The final game before the long April international break has Angel City Football Club on the road facing one of its biggest early tests of the 2026 season.<\/p>\n
Friday night, Angel City will visit the Orlando Pride. The Pride, the 2024 NWSL champions and Supporter\u2019s Shield winners, have always been a challenge for Angel City.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are dangerous through 95 minutes and can hurt you at any time,\u201d Angel City coach Alex Straus said of Orlando.<\/p>\n
Of the eight meetings between the two teams, five have featured either a tying or winning goal scored in the 85th minute or later. In the first meeting last season, Angel City took a 2-0 lead into halftime, but Orlando rallied with goals in the 71st and 76th minutes and then the winner on an Angel City own goal.<\/p>\n
When the teams met at BMO Stadium last August, an 86th-minute goal by Angel City\u2019s Gisele Thompson proved to be the winner.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this league and against this level of opponent, the games can switch up so quickly,\u201d Angel City goalkeeper Angelina Anderson said. \u201cIt\u2019s so important to gain momentum and keep momentum or if you don\u2019t have momentum, how do you get it?<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like the last two matchups, at least for us, have been difficult, tough, testing, challenging and you can see how both of those played out at the end. So going into tomorrow (Friday), we know that, it\u2019s going to be a tough game. We know what it feels like on both ends of that spectrum and we\u2019re going to do everything we can to just be on the winning side.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Pride (1-1-2, five points) have scored five goals this season, three from Barbara Banda. Angel City (3-0-0, nine points) has allowed only two goals, while leading the league with nine goals scored.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve been successful for the last years and I think if they didn\u2019t lose Banda for that big part of last season, they would probably be in and around at the end of last season, as well,\u201d Straus said. \u201cThey have some really important individuals. They\u2019re a really, really tough team and a tough test for us. We need to be at our best, but if we are at our best, I think we can challenge them.\u201d<\/p>\n
MARCH AWARDS<\/p>\n
The only remaining unbeaten team in the NWSL after the first month, reaped some of the awards, announced Friday.<\/p>\n
Angel City Football Club went 3-0 in March, with wins over the Chicago Stars, Bay FC and Houston Dash.<\/p>\n
Straus was selected the NWSL Coach of the Month and Sveind\u00eds J\u00f3nsd\u00f3ttir earned Player of the Month honors. J\u00f3nsd\u00f3ttir, who had only one goal and one assist in her short time with the team last season, scored three goals and added a pair of assists in March.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a recognition of the work that we have been doing,\u201d Straus said. \u201cWe would rather have it the end of the year, not in the first month of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n
INTERNATIONAL BREAK<\/p>\n
Friday is Angel City\u2019s final game until April 26. That means it will be a busy stretch for internationals. Here is the list of players heading out on duty:<\/p>\n
Gisele Thompson and Emily Sams will join the USWNT senior team for a trio of games (April 11 in San Jose, April 14 in Seattle and April 17 in Colorado) against Japan.<\/p>\n
Evelyn Shores and Riley Tiernan will be with the U.S. U-23\u2019s for a camp in Spain from April 7-17. The team will face off against the Netherlands (April 10), Denmark (April 13) and then a third game to conclude the camp.<\/p>\n
Kennedy Fuller will join the U.S. U-20\u2019s in a domestic camp in Kansas City from April 7-16. The camp will also feature a pair of exhibition games against Brazil\u2019s U-20 team.<\/p>\n
Casey Phair will travel to join the South Korean national team and Ary Borges and Maiara Niehues will join Brazil\u2019s senior team.<\/p>\n
ANGEL CITY FC at ORLANDO PRIDE<\/p>\n
When: Friday, 5 p.m. PT<\/p>\n
Where: Inter&Co Stadium; Orlando, Fla.<\/p>\n
How to watch: Amazon Prime Video<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The final game before the long April international break has Angel City Football Club on the road facing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[57307,139,141,140,2062,110],"class_list":{"0":"post-216824","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-angel-city-football-club","9":"tag-orlando","10":"tag-orlando-headlines","11":"tag-orlando-news","12":"tag-soccer","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}