Reign stumble heavily out of the gate, falling to Gotham by three goals 

May 22, 2023 Charles Hamaker

By Charles Hamaker

Seattle, WA – The return home to Lumen Field wasn’t a positive one for the OL Reign, who fell flat on their face out of the gate and conceded four goals to Gotham FC in an ugly defeat. A late goal by forward Jordyn Huitema made sure this wasn’t a shutout defeat, but was far too little and far too late. The club’s finishing struggles continued in this one, as even in the limited opportunities that the Reign put on net, they failed to get their shots in better position. Due to the top of the table being tightly contested, Gotham jumps from fourth place up to first, and the Reign stay at fifth. Following the ugly loss, the club will be able to stay home for training ahead of their next match, but there will need to be serious adjustment made in those training sessions.

Pre-game scenes ahead of the NY/NJ Gotham defeat of the OL Reign (Photos by Liz Wolter)

First half flunk

This match got out to a bad start early, as the Reign conceded twice in as many minutes before we get to the midway point of the first half. As the home side failed to get anything going on with their attack, Gotham was able to find an opening that they’d capitalize on. As Gotham had possession in the Reign half and were searching for a good spot to strike, midfielder Kristie Mewis swung it out wide to Jenna Nighswonger, who took one step before blasting a ball to the far corner. The shot seemed to catch Reign goalkeeper Phallon Tullis-Joyce by surprise, as a ball that she potentially could have saved was one she instead had to dive for, glancing off the tips of her gloves and in. An absolute strike of the ball with enough room around her to shoot unaffected, and the away side had taken an early lead. It was a tough way to begin the match, and that issue spiraled.

NY/NJ Gotham FC struck early, as Jenna Nightswonger got her side on the board in the 10th minute (Photos by Liz Wolter)

The Reign aimed to conduct a response attack, but as the club tried to get the ball up the right side with Sofia Huerta, Huerta half-hit the ball and it rolled right to Gotham. The away side got the ball to Kristie Mewis along the sideline, who sent a ball downfield in hopes to create something where there otherwise wasn’t anything. That ball came right to Reign outside back Lu Barnes, who like Huerta couldn’t properly get a full hit on the ball, and bad things were bound to happen again. Gotham’s Lynn Williams had been in pursuit, and was right on the spot when the ball weakly came off Barnes’ foot. Williams was able to take the gifted breakaway chance to score, and just like that Gotham had a two-goal lead. A goal in the 38th minute that saw Gotham’s Taylor Smith get behind the backline with ease, somehow unmarked, and the Reign were staring at a three-goal mountain heading into the half.

Gotham’s Lynn Williams scored just a few minutes later to double the lead (Photos by Liz Wolter)

Huitema breaks the shutout

The three-goal first half wasn’t where Gotham was going to stop with their offensive attack, as a fourth goal was added in the 73rd minute as Veronica Latsko, helping back defensively, was stripped of the ball by Bruninha in the lower box to score easily. It was looking REALLY bad at that point for the Reign, who just couldn’t get anything down offensively and were having an atrocious game defensively. There was a positive to look back on, thankfully, as forward Jordyn Huitema broke the shutout with a goal in the 77th minute. Gotham failed to clear a corner that handed found anybody in particular, and Huitema was able to locate the ball amidst the scramble and score amongst the chaos. It continues a solid stretch for Huitema, who now has three goals in her past four matches.

OL Reign forward Jordyn Huitema scored the only goal of the match for the Reign, followed by some controversey as Gotham keeper Abby Smith tried to delay the restart (Photos by Liz Wolter)

Where’d the goals go?

There was a stretch not so long ago in this 2023 season where the Reign had scored nine goals across three matches, a stretch from April 22nd through May 6th. The last two matches have brought the Reign crashing back down to Earth, getting shutout against the Courage on the road and now this ugly defeat at Lumen against Gotham. The Reign haven’t been able to get much of anything going offensively in either of those matches, and it feels like the midfield could use a bit more juice in terms of creativity and flow. The addition of Quinn back to the lineup has been nice, but it’ll be good to see Olivia Van Der Jagt get back into matches for the Reign. The former University of Washington midfielder has been out for the past few matches with an excused absence, but was available for selection today even though she didn’t get subbed on.

There was some interesting discourse following this match, regarding coaching decisions and substitutions. I honestly thought that the substitutions that Laura Harvey decided upon made sense, and Harvey made more substitutions than she normally does. Any calls for coaching changes are ridiculous. It was just two matches ago that the Reign had defeated the Houston Dash two-nothing at Lumen and things looked great. Hitting the panic button over a stretch of two losses, one of them being tight and on the road, is ridiculous and not how sports work. Harvey, Parkinson, and the coaching staff will have to sit down and make adjustments and changes where necessary ahead of the club’s next match, but it isn’t even close to the time to freak out.

I think, we obviously started off very poorly, credit to them. I thought they were excellent. We didn’t have a response to that. We played ourselves into danger a lot, didn’t realize it quick enough. Obviously two goals of theirs come from mistakes from us, but I'm not going to take anything away from them. I thought that they were up for it, they were on the front foot, they won first and second balls. They did all the things that you have to do in this league to be hard to beat. I think conceding early was tough, but even before the goal, we didn’t start well and then I just said at halftime, they needed to make a choice whether we threw the game away or we tried to get back into it. I thought in the second half, we dug in and we tried and we pushed, didn’t quite have quality throughout the whole game, but you can't come in at 3-0 down and expect to be able to turn a game around.

Laura Harvey, OL Reign head coach, on today’s loss.

Quick notes

Gotham’s two goals in the opening 12 minutes against OL Reign is the fastest from kickoff they've ever scored two goals in a regular season match in the club's NWSL history
Gotham is the first visiting team to score 3 first-half goals at OL Reign in the club's NWSL history, across all competitions.
OL Reign has lost 5 home NWSL matches by a margin of 3+ goals. Three of the five came at the hands of Gotham (also in 2013, 2021).

What’s next?

The Reign will look to wash any recollection of this loss away, one of the worst defeats they’ve suffered, ahead of their next match day on Saturday, May 27th. The club remains home, staying at Lumen Field and getting training sessions in at Starfire Stadium, as they host Angel City FC for the second time this season and their third meeting overall. Heading into that match, both clubs are struggling in recent form, and the Reign will aim to be the one that pulls ahead. Considering that the club’s injury list is getting shorter in recent weeks, there should be little excuse left when it comes to improvement following today’s result.

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