and Wyne are the players that will be adjusting their style of play the most.

Racing’s recruitment strategy seems to have been to favor players that are a style fit and presumably have favorable advanced metrics in the leagues in which they were playing. And therein lies the rub. Are we sure those performances and stats can translate to the NWSL? The club has banked on finding talent outside of the NWSL. You could argue that it hasn’t worked, yet. Take a look at these three numbers: 398, 837, and 843. These are the total combined NWSL appearances for the current rosters for Racing, the San Diego Wave, and Angel City respectively (the two expansion teams this year).

Now look at these numbers: 10, 1, and 5. Those are their respective places in the table. To be completely fair, Racing was given a tremendously raw deal in its expansion draft compared to San Diego and Angel City. For Racing’s draft, the teams could protect 11 players. For San Diego and Angel City teams could only protect 9 and Kansas City could protect its entire roster. However, Racing Louisville was able to get some experience, they just didn’t value it enough to hold on to it for their second season.

Every single departure of an experienced player (McCaskill, Betos, Nagasato in 2021 and Kizer and Simon in 2022) made sense in and of itself, but the club lost a lot of NWSL tenure and has really only added McDonald to make it up. I have no idea if this strategy is deliberate to try to find hidden gems or enforced due to the limited movement of NSWL players in the summer transfer window, but I would argue that in the short term it hasn’t worked. And if Racing doesn’t add any other players in this window, it is an utter failure of a transfer window in the short term. Luckily for Racing Louisville, transfer windows can really only be evaluated in the long term.

This leads me back to my original point. The continuous coming and going of players can’t be good for a young team with a first-year coach. That isn’t to say that all of these moves won’t pay off at some point, but they aren’t showing any immediate benefits. To me, the most frustrating part of this 6-match stretch has been how little the club seems to have valued it. Racing Louisville has been forced to play Lauren Milliet at left back. Why? Because their two other options (Fox and Holloway) are on international duty. Holloway was signed presumably to be cover for Fox (or to shift Fox to the right), but to sign a player who you know is going to be absent in the same window of time as the player she is replacing seems odd. Every NWSL team is hit with international player absences, but Racing Louisville was already thin in defense, so to have 3 defenders out during this international competition season hurts them particularly hard, especially when 2 of those players were signed within the last few months. Their deals may have been in the pipeline for longer, but the club had to know that May was going to be the earliest that either of them could have joined the team.

As for the players that were here, they can’t seem to handle success. Barring a 0-3 loss to North Carolina (still in last place, but with at least two games in hand on the 3 teams directly above them in the table), Racing Louisville has either shot themselves in the foot by giving away easy goals, not protecting leads, or both. The lone excellent half of soccer during these 6 matches has to be the second half against the Washington Spirit.

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What has gone well?

Not as much as the fans would like, but it hasn’t all been doom and gloom on the micro level.

Savanah DeMelo continues her run of really good form and has scored in the last two matches. She has been so good, that it is a bit hard to pinpoint exactly what her best position might be. To me, she is a natural number 8 box-to-box midfielder. She has been deployed as the central attacking midfielder and as a deeper lying midfielder at times, but I think she really can play anywhere. When Racing is at full strength with McDonald and Nadim at the 9 and 10, she will probably line up on the team sheet as one of two deeper lying midfielders but will almost surely be the more advanced midfielder compared to Howell. I really feel like the sky is the limit for her at this point. My concern with her is that if Racing doesn’t start winning consistently by next season, the lure of SoCal may be enough to make the Long Beach native’s stay in Louisville all too short.
Racing really has scored some cracking goals. Gemma Bonner’s may be the pick of the bunch, but they have all been really good. Check out this link to my site to check them out. Bonner’s fine goal at number 42 starts the run of seven goals in this 6-match stretch.
Nadia Nadim has played 86 minutes and scored 3 times. Then she had to leave for international duty right on the heels of the team best single half performance of this stretch where she scored twice to earn Racing a point away at the Spirit. That felt like it could have been a turning point, but a poor second half in Orlando derailed that momentum.
Racing never feels out of a match. Even the 0-3 loss to North Carolina didn’t feel as hopeless as some of the matches last year. With a few more breaks, you could image this 6-game stretch with a 9-point haul instead of a measly 2-point one. While I don’t personally think the playoffs are in the cards this season, the team is just a few breaks away from getting right back into the hunt.

What can Racing do to salvage its season?

First, I think we have to define and be realistic about what the expectations for the last half of the season should be. I don’t want to completely write off their ability to make a playoff push. It wouldn’t take an impossible run of form, but it would be an unprecedented one for this club. That being said, let’s focus on the next 5 matches. On paper, things don’t look promising. Their next 5 matches are San Diego (1) away, Portland (3) at home, OL Reign (4) at home, Washington (11) at home and Houston (6) away with the number indicating their opponents current spot in the table. Four of these teams are in playoff positions, and Washington frankly can’t be this bad, can they? Racing will be catching San Diego without their international stars, but Portland’s American players will be back, and most international players for all NWSL teams could be back by the time Racing face the OL Reign. Here is what I think the team need to do to get back into the hunt:

Stop allowing goals, by any means necessary. I would like to see this team sit back and counter, but I just don’t think that is going to happen. I’m getting pretty tired of talking about Racing’s unwillingness or incapability to play in any style other than the one they currently employ. If the style isn’t going to change, then the players are simply going to have to take it onto themselves to be sharper on defense. I don’t think style has been completely at fault for this team’s defensive frailties. A change in style might have masked their deficiencies better, but they would still be there. Simply stated, for the next 5 matches make sure that every goal conceded is earned though their opponent’s skill and not through a mistake. Good teams don’t need help scoring, so don’t give them any.
Communicate better on the pitch. A few of the goals conceded recently seem to have been assisted by a breakdown in or lack of communication. I sit close enough to hear players talk at Lynn Family Stadium, and in almost every match, Racing’s opponents do more on-the-field verbal communicating than Racing Louisville. I chalk this up a bit to youth and inexperience, but I think it’s something that can be fixed.
Stop messing with the back line. Fox has been deployed on both sides, typically to match up with the opponent’s best attacker. It was a strategy that worked until it didn’t. The fact is that Racing doesn’t have another wing defender even close to Fox’s ability (off-season priority number one in my opinion), so there may not be much that the team can do here. However, at this point I don’t think the team has anything to lose with giving either Holloway at left or Martin or Wyne at right the starting role for a few matches once Fox returns, just to see if the unit can gel. Holloway had a couple of rough matches to start her career and hasn’t been given a look since. Wyne had a fine debut, and I have never thought Martin has seemed out of her element on the pitch. I think Björkegren should just pick one and live with the results for a while. There really isn’t anything to lose at this point.
If you can’t sit on a lead, don’t even try. This team plays its best when it is down a goal, so play every minute like you are trailing 1-0. Against Orlando, I think the team was stuck between fully protecting a 2-0 lead vs. still attacking. They got caught in the middle and paid. I still think that this team needs to score 3 to have a shot at winning. Since they aren’t going to change tactics enough to protect a lead, then they have to take better advantage of the times at which they are controlling the match. Racing Louisville won the first 20 minutes pretty handily against Gotham in every place except the one that mattered: the scoreboard. They did that excellently against San Diego. The team played really well for a 20-minute stretch and got a lead that they were able to protect. Since then, they haven’t been able to find that magic, and the back line that defended that lead isn’t here anymore. I think that means that if Racing Louisville are to win, it will have to be 3-2 because they don’t seem to have 1-0 in their repertoire.
Don’t worry about the results. Put in a good 90-minute performance and let the chips fall where they may. That means putting in a full 90-minute performance and not 4 really good 22-minute sections and 2 bad one-minute sections. If they put in complete performances and get beat while playing their best, every single person in the organization and in the stadium will be behind them regardless of the score. This will require complete concentration for two 45-minute halves. Circling back to how the NWSL is different, I think the inability to even take one second off in this league is the toughest thing that new players to the league have to adjust to. Soccer is the most relentless sport when played at the highest level. The margins are so fine that even a slight miscue or miscalculation can cost, and opportunities for those moments seem to continually occur for 90 solid minutes. When Coach Björkegren keeps talking about the little things, I think these little, microscopic lapses in concentration are what he is talking about. This ability to concentrate for extended periods works just like everything else in that you need to practice them in order to get better. Here’s to hoping that Racing can bend the learning curve that their youthfulness tends to exacerbate.