"They're the Best Conversations to Have": Reign Beat Stars 1-0 Despite Missed Opportunities

SEATTLE - The Reign may have only scored one goal on Friday night, but in terms of chance production, it was their most encouraging game yet.

A week ago I wrote about the Reign's need to keep their offensive firepower rolling. At an underlying level, this means expected goals (xG), where they had been one of the worst teams before the World Cup break and one of the best teams after it.

Seattle out-xGed the Chicago Stars by a factor of 10-to-1. Had the Stars managed a gut-wrenching late equalizer, there would have been a whole different discussion postgame. But all's well that ends well, and though the Reign missed five "big chances" according to FotMob - and only scored once despite 44 touches in the opposing box - they kept a clean sheet and got all three points.

"I'll take this stretch for sure. No question," Harvey said when asked how such a game compared to the team's early season rut. "And not just the multiple games ... if we can create the way we have done of late, and be clinical - or, like tonight, keep creating, and be annoyed at ourselves that we weren't clinical - they're the best conversations to have."

Friday's win advanced the Reign's record to 8-7-3, an above-even record for the first time since their loss to the Washington Spirit on May 10. They are now 4-1-1 over their past six games, having outscored their opponents 12-7 with 2.1 xG per game.

The match may have been against the worst team in the NWSL, but it was another notch in the belt of a Reign team that has seemed to go from underperforming to dark horse surprise side in the span of six matches. They still have a long way to go, but their current run has put them in a solid spot to utilize their final 12 games of the year.

Seattle currently has 27 points, so to get the requisite 15 points over their remaining dozen contests, they'll have to get 1.25 points per game. Five wins would automatically get them to 42, as would four wins plus three draws, three wins plus six draws, or two wins plus nine draws.

Seattle's first half wasn't as effective as the second, but they still managed to mostly keep the Stars under wraps.

Despite the Stars entering the game (and exiting it) with the worst record in the NWSL, they still have a potent threat in Mallory Swanson. She formed the majority of the Stars' threats in the first half, getting the only two shots on target for the entire game (both of which in the first half).

As for the Reign, some of the early passes weren't as clinical as they would have liked, but for the most part, the team kept the ball in the attacking half for most of the first five minutes. The Stars, however, kept Seattle from turning these early looks into more than that, and even though Maddie Mercado and Sally Menti picked the visitors' pockets deep in their half to force a corner in the seventh, all it became was the first of a couple early breakaways for Chicago.

Claudia Dickey stopped that breakaway with a diving save and, within the following minute, it became a fast break for the Reign going the other way. Stars keeper Katie Atkinson returned the favor to Seattle with a jumping deflection over the crossbar, however, and the ensuing corner for Seattle became the second Stars breakaway.

Maddie Dahlien had a couple of early missed touches, overshooting Mercado on a 10th minute cross (having gotten a soaring long ball from Ainsley McCammon to begin the opportunity) and shanking a 13th minute header on a Reign corner kick second ball, but she was still getting herself into some dangerous spots as per usual.

Although the connection and precision team-wide began to dwindle around the 15th minute, the team won a corner kick in the 19th after moving the ball up the right side. The service ended up coming in perfectly to McCammon near the right post, but her header bounced off the crossbar.

By this point in the game, there existed a notable gulf between Seattle's ideas and what they actually managed to do. A persistent plague of too-strong touches seeped throughout the entire team, from kicks up the touchlines that went to far to takeaway opportunities that ended due to the first boot sending it back to the Stars.

Chicago's chances had remained relatively few and far between for the first 25 minutes, but some quality on the ball from Brianna Pinto in the 27th minute nearly opened the scoring for the visitors and the momentum continued to swing in their direction for a few minutes.

Such sustained Stars momentum dissipated as fast as it gathered, however. A fast break nearly became a Reign goal in the 30th as Dahlien sent a perfect pass to Mercado on the right side, but it was deflected for a corner and the previous order of play - caroming fast breaks dotted by mistakes for each side in the final third - reasserted itself. Potential connection between Menti and Fishel in the 32nd became a Stars breakaway, which became a Swanson shot right into Dickey's grasp, which became a brief look for Seattle; rinse and repeat. Not all the plays were as threatening as those, but the inability of either side to assert itself over the other led to this kind of back-and-forth pattern of play.

Seattle's back line press mostly kept Dickey from having to bail out her team, but both were needed to repel a series of corners in the 36th and 37th minutes, as the keeper made a high deflection to bat one away and Phoebe McClernon sent a clearance soaring to end the second chance for Chicago.

The Reign ended up with two more chances before halftime, but they were some of the best of the first 45. McCammon sent a high leftward-curling pass to Fishel in the 42nd, who sent a cross to Mercado next to the right post, but her shot went outside said post as both she and Atkinson collided. VAR ruled there wasn't a foul (to the boos of 7,646 fans in Lumen), and when Seattle's last entry into the final third fizzled out when Mercado couldn't pull the trigger with an open ball.

Harvey saw the first 45 minutes as not quite up to standard, with the Reign giving a little too much deference to their opponents and not going the extra mile to dominate the game.

"I think Ainsley's little chip over to Mia in the first half was probably the only real time in the first half we got behind them," Harvey said. "We were a little more fluid in our movement [in the second half], we didn't try to overplay, and we suffocated their transition. I think we gave Mal a bit more respect in the first half - and obviously she's a fantastic player - and in the second half we didn't do that. We were more suffocating, we got on the front foot."

Seattle dominated the second half, though they only scored one goal.

Perhaps it's a positive sign for staying power; perhaps it's a negative sign for quickness. The real "analysis" will probably be made post facto, sort of as in the manner of nearly every "rest versus rust" narrative that has ever been made (did they win? Rest! Did they lose? Rust!). But the fact remains that the second half was when the team turned into high gear, and this for the second straight game.

It's a stark departure from a team who has come out roaring in the first half post-break only to let up the gas and be at the mercy of their opponents' comeback efforts. Mercado, the lone goal scorer in the final 45 (though she might remember this game for how many chances she missed), said as much.

"I think the second half, for us, has been something that we've really focused on, it's how we can make that similar to coming out on the front foot, like we do in the first half. I think the first few games of the season, we struggled coming out in the second half, it seemed like we were a little bit flat," Mercado said. "And so I think as a team, as a group, we've really worked through that."

The ideal, of course, is to play like that in both halves. The Reign had the luxury of playing against the worst team in the NWSL, but that will certainly not be the case as they take on Racing Louisville and the Kansas City Current in the week ahead.

In any case, the second half against Chicago opened similarly to the first, with Seattle on the attack but missing the final touch in three early chances. Two ended on attempted shots that went wide of the net, while the third culminated in a boot that went directly to Atkinson.

But all this pressure - mostly by Seattle, who led the first half in xG 0.87 to 0.32 - had to go somewhere. As Dahlien and Sofia Huerta switched spots in the 53rd and Huerta got a breakaway up the left side before sending it to Menti in the center of the box. Menti had Mercado right in front of her, and although Stars defender Leila Ouahabi managed to get a foot on it, Mercado recovered and delivered a point blank shot into the net. The game was 1-0 in Seattle's favor.

It's become practically law at this point that the first two Reign goals of a game have to come in quick succession. The Stars tested this law quite heavily as they sat in stunned inaction while Seattle brought the ball into the final third again and again. Mercado was at the center of a lot of the action, with three scoring chances going by the wayside (one blocked and two as missed shots) but so were McCammon and Dahlien. None of the many, many chances managed to go in, however: they mostly ended as one Reign player or another would barely miss their shot.

Mercado's first miss was in the 58th minute. After Ryanne Brown stole the ball away in Seattle's attacking half, the Reign got it again to Menti in the middle of the box, and she again nonchalantly flicked it Mercado's way - but she went a step too far forward and tried for a diagonal bottom right-to-top left shot, sailing it over the woodwork. Merely two minutes later was her second miss, which was off a Dahlien cross from the left side and, although being a much better look on net, Mercado missed by more than she had the first time.

The game-winning goal-scorer held her head in her hands, knowing she could have had a brace. The game, in truth, could have been 7-0. Dahlien missed about a foot wide of the left post roughly a minute later, squandering a Reign breakaway, and the chances kept coming.

Seattle was hunting that goal for most of the remaining 37 minutes after Mercado's first goal, but they never would end up finding it. Nérilia "Coco" Mondésir and Holly Ward, who had subbed on for Mia Fishel and Maddie Dahlien in the 70th minute, combined for a golden opportunity in the 73rd as Ward took it up into the left corner and passed it back to Mondésir - but Coco's header went over the post.

More opportunities came and went for the Reign, with Mercado rattling off another shot in the 81st and Atkinson making a strong save against Emeri Adames in the 88th. But despite the missed chances, by the time the final whistle sounded, the Stars hadn't fired a single shot since halftime. The Reign, meanwhile, had cleaned up most everything except their finishing touch, and the one goal they had managed to punch in turned out to be enough.

The Reign "made it harder than it needed to be", but they came away with a win nonetheless.

Seattle probably should have scored a bit more. Mercado could have had a hat trick with slightly better precision, for example, and one bad mistake in the back line could have left the Reign without two points they really needed. But it was a win nonetheless.

"We probably made it a little harder than in needed to be," Harvey said. "I felt that, overall, we played really well; we only got hurt in the first half through transition, which when you dig into transition, it normally means that you gave the ball away in an area you didn't want to. I felt that we eliminated that in the second half for the majority of the time."

Though this wasn't how the Reign have usually struggled (for a certain definition of that word, given that they won and all), it offered room for improvement for Harvey's side as they go into two road matches on a quick turnaround for each.

"I said to the players at the end, I think we had enough opportunities to make the game a little bit more comfortable for ourselves," Harvey said on Friday. "And that's maybe not been our trait of late! We've been quite clinical. So, the players feel good with the clean sheet and the three points, but I love the fact that they're a little bit disappointed about that."

McCammon, who had put in another strong performance in the midfield, had a similar message with a different spin. Seattle had effectively slowed the game down in the final minutes - using a bit of "the dark arts" as they are known among Interbay Stadium's two natty-winning USL sides - and she lauded her team's ability to end the game on their terms.

"At the ends of games, you kinda just gotta grind it out," McCammon said. "I think we did a better job of wasting time and not always just playing long, but keeping it when we could, too. I think there's always room for improvement, we can do a little bit of a better job, but I know we're super proud that we kept the clean sheet."

In the end, the lack of a finishing touch was the only real blemish on the performance. Outside of some mistakes that were, in retrospect, first half jitters, the play in 80% of the pitch was exactly what Seattle needed to do to win. And despite her remark that her players had been a little disappointed, Harvey had plenty to praise about the game.

Despite Sam Meza being out with a last-minute injury, the midfield play ended up just as solid as Seattle needed it to be.

The Reign didn't have the full starting XI they had wanted for Friday. Sam Meza, who many on the team (and this website) have praised as an underrated piece of Seattle's midfield, was out with a leg injury at kickoff.

"Total, yesterday in training, just last-minute. It's not bad, but to get it turned round in 24 hours was gonna be unrealistic," Harvey said. "We've been preparing Haz for a while to get ready to play, with Ainsley potentially going to a U20 World Cup, and it just came earlier than we thought."

Angharad James-Turner, or "Haz" as the team knows her, played in Meza's defensive midfield spot. While she didn't have the exciting takeaways that Meza is known for, she still put in the work rate and precision needed for the role.

"I thought she put a great shift in tonight," Harvey said.

Now, Haz wasn't as good as her two midfield companions on Friday, but that could be classified as appraisal by faint damnation. Both McCammon - who showed why she might be called up to the U20 World Cup this year in Poland - and Menti were stellar on Friday, taking the opportunities Haz and the backline gave them and turning them into real threats.

According to FotMob, Menti created seven chances and racked up 1.06 expected assists (xA) with 50 touches, 24 out of 31 (77%) accurate passes, and five out of nine (56%) accurate crosses. McCammon, a line behind Menti, had nine passes into the final third, and despite struggling with touch quality in the first half, she wound up building opportunities aplenty in the second half.

The tactics, she said, were just about the same as they would have been with Meza on the roster.

"I don't think we've really changed too much. We knew that Haz was gonna be able to step in and do her role, and she obviously did, she performed great tonight," McCammon said. "So, I don't think there was really any tactical changes, because we knew that Haz could step in and perform like she did tonight."

The Reign's 4-1-1 run has built up a level of team belief they haven't enjoyed in a while.

Winning, as they say, fixes everything. The Reign were restless before the break, having taken exactly the big step back that many nationally were predicting. Their production took an 11-half absense in net, the xG figures were some of the lowest in the league, and the goals added (g+) were roughly similar.

Advanced metrics and traditional ones agreed the Reign were struggling pre-World Cup; afterwards, they both agree on how well they're doing. No longer do they have to be bailed out by Claudia Dickey innumerable times in order to eke their way into the playoffs - they can now rely on offense to do that. The clearances have still been shaky at plenty of points (not against Chicago, but it's still something they should keep an eye on), but other than that, the team has undergone a remarkable renovation.

Of course, this all means good things for morale and cohesion.

It's the exact opposite of what the other Lumen Field soccer team is going through. For the Reign, their form is an upward spiral, where good play encourages creativity and simplicity alike which engenders good play.

"We were just doing good things," Harvey said. "Maddie Dahlien was a real threat 1-v-1 on the left and we were combining well on the right. Obviously, Sofia (Huerta) got in for the goal, which was great. I felt that we were really on the front foot too, which was fantastic. And we had good positioning behind the ball too, where it made it hard for them to get out of wherever we were attacking from. Just that final end product, their keeper made a couple of good saves, but the amount of corners we had, the amount of set pieces we had - I'm picturing Maddie Mercado's volley as well - just good chances, and I think we can be disappointed with that, but I think, as you mentioned, it's been a while since we only scored one goal, so we're not gonna beat ourselves too much up about that."

Given how big of a rut they put themselves in earlier on in the season, they'll need to continue this kind of play. Going 8-2-2 over the remaining 12 games (that is to say, continuing their run of form exactly for the entire rest of the season) would get them to 53 points; that would be fourth place if every other team maintained their exact pace. Getting a guarantedd home playoff match, then, would really require the team to be sustainably locked-in. The team seems to be focused on making it to the playoffs in general, however, and that's a shorter task.

Pride Night II in Lumen

Neither the Reign nor Sounders played a match in June, the traditional month for Pride celebrations, on account of the World Cup. There was a (city-designated) Pride Night during that month in the stadium, however: the Egypt-Iran group stage match, one which caught a lot of prematch commentary for the irony of two countries with terrible gay rights records playing the rainbow ceremony - and one that caught a lot of postmatch commentary for a lot more (the consequences of a major regional war, the Iran national team's harsh travel schedule, and a controversial VAR call).

Pride Night II (title unofficial) was the Reign's on Friday, with the stadium handing out rainbow flags to be displayed at second half kickoff. Harvey, a gay woman, held the day as a special one.

"It's great to see the fans turning up, being loud and proud, it just fills me with so much joy," Harvey said. "The cherry on top is that it's the pride game and we can all go and be happy and gay."