“We kind of manifested this,” Croix Bethune told reporters after Washington’s gritty victory, saying that the Spirit emphasized ending this long trip with three points. “This is a big win for us.”

Speaking of manifesting good things, Bethune has now played a direct role in 11 of the Spirit’s last 12 goals, which is preposterous.

Washington went on the road for two weeks right after losing Anna Heilferty, a key piece in the locker room, to a torn ACL for the second straight year. The Spirit have kept roster spots open, most likely for summer transfers, but right now that means they boarded a plane with just 20 players, including three goalkeepers.

They were given multiple moments to check out of this game, too. A penalty kick for Racing midway through the half came via a call you could dispute from multiple angles, but Aubrey Kingsbury responded with a double-save to keep the group on target.

Savannah DeMelo’s spectacular free kick goal on the stroke of halftime could have also flipped this game on its head, but once again Washington kept their heads in the game. Even when fatigue and knocks saw Adrián González remove some of the team’s biggest names, the Spirit’s lesser-used players were ready for a battle.

“I think today, we’ve won more than three points,” said González in possibly his most effusive post-game press conference of the entire season. “It’s been a really tough game, especially coming from this long trip. Obviously, the fatigue was there. The field also was tough to play, to be honest. But I think the way that we competed today? It’s amazing.”

Interestingly, Louisville head coach Bev Yanez was also positive in a lot of ways, focusing on her side’s ability to put the Spirit under so much pressure in the second half. For Yanez, this game was one that showed Racing is — despite following a 5-1 win over the Utah Royals up with a draw and two losses — going in the right direction.

“I think the most important piece is not sounding any alarm bells,” said Yanez after the match. “This is not alarming by any way, shape or form. If you go and look at the scores, you go, ‘Okay, a loss last game, you do a loss this game.’ But you look at who we are, and you look at the areas we’re getting better and why… You see belief.”

And let’s be fair here: Racing is in the middle of what might be the toughest four-game spell of their entire season. It started with a draw against the defending champions, NJ/NY Gotham FC, and Saturday’s match against the Kansas City Current will make it three straight against the top three teams in the standings.

Over Louisville’s next 12 matches, they’ll play teams currently outside the playoff picture seven times, and won’t see any of the teams in the top four. That’s a stretch that will take Racing all the way to late September, just as the stretch run truly begins.

The Take-Off was given one piece of encouragement to continue covering midweek games via Japanese poetry forms, and zero pieces of discouragement.

As such, Wednesday’s games are once again restricted to 17 syllables.

Houston Dash 0:1 NJ/NY Gotham FC

Houston…what is this?
Bats in second gear, yet win
Grim stuff from the Dash

Seattle Reign 0:0 Kansas City Current

Many stoppages
Glad everyone seems okay
Mid-week meat grinder

San Diego Wave 2:0 Utah Royals

Let’s keep it simple.
Jaedyn Shaw starts: Goal, assist
What can she not do?

What does Gotham want out of a center forward? The Take-Off yields the floor to Ella Stevens:

Beyond the obvious (i.e. good finishing, and this was superb from Stevens), the answer is what goes on right at the beginning of this clip.

An out-and-out striker is generally standing up alongside the San Diego defense, and in some cases might even intentionally stand in an offside position to better avoid detection — out of sight, out of mind — or surprise a Wave player in a counter-pressing scenario.

Instead of all that, Stevens is almost touch-tight on midfielder Danny Colaprico, because what Gotham wants is an overload. Why stay up high in a one-on-two, as is so often the plight of a true striker, when you can help put a defensive midfielder into a bind? If Colaprico focuses on Delanie Sheehan, Stevens is open; if she drops a step to cut Stevens out, Sam Hiatt can send her header to Sheehan in enough space to get on the half-turn. It’s a problem for San Diego no matter what Colaprico does.

This is the whole point of how Gotham plays soccer. They want to put opposing players into unwinnable scenarios, and you engineer that by creating overloads and pairing them with counter-movements. Watch Stevens after she receives the ball: she turns inside, away from her options and pulling several Wave players with her, only to then play the ball back against the grain to (a now wide-open) Lynn Williams.

The situation doesn’t immediately become a goal, and requires Sheehan to win a protracted scuffle over a loose ball, but the point is creating a moment that is rife with opportunity. If that loose ball pops out a different way, maybe it’s Sheehan getting a shot off. If Jenna Nighswonger chooses the back post, Yazmeen Ryan has a one-on-one with a defender, and has the space to attack the ball. As soon as Stevens cuts the disguised pass to Williams across her body, San Diego is in deep trouble.

This is why Juan Carlos Amorós has often gone with Esther, generously listed at 5-foot-3, as his nominal center forward. Esther was Gotham’s No. 10 on Sunday, but has made the Bats so dangerous by dropping off the front line to give her side a fourth player in central midfield. Gotham doesn’t want to send Esther or Stevens into the space behind an opposing defense, or battling it out with physical center backs. They want those players to function as playmakers who find Williams, or Ryan, or Crystal Dunn making that run off the wing.

Gotham, with just six goals in nine games, hasn’t executed enough of these moments this season. However, they’re making progress, and Stevens is playing a big part despite being an under-the-radar acquisition.

While it took something of a pickle for her to get into the team — Tierna Davidson’s injury was addressed by moving Emily Sonnett back, which in turn meant moving Esther into a midfield role, opening the door for Stevens — it wouldn’t be at all surprising to see Amorós keep the 26-year-old in his starting 11. Esther has made the midfield more fluent, Stevens is handling the World Cup winner’s normal duties “up top,” and the Bats are more dangerous as a result.

From a San Diego perspective, this was a little too much of a “Kailen Sheridan is good” game for comfort, with Casey Stoney shouting her goalkeeper out after the match. However, the main headline might be Jaedyn Shaw limping off with a suspected ankle injury in the game’s final seconds. Already without Naomi Girma and Alex Morgan, the Wave can’t afford to lose Shaw as well.

This couldn’t have been more of a gut punch for Angel City, who conceded yet another late goal to drop yet more points, and of course it had to be Paige Nielsen to stick the dagger in.

Here’s a quick recap of all the goals scored after the 85th minute in Angel City games in 2024:

• March 22, 1-1 draw at Orlando (Marta’s 88th minute equalizer on a corner)
• March 30, 4-2 loss at Kansas City (Bia Zaneratto’s 92nd minute goal moments after Angel City had a potential equalizer wiped out by VAR)
• April 26, 3-1 home loss to Kansas City (Clare Lavogez’s 90th minute game-winner)
• April 26, 3-1 home loss to Kansas City (Lavogez’s 93rd minute goal to ice the game)
• May 12, 1-0 home loss to Houston (Nielsen’s 98th minute winner with essentially the last kick of the game, again on a corner)

If Angel City could get to the finish line without falling down, they’d be in sixth place on 14 points, with a game in hand. Instead, they’re outside of the playoff places, and having to once again rebuild morale after a massively disappointing end to a match. Previous Angel City teams were more erratic than this year’s version, but at least managed to mix in some late goals for.

This one, like Marta’s early-season equalizer, came on a corner, which has been a weakness all season for Becki Tweed’s side. Sometimes it’s structure, but on this one it’s just Clarisse Le Bihan getting her body position wrong in a man-marking situation.

Nielsen, who has in the past played as a striker, sensed it immediately. Le Bihan can’t see her and sticks an arm out to feel for her old teammate, but Nielsen stayed beyond her reach before making a hard cut inside. In a situation like that, Le Bihan needs to be facing out away from goal, so she can see and possibly grapple with Nielsen. Instead, she’s watching the ball, and Nielsen gets into prime goal-scoring territory without having to fight through any traffic.

As for the Dash, this is — like their win against Bay FC — a potentially pivotal win in this season. Nielsen seemed to know it, too, telling reporters after the match about how her sprint-to-the-bench goal celebration was about lifting an entire squad who despite a miserable start to the year still has time to turn things around.

Houston has quietly given up just two goals in its last four games, and between a road shutout and the emotionally loaded nature of the game-winner, this has to be a big moment for the Dash. Building on this won’t be easy with Portland coming to town on Friday, but the performances and coherence within the group need to keep progressing. It’s hard to imagine this group getting another, better moment to spark a climb up the table.

Orlando Pride 1:0 Bay FC: The expansion side has now lost five straight, with Adriana’s first-half penalty the difference on Saturday. Expected goal data has to be used with care and placed in the context of game states, but this was the fifth time in 2024 that Bay FC has come out of a game trailing their opponent by 0.5 xG or more.

The first half in particular was grim in terms of game control, with Orlando — now on a club-record six-game winning streak — taking 17 shots before eventually making the pressure tell as Barbra Banda turned a one-on-one in the box with Deyna Castellanos into a spot kick.

Bay is between something of a rock and a hard place right now. The club has made a pointed commitment is to keeping the ball and disorganizing teams in possession, but has been unable to control games with any regularity.

Losing Alex Loera has left the team experimenting at the No. 6 (which in this game model is the most important position on the entire field), and there’s not enough speed across their backline to play out of an expansive, attack-first posture.

As currently comprised, Bay does have an avenue towards improvement: a compact mid-block, a flipped midfield triangle to go 4-2-3-1, and an emphasis on using an explosive set of attackers to rip teams apart in transition.

That’s not the blueprint for the beautiful soccer Bay promised, but it wouldn’t be uglier than five straight losses.

Portland Thorns 4:0 Seattle Reign: The prior Take-Off discussed the Reign getting a possibly season-changing win over San Diego after Tziarra King’s early red card, but the early evidence is that the pivot to better play hasn’t arrived.

Maybe the physical play in Wednesday’s home clash with Kansas City simply sapped too many players of the energy needed? Whatever it was, outside of a brief, furious response to Olivia Moultrie’s tremendous opening goal late in the first half, the Reign were second-best.

True, the scoreline is heavily influenced by an 80th minute penalty given despite being a pretty clear instance of what IFAB refers to as “not handball”:

Regardless, if you’re the Reign, what followed this dubious call saw desperation to equalize paired with a lack of conviction that eventually ended with Hina Sugita (who has been a key factor in Portland’s post-coaching-change improvement) and Payton Linnehan tacking on two more goals.

“We need to watch film, we need to fix stuff, and we need to do it quick,” Lauren Barnes told reporters after the match. She’s not wrong.

Chicago Red Stars 3:1 Utah Royals: Chicago got their second home win in five tries, and it came down to Utah giving them the game they wanted.

The Red Stars are built to play against the ball to such an extent that they have not had more than 45% of the possession in any match this season, and Saturday’s win was the third time they finished up below 40%. Chicago straight up wants their foes to have the ball, and wants them to come forward, because the Red Stars want to hit on the break and attack the resulting space.

If you’ve seen Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers, they’re Art playing percentage tennis, waiting for opponents to, uh, screw up.

Sadly, the Royals walked right into the trap.

Even Cameron Tucker’s unreal, bending lob (this is at least as good as DeMelo’s free kick, sorry if this offends) couldn’t salvage anything for Utah, who are now on a seven-game winless streak that doesn’t appear close to ending right now. It’s time to start asking why players like Addisyn Merrick and Frankie Tagliaferri aren’t getting minutes, and why Brecken Mozingo isn’t getting starts.

Kansas City Current 1:0 North Carolina Courage: This game was not nearly as close as the scoreline indicates, with Debinha scoring against her old club in what was her first start since the season-opener.

It’s frankly absurd that KC has done what it’s done with limited contributions from one of the best players in the league, and it’s unclear what Vlatko Andonovski sees as his first-choice 11. Temwa Chawinga played as a No. 9 from the start in this one, with Debinha wide right, and on another day we’re talking about a multi-goal win.

The Courage probably need more time on their rest defense, which Claire Hutton and Alexa Spaanstra casually eviscerating NC on the break that became the goal:

Hutton, by the way, is playing spectacular soccer, and it’s a little baffling there’s not more of a hype train. Emma Hayes should be very interested in the youngster’s extremely well-rounded game, because Andonovski is giving her a huge amount of responsibility.