For Ali Krieger, the Orlando Pride’s loss to the Houston Dash last Wednesday led to a shift in the Pride’s team mentality.
There’s no shortage of talent on the Pride’s roster. But there have been some lackluster performances lately. Orlando has lost three of its past five games.
Still, the Pride bounced back from their loss to the Dash with a road victory over the Utah Royals. Krieger, a veteran NWSL defender and one of the Pride’s leaders, said the match was the result of Pride players doing a bit of introspection.
“Maybe there was a kind of mentality switch, I think, for everyone to say, ‘All right. Am I giving everything I can give as an individual player to help this team?’” Krieger said.
“I think maybe everyone kind of took a hard look in the mirror and realized we want to have fun, we’re really good players, we’re a good team, let’s just put a good product out there and really focus on ourselves and then the bigger things will take care of themselves.”
Krieger said she wants that mentality to carry forward to the Pride’s matchup against the Seattle Reign. The two teams meet at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday at Orlando City Stadium in a battle for second place in the NWSL.
“Luckily, we have this advantage of being home and being in our stadium, which always helps,” Krieger said. “Specifically, to have our 12th man with our supporters and fans and obviously not to have to travel or have a mid-week game. I think that’s really going to help with our preparation and our mentality to prepare for Saturday.”
Midfielder Kristen Edmonds said the club’s focus is 100 percent on the Reign. The Pride (8-6-4, 28 points) have just six games remaining in the regular season. Four of them are at home, including the next three.
“Nobody ever wants to lose a game,” she said. “I think we kind of just reflect on things we could have done better and just try to correct them for the next game.”
“Right now, every game we play is the biggest game of the season. One game at a time. This game is no less important than the next one. Obviously, we’re focusing now for Seattle on Saturday, and we’re missing a couple of players with our national team players from the U.S. being gone, but we have a great squad with the players we have here and we’ll be ready come Saturday.”
Coach Tom Sermanni said if he could explain the difference in quality in the Pride’s performances from match to match, he’d fix it.
Still, he was pleased with his club’s ability to bounce back and steal points from the Royals on the road. Plus, the Pride are in third place in the NWSL table, despite some rough patches.
“This was a very difficult road trip, particularly after Wednesday’s game when you lose a game that’s against a team that’s not out of the top-four race, but struggling to be in the top-four race,” Sermanni said. “Then you have to go to play at that Utah altitude with a team that hadn’t lost in six games at home.
“It was a difficult ask and the team did terrifically to get up for that game and perform the way they did.”
The North Carolina Courage have first place in the league locked up. Only three points separate second through fifth place on the table, with the Royals lurking five points behind the fifth-place Portland Thorns.