Angel City F.C. vs. Orlando Pride: Will Both Teams Remain Stagnant?
Angel City FC will be facing off against Orlando Pride on Thursday, August 21st, at 9:30 p.m. EST at the BMO Stadium in Los Angeles. Both teams are coming back from games they have tied. They’re each dealing with varying levels of disappointment. Orlando Pride slid down one slot to rank third with a total of 28 points. Meanwhile, Angel City did not move and stayed in 11th place with 17 points.
ACFC’s last match ended in a tie of 0-0. According to the rankings, the game with UTA shouldn’t have been too difficult. UTA sits at the bottom of the leaderboard in 14th place. Fans are hoping their last performance was a fluke. The Utah Royals had possession of the ball for most of the game. ACFC had numerous chances to score, but none of the balls successfully found the net. For example, Alyssa Thompson shoots a header aiming for the center of the goal; unfortunately, she misses. Head coach Alex Straus said, “[The game] was a step backward.” The team was not pleased with their performance and felt they could have done more. Goalkeeper Hannah Seabert commented after the game that “honestly, we are not stepping away from this [game] happy, and there is going to be a lot of work in this coming week to make sure more things happen for us.
Similar to Angel City, Orlando Pride's match with KC Current ended in a 0-0 tie. Orlando Pride was playing against the number one team, and there was supposed to be a showdown between Barbra Banda and Temwa Chaŵinga. Unfortunately, Barbra was injured in the 10th minute, resulting in Ally Lemos replacing her. Orlando's head coach, Seb Hines, said, "Something you don’t plan for is Barbra Banda going down after 10 minutes. Banda is such a key player for us with her threat behind her and goal-scoring [capabilities.]”The players struggled to adapt to playing without Banda, managing only to defend. Hines gave credit where it was due and praised the players for continuing to apply pressure to the KC Current team.
The next match between Angel City and Orlando Pride will allow the two teams to prove to themselves and the world of their true potential. The future of Orland Pride is overcast for now. It is unclear whether Banda will be able to participate in the match against ACFC. Angel City has been training harder since their last game and hopes to showcase their improvement in this subsequent game. Fans will have to wait till Thursday to find out how exactly both teams have progressed, or rather if their playing continues to be underwhelming.
