Week 15 recap: Instant Classic

Gotham FC pulled off the impossible on a rainy and smoky afternoon on Randall’s Island as they came back from a 2-0 deficit to secure the full three points in a 3-2 win over the Seattle Reign. Goals in the 81st minute and fourth minute of second-half stoppage time from Esther González leveled the scores before Rose Lavelle delivered the final dagger in the eighth minute of second-half stoppage. This was new territory for the Bats — only two players from the current roster (Sam Kerr and Mandy Freeman) were around the last time Gotham overcame a 2-0 deficit in August 2019, also against the Seattle Reign. How did the Bats beat the odds?

Defensive lapses

To get to how Gotham pulled off the impossible, it’s important to understand how it became an impossible situation in the first place. 

The Bats had a turnaround of less than 72 hours between Wednesday’s game against the Spirit and Sunday’s against the Reign; because both games were technically home games for Gotham, this scheduling was CBA-compliant. “We played Wednesday night, got home very late, had basically one day to recover, one day to half-train because of the smoke, and then had to compete again against a team that had the whole week to prepare,” explained head coach Juan Carlos Amorós. “Then we had a three-hour delay before kickoff. The players are human.”

All of this is to say that the Bats had several factors going against them that can partially explain what you are about to see below.

This wasn’t by any means the worst defensive performance that the Bats have put on — the Reign managed only two shots on target (unfortunately both saw the back of the net), and even before their first goal they only had 16 final third touches compared to Gotham’s 46. But goals change games, and Seattle was the side that was able to strike first. 

The play leading to a penalty call in Seattle’s favor starts with the team’s fourth interception of a Gotham pass in less than twelve minutes of play; this is especially impressive when you consider that the Bats have allowed them just 42 percent of possession at this point in the match. 

After intercepting the ball, the Reign are off to the races. The matchup to watch here is the one between right back Jess Carter and Seattle winger Maddie Dahlien. Dahlien’s speed leaves Carter at a disadvantage as the latter is consistently a step behind. This allows Dahlien to pick out Maddie Mercado at the back post, who is being marked by a ball-watching Mandy Freeman. By the time Gotham realizes what is about to happen, Freeman is forced into fouling Mercado in the box, earning the Reign a penalty kick opportunity. 

Seattle capitalizes as Mia Fishel scores her first goal in the NWSL and suddenly a team that is unbelievably tired and hates being a goal down is a goal down. 

The silver lining here is AKB guessed the right way? 

Gotham didn’t really have much of a response to this goal, at least not initially. In the 10 or so minutes between Seattle’s first and second goals, the Reign had 22 final third touches compared to Gotham’s nine, tilting the field 71-29 in Seattle’s favor. This persistence pays off as they net their second of the afternoon.

Once again it’s the matchup between Dahlien and Carter that is Gotham’s downfall. Reign striker Mia Fishel also does such a good job monopolizing the Bats’ defensive attention that Maddie Mercado is able to slip through Mandy Freeman and Emily Sonnett unnoticed, earning herself any easy tap-in. The Reign were able to run the exact same play twice — the first resulted in a penalty, and the second showed us what would have happened had the foul never occurred. 

The Reign also had the opportunity to score a third after they were awarded a penalty in the 57th minute for a foul that took place in the 50th.

Was this a foul? Probably. But should it take seven minutes for the center referee to decide whether they made a “clear and obvious error”? Maybe not. Either way, Gotham got a huge break with the actual penalty kick.

AKB goes the right way once again but is not credited with the save as Dahlien’s shot hits the post. 

With this miss, Seattle’s last goal was scored in only the 22nd minute. Gotham theoretically had 68 minutes to turn it around — why did it take until the 81st for the dam to break?

Offensive mediocrity

In the Bats’ defense, this was one of the strangest lineups put out on the field this season. A pair of more defensive fullbacks in Jess Carter and Mandy Freeman, a more defensive midfield set up, and Rose Lavelle and Jaedyn Shaw playing out of position meant that the team was set up for failure in terms of generating creative and threatening attacks. 

So while the Bats had the majority of the field tilt throughout this game…

… they failed to make much of it. Despite actually getting a shot off five times, Gotham only managed 0.15 xG in the 45 minutes that all starters were on the pitch.

Gotham’s first shot of the game was actually not terrible. It came from winning second and third balls, a strategy that has brought the Bats a lot of success this season. Savannah McCaskill ultimately sees that she has space to shoot and gets it on target. It doesn’t have enough pace to properly challenge Reign keeper Cassie Miller, but it’s a good start and a good way to set the Bats’ intention for this match.

This one is probably less of a shot and more of an attempted through ball to Midge Purce that’s thwarted by Sam Meza. Either way, it would’ve been a tough move to pull off with all the bodies in white sitting so far back, but the Bats don’t have many options here. 

Jaelin Howell decides to do it all herself here but it ends up being the Bats’ third outside-of-the-box shot of the afternoon as they find themselves forced into poor decision after poor decision.

And then they do it again, this time intentionally. Chances like this are the least likely to go in, but it’s all this lineup has to offer at this point. 

The last shot of the half makes it five for five, as center back Tierna Davidson has a go from 25 yards out.

Halftime finally arrives and Gotham has a chance to regroup. And while Seattle got the first two goals and Gotham failed to come up with a response for the next 58 minutes, what matters most is which team ended up walking away with three points. Let’s get into what made that magic happen.

The (second) greatest comeback of all time

On August 19, 2017, Sky Blue FC entered the locker room at the half down 3-0 to the Seattle Reign. Around an hour later, they returned to the locker room victorious, having pulled off a massive 5-4 win on the back of four goals from young superstar Sam Kerr. It took just under nine years (and two club name changes) for that same team to come back to win from a 2-0 deficit again. 

Because of a variety of factors, including but not limited to poor defense in transitions, poor decision making in attack, a lineup that didn’t set the team up for success, and of course very little turnaround and having to play in poor air quality twice in one week, the first half of this game was kind of a wash for the Bats. The substitutions Juan Carlos Amorós made in the second half were exactly what they needed to turn this around.

Phase 1: Esther González and Guro Reiten come in for Jess Carter and Mandy Freeman

Having an actual striker on the pitch made a world of a difference for Gotham (and of course she went on to score two goals, but more on that later). Substituting Carter and Freeman off meant Gotham returned to a lineup with more attacking-minded fullbacks, as Reiten took Freeman’s place on the left and Midge Purce moved back to take over at right back. González taking over at striker meant Jaedyn Shaw was able to return to the left side, which meant Rose Lavelle could get back to her most efficient position at the 10. These substitutions immediately turned the team into one that was much more capable of the tempo of the game on both sides of the ball.

A little over three minutes after entering the pitch, González more than doubled Gotham’s xG total with just one shot.

Gotham’s substitutes make an immediate impact here. Reiten has gorgeous give-and-go play with Rose Lavelle on the left side and then delivers a gorgeous cross straight to González’s head. It’s incredible how much more space Gotham is able to create in the attack with just these two substitutions.

The Bats don’t do much else in this phase — eight minutes of it are spent reviewing a penalty call and taking a penalty kick — but their dominance on the ball makes it clear how necessary these substitutions were.

Phase 2: Bruninha and Sam Kerr come in for Sarah Schupansky and Savannah McCaskill

This pair of substitutions brought a lot of much needed energy to the team’s attack. Seattle attempted zero shots between the 63rd minute when these two came on and the 83rd — that’s 20 minutes without an attempt at goal. 

In the 18 minutes between these subs and the next one, the Bats came up with a whopping 0.77 xG and 1.64 PSxG, 0.43 and 1.44 of which came from Sam Kerr. Kerr did an incredible job of being at the right place at the right time here:

And here:

The Bats were making testing goalkeeper Cassie Miller a more frequent habit, building up their attacking pressure. It wasn’t much later that the dam finally broke.

Esther González almost got her first goal here after Rose Lavelle teed it up for her, missing by inches and hitting the crossbar instead.

The Bats recycle the play, once again run it through that trusty left side, and Jaedyn Shaw and González combine for a brilliant goal.

Sam Kerr’s performance showed us what she is capable of doing for a team that’s in crisis. She creates good chances with excellent game awareness and positioning, and she also draws defenders away from Gotham’s many other dangerous attackers, opening up space for them to shoot at goal. 

“I was really excited when I saw her coming on,” said forward Midge Purce. “I had this Marvel moment where I was like, ‘You thought this was everything, and now we're bringing on the Hulk.’ It was amazing.”

While this phase is the one where the floodgates finally opened, the next phase was what facilitated the full comeback for the Bats.

Phase 3: Denise O’Sullivan comes in for Jaelin Howell

Jaelin Howell got some rest for only the second time this season as Gotham’s latest acquisition took her place at defensive midfield. O’Sullivan had only been with the team for a week at this point and hadn’t had much time to learn the intricacies of Gotham’s system but that didn’t stop her from making an immediate impact. “Juan told me to go in there, try to get on the ball, try to switch play and settle things down,” she said after the game. And that’s exactly what she did.  

O’Sullivan completed 12 of the 13 passes she attempted, making sure the Bats retained possession of the ball in critical moments. One of the moments in question was in the build up to their second goal.

Here, O’Sullivan is able to control and ground the ball, keeping the play alive for the Bats in the fourth or so phase of play following a corner kick. Five passes later, it’s in the back of the net. 

After the game, Seattle head coach Laura Harvey expressed frustration with her team’s defensive performance in the lead up to this goal. “If we’re gonna get pressure on the ball, we’ve gotta do that collectively. If we’re not going to get pressure on the ball, we need to do that collectively,” she said. “I felt that that disconnect right at the end there cost us.” The Bats did a great job reading and exploiting that disconnect to tie up the game. 

O’Sullivan didn’t have much to do with the goal that sealed the comeback win for Gotham, however. Instead, it was a Rose Lavelle masterpiece with an important Sam Kerr cameo.

Kerr’s reception of González’s ball forward was brilliant, and she nearly created a shooting window for herself. It’s unclear whether the ball landing at Lavelle’s feet was an intentional move on her part or a bad touch, but either way she gets on the assist sheet and the player that started this entire play hammers it home, completing the second-most epic comeback victory in club history.

Forward Midge Purce was all smiles after that performance, explaining that, “I don't think there's another thing on this earth that I've experienced that's as fun as coming back like that.”

Looking ahead to next match

The Bats are on the road again as they take on the Portland Thorns on Friday, July 24th at 10 PM ET, streaming nationally on Amazon Prime. The Thorns were ahead of Gotham in league standings up until this past weekend, but now sit in fourth following a 2-1 loss to the Denver Summit on Saturday. Portland has eight wins, three draws, and five losses to its name so far this season, having played one more game than Gotham. The Thorns’ most dangerous threats definitely come on the attacking side, with Sophia Wilson back from maternity leave and looking scarily like her old self. League sophomore Pietra Tordin and 20-year-old veteran Olivia Moultrie have also been huge contributors to the attack, having scored 16 of the Thorns’ 25 goals this season along with Wilson. Aside from being extremely technical, this offense is speedy, so Gotham needs to limit transition moments as much as they can to have a chance at keeping the league’s leading attack at bay.

Thumbnail courtesy of Gotham FC.