The Orlando Pride head into the second leg of a three-match road trip on the heels of a disappointing 2-1 loss to expansion side Boston Legacy FC.<\/p>\n
The Pride will have to regroup quickly from Tuesday\u2019s loss, because they\u2019ll be in Colorado on Saturday to take on the NWSL\u2019s other expansion team, Denver Summit FC. Kickoff at Dick\u2019s Sporting Goods Park is 8:45 p.m.<\/p>\n
The Pride stands at 3-4-2 with 11 points and sits seventh in the NWSL standings. Denver is 2-3-3 with nine points, good for 12th in the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is part of the challenge in this league,\u201d Orlando head coach Seb Hines said after the Boston match. \u201cWe can\u2019t turn around and say, \u2018Well, we only had 72 hours to prepare for this game.\u2019 We have to do better.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t afford to concede two goals, especially towards the end of the half, and as a collective we have to do more to be more threatening in the attack as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Orlando has already faced Denver once this season, earning a 1-1 draw at home in March. Denver is a physical team that knows how to clog the midfield, which Orlando does not have a clear way to counter. Haley McCutcheon dropping deep to help the backline is one option, something Orlando has done at times this season against more threatening teams.<\/p>\n
Both sides have scored eight goals in their last five games. Denver midfielder Natasha Flint has scored in three straight, while Barbra Banda has a league-leading eight goals for Orlando. The Pride have needed other players to step up alongside Banda, something Hines was quite clear about after the Boston loss.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to pull them out of positions and exploit the space that they have left in behind. I think that is where we had a lot of joy in the first half with Marta as a nine dropping down and Julie (Doyle) running in behind,\u201d Hines added. \u201cI would have liked to see that a little bit more with other players other than Julie running in behind as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
The approach against Denver should be similar, although the Summit are a better team than Boston. The Pride will have to be at their best to earn a victory on the road, but they have the talent and ability to make it happen.<\/p>\n
Following Saturday\u2019s match, Orlando travels to face San Diego Wave FC on May 24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Orlando Pride head into the second leg of a three-match road trip on the heels of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[28,1335,139,141,140,3968,2062,76046,110],"class_list":["post-272627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-florida","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-orlando-pride","tag-soccer","tag-social-sports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272627","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=272627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}