Reign Fall Late to Washington, Extend No-Goal Streak to Nine Halves

SEATTLE - The last time the Reign scored a goal was in the 42nd minute of their second game in Spokane, played on March 28. For nine straight halves, they haven't reached the back of the net once.

Going up against the Washington Spirit on Sunday, the Reign a tall task ahead of them. The Spirit came into the match having won their last four games by a combined score of 11-2 and had 15 points in the table (4-1-3) compared to Seattle's 11 (3-2-2) at the time of kickoff, though with the Reign's game in hand, there wasn't much actual separation between the sides.

By the end of the game, there seemed to be something of a disconnect in tone. On one hand, they kept a mostly tight lid on a Spirit offense that had scored nearly three goals a game over their past four fixtures. And that wasn't a skin-of-the-teeth defensive showing; Washington had a grand total of two shots on target and 0.44 expected goals (xG). It was the lowest xG that any team had held Washington to at any point in the 2026 season.

At the same time, the team really didn't threaten much on the opposing side of the net. Seattle, from the first minute to the last, failed to string together quality touches on the ball, barely getting three shots on target and 0.81 xG of their own, a marked decrease from their previous match against Houston but not outside the realm of what the offense has been able to produce at an underlying level in 2026.

And of course, the number that mattered: the Reign didn't produce a single goal. For the fourth straight game, by the way. The eighth and ninth straight halves. The Spirit knocked one in during the final minutes on an incredibly well-executed run of play in the 84th minute. Seattle lost.

At least some of the players, in the immediate aftermath, were more positive about the team's battle than the final score might suggest.

"Honestly, I'm pretty proud of the team's performance overall. It's obviously pretty upsetting to give up a goal in a game where we felt we deserved and earned more," left back Maddy Curry said. "But at the end of the day, that's well within our power to create in the final third and put our chances away, because we had quality chances, and we're inching towards what we want in our identity. Yeah, we just have to keep working."

Head coach Laura Harvey, on the other hand, had a much more sour view of the game.

"This is a tough one to take, I would say," Harvey said. "Out of all the games we've played this year, it's probably the most disappointed I've been."

The nature of the loss was different to their previous two. The rivalry match in Portland was an ugly, baffling loss when the team lost its composure after their opponents suffered two red cards. Seattle's loss to Utah was downstream of some bad defensive lapses that led to one goal after another. In each of those, the causes of the losses were easy to parse and attack the next week; on Sunday, the cause was more nebulous.

There wasn't a single player who bore the responsibility or had a particularly bad game. Rather, across the team, the same players would create a good look and then lose one a few minutes later. They were strong defensively, but failed to build anything once they got into that final third. They couldn't find a consistent playmaker in the front four.

I suppose both attitudes are necessary for Seattle: the frankness about how the team fell short and the optimism about how to go about fixing it. But right after the game, the two viewpoints weren't in synthesis. The Reign's overarching identity as a team built on solid contribution across the pitch isn't in doubt, but their identity of how to get there might need some ironing out.

The general flow of the game didn't change much between halves, and it was one fulfilled opportunity for Washington that settled the score.

The Reign had some aggression in the opening minutes (maybe a little less than they needed) and promising windows opened up early on. An interesting look for Mia Fishel didn't quite materialize to start off a spell of high possession, though, and keeper Sandy MacIver made a stellar jumping save to deflect a Maddie Mercado shot on net in the fourth minute.

Washington began turning the game towards their attacking half in the following minutes, putting the Reign on the back foot as they made a series of decent looks and half-chances for themselves. Seattle didn't give in at the end, but the pressure showed up in mental decisions: panicked touches, a lack of aggressive play when they did get the ball, and an overall reactive approach. This showed in the 17th minute as, although Nérilia Mondésir broke up Washington's possession around Seattle's own penalty area and passed up to Maddie Dahlien in a central position, there weren't enough numbers going up and Dahlien hesitated around midfield in any case.

The effect of what a confident touch could do was evident in the 20th minute, as although Trinity Rodman came up the left side and knocked a cross into the box, Phoebe McClernon recognized that there weren't any enemy jerseys close enough to threaten to cash it in, and so she calmly passed it upwards. Seattle turned that phase of play into some rather unthreatening attacking possession, sure, but it put a lid on Washington's attack for some time.

It culminated in a 25th minute corner kick for Seattle. Mondésir sent in a solid service for Dahlien, but the latter's header was offline and the first goal in eight halves would have to wait.

Groundhog Day was about the best way Seattle's attacking play could be described in the ensuing minutes. There would be in interesting look every couple of minutes, only for a bad touch or a little bit of unawareness would allow the Spirit to regain possession. To Seattle's credit, they kept a strong pressing structure for quite a while, but a breakdown in that structure allowed an attack to gather briefly for Washington in the 35th minute.

For a couple fleeting moments, it seemed like disaster had struck. Rosemond Kouassi went down in the penalty area, and with head referee Jaclyn Metz' already evident tendency to call the borderline foul, the visitors looked on the verge of a penalty.

No call was made. Seattle took the ball up the right touchline and managed to win a free kick as Rebecca Bernal was shown a yellow, but nothing came of it. Neither did anything get produced out of a couple of Mercado runs around the middle of the pitch in the late first half, though this was due to Washington midfielder Hal Hershfelt outrunning her both times.

The visitors weren't strangers to missed chances in the first half, though theirs came late off of the rare lapses in pressure from Seattle's defense. Luckily for Seattle, they couldn't get a shot off. The half ended without fanfare roughly at the moment the 45th minute wrapped up.

Another unfulfilled corner began the second half, as Seattle couldn't find a touch in the box and the ball soon went the other way. It presaged quite a few more mistakes just as those that had peppered the first half, the kinds of shanked touches or missed aerials that left looks and half-chances without proper expansion into full opportunities. There wasn't a particular culprit the mistakes fell on; the same player who provided the solid foundation of a later-on squandered half-chance would go on to be the one doing the squandering the next go around.

Seattle produced a shot on net in the 54th minute, the first time a cross truly found a clear target in the box for either side. But Coco's header went right to MacIver and Seattle would have to try again.

MacIver would prove quite a bit more active in the second half than she had been in the first, jumping up to nab Mondésir's corner kick service in the 57th and then diving to grab a back-headed Mercado shot - though not on net - in the 64th minute. Mercado had shined during the beginning of that run of play, with a pristine one-touch pass to Fishel on the left side, who sent it back to Mercado for that header opportunity.

But the back-headed shot attempt, valiant as it was, resulted from a disconnect between Mercado's positioning in the box and where Fishel had sent in the cross.

An attempted golazo from Curry in the 73rd - taken on the heels of quite a dubious free kick just outside the box (not that the Reign minded) - flew over the crossbar.

Not that the Spirit weren't missing a few opportunities, either. Just like in the first half, these mostly came off transition moments and defensive zone Seattle giveaways. But even with some of these chances being quite promising, their shots would time and again go over the woodwork or well offline, not to mention the times someone like Sam Meza would break up their lines of play.

Claudia Dickey found her first meaningful action of the game in the 74th minute as she nabbed a corner kick from Washington, the first of the half for the visitors. The Spirit had an excellent look in the 81st minute as they had brief numbers deep in the box, only needing a dangerous shot to take a killer late lead, but Paige Metayer's shot went right to Dickey.

But "one piece of quality", as Harvey put it after the game, made the difference. The Spirit got an 84th minute breakaway on the right touchline (though Coco nearly intercepted the ball up) and roared up the pitch. The Reign brought numbers into the box to try and take the ball away, but as Gabrielle Carle sent the ball over for Claudia Martínez, the latter put a perfect shot on the ball through two defenders it to the right edge of the goal, far away from Dickey, who was planted in the center of the net. Washington led 1-0.

Needing to get her team back on track and quickly, Harvey made a flurry of substitutions in the 87th and 89th minutes. Out went Mondésir and Ainsley McCammon, in came Angharad James-Turner and Emeri Adames. Brittany Ratcliffe subbed on for Curry as Seattle moved to a more attacking structure. But the misses in quality kept piling up; sometimes with the same player that created the chance letting the chance go away in the same run of play, as Adames did during stoppage.

A late equalizer was not to be. Seattle finished their ninth straight scoreless half and lost a quite winnable match to what had been a white-hot Spirit side.

Producing little more than half-chances made much of the possession moot.

Seattle did something no other team had done against the Spirit in 2026: win the possession battle.

This didn't matter. Much of the possession was build-up intended for connections upfield that never came; some of the other possession was simply the team playing it back without making many threats. In any case, with the defensive play the way that it was, Harvey plainly didn't see the possession battle as a major factor in the match.

"I don't contemplate that [possession] for a second, to be honest. I wanted us to be aggressive defensively, I wanted us to make it difficult for them, I think we did a good job of that," Harvey said. "But, if they'd had 80% possession, I'd be fine with that if we defended the way we did."

McCammon and Curry, after the game, did make note of possession in the game, viewing it (and their ability to go toe-to-toe with Washington physically) as a positive sign moving forward.

"We obviously always hone in on our defensive gameplan, but I know this week we really did work on our build-out, working on having more unpredictability and doing different things," McCammon said. "I think our build-out was super successful today, we found good breaking lines, passes. So, again, it's just, once we get into that final third, what can we do?"

Harvey didn't see her team's attacking woes as resultant of tactical mistakes per se, rather, she saw it as bad execution upon sound tactics creating the openings of opportunities.

"Final third, to me, is not tactical; it's about technical execution," Harvey said. "I thought in the first half, we got in areas we wanted to get into, and then we overhit a pass, or we made the wrong decision, all those little bits. It's not tactical. Tactical is how you get there; tactical is how you stop them getting there. And I thought we did a really good job of that today - but then it's about how we execute in those moments."

There are definitely tactical ideas (and trade-offs) to consider. Time and again the Reign broke up potential looks from Washington and pressed them into unthreatening areas when they had the ball. But they weren't quick enough on the uptake during potential transition moments, with too few numbers going upfield. The obvious trade-off here is that bringing too many jerseys into the attack would leave Seattle potentially vulnerable to counter-transition, but there were too many times when it would be something like 1-on-5 or more and there wouldn't be much of an opportunity for Seattle to make anything out of a switch in momentum. They didn't have the speed to make that work.

But Harvey was correct that the technical execution was the main culprit. They did some of that better against Houston, when they really fell to the auspices of bad luck. Seattle came tantalizingly close to scoring many times against Utah. They took a step back on Sunday.

McCammon shared a similar view on the team's needs up top.

The players, for their part, are still optimistic (as they have to be). The belief in the general game plan is still fully there. It's all about how to create it that differs.

How will the Reign build up their identity?

Earlier I mentioned how the team's instrumental identity - how they approach the game beyond the overarching team attitude - seems cross-pressured at the moment: players have a different idea of the team's identity than Harvey does. Ideally, the whole squad should be on the same page, but they seemed to be on different pages after Sunday's game.

"I think, in general, our team really focuses on our defense, and that's something that we pride ourselves in, and we slipped up a few times this season," Curry said. "And we really wanted to make sure that our identity is a defensive team first, and I think we showed that in the first half and most of the second half. It's always a good feeling when you shut down those kinds of players [like the Spirit's Trinity Rodman], it gives the confidence to go and start our attack."

Curry viewed the team's priority over their previous few weeks as shoring up a defense that had struggled, with the offense something to build up once the defensive foundations were there.

Now, it's worth noting that Curry is a defender; she is naturally going to focus more on her area of the game. Harvey, the coach, is naturally going to take a more total look at the game. It's the "view from 10 feet" versus the "view from 10,000 feet", the forest and the trees, or whatever metaphor you prefer.

Taking things one step at a time has its merits. Try to fix everything and you will fix nothing - and a defender should always hone in on defense. Evidently, however, Harvey had been looking for a concurrent improvement on the attack, given the clean sheet that her team had produced against Houston. The best defense, as they say, is a good offense, and had the Reign produced one on Sunday, it would have been a whole different ballgame (literally).

Harvey's view on the identity was different. She agreed that the team was building up its defensive mindset well, but she balanced that with a recognition of the dire need to score.

All thirds of the field. This will surely be Harvey's message to the team in the week ahead; for the defense to keep doing what it is doing and for the offense to sharpen up. Seattle have been shut out in five of its eight contests in 2026, and despite jumping out to a higher spot in the table to begin the season, the Reign now sit in eighth place, the last spot that goes into the playoffs at the end of the season.

The end of the year, of course, is far, far away. But if Seattle are going to beat the national media's preseason expectations and earn a home playoff match, they will have to step up the attacking production.

Their next game is at home on Friday, May 15 at home against Gotham.