Reign parched in Houston with a 1-0 loss

On a hot and humid night on the road, the Seattle Reign were once again held without a goal for the seventh time this year. Meanwhile, Yuki Nagasato scored a goalazo for the Houston Dash, a moment of quality that was enough to end their nine-game NWSL winless streak. It was a massive missed opportunity for the Reign to stay close in the playoff race, facing the team at the bottom of the table that had scored the fewest goals in the league. It was the Reign's second loss in a row, keeping them five points back in the playoff race with five matches to go.

The Reign controlled much of the match, dominating the ball with 63.1% of possession, their highest of the year. They also had no shortage of opportunities, with eight shots from inside the box and one big chance on a Jordyn Huitema header as she was free in the box, but Seattle's two shots on frame were easily saved by Jane Campbell for Houston.

On the other end, the Dash managed 10 shots, but they also only had two shots on target. Though Seattle had most of the possession, Houston pressed high and generated some turnovers from errant passes or tackles won and had bursts of success in offense. The attacking momentum chart below from Sofascore shows long stretches with Seattle controlling the attacking momentum, but not creating too many high quality chances for large stretches, interspersed with moments where Houston created a lot of danger in short stretches. Seattle had some strong changes around the 80th minute, but even with eight minutes of stoppage could not find an qualizer.

Seattle will have opportunities to make up ground in the playoff race, none bigger than next weekend's match against one of the teams they need to catch, Bay FC. A match against Angel City FC follows, who are just ahead of Seattle on 21 points and play the fading Portland Thorns (four straight losses) on Monday.

What we learned

The quality is still lacking

Coach Laura Harvey went to a familiar refrain after the match: "we didn't have enough quality in the moments we needed it . . . we controlled it, we moved the ball, but in the moments we needed some quality we didn't have it." The Reign found that quality in two road wins recently, 3-2 over Louisville and 3-2 over Angel City, but it was absent in Texas.

With Bethany Balcer gone, the Reign are missing a reliable goalscoring forward or winger. In this game it looked like Huitema was the most likely goalscorer, taking six shots (tying her single game NSWL career high), five of them inside the box and forcing Campbell's two saves. But she still has just two goals in over 1000 minutes for the year; Tziarra King has two goals in just over 1000 minutes, as well. New signings Ana-Maria Crnogorčević and Nérilia Mondésir have not yet scored. One or more of these players will need to step up in the stretch run to score goals when Ji So-Yun doesn't find a wonder goal, especially as the team is missing Jess Fishlock (Harvey did not have an update on her availability post game).

Veronica Latsko can defend

This marked Latsko's first extended minutes at right back, as she entered in the 59th minute for right back Hanna Glas and stayed at that position throughout the evening. After the match, Harvey spoke about Latsko playing the position like Sofia Huerta:

Ronnie is the probably the closest person we have to the type of player that Sofia is. Some games I think it will be great to get Veronica out there because she can serve balls into the box. I think she did a great job tonight doing that.

Harvey suggested that Hanna Glas will be used more as a "true defending right back," which they may need more of in some games, while in others Latsko's offensive capabilities will be more useful. Latsko will still play attacking mid at times, but on nights like tonight, especially with Glas picking up a yellow card in the first half, Latsko did well in 30 minutes plus stoppage at right back.

Still to come: Playoffs?

While the Reign did themselves no favors in the playoff race, the team is still fighting for points and has a clear, if increasingly narrow, path to making it in. While they do not exactly control their destiny, Harvey postgame put a target of four wins in the remaining five as a pace that should make the playoffs. That would mean three home wins against Bay FC, Angel City and the Dash, none of whom are in playoff positions at the moment (though at the moment the Reign would need to pass Bay and Angel City to earn a playoff spot). They would also need a win at Utah, who are back to the bottom of the table, pending the result of their match this weekend. If the Reign drop points in any of these matches, they close the season with a game at Orlando Pride. The Reign will hope Orlando has locked up the first-place spot (which looks likely, as they have a seven-point cushion on the Spirit in second) and use the match as a chance to rest up their stars ahead of the playoffs.

Of course, they need to take this one match at a time and not focus on the missed opportunity of this loss. After the match Lauren Barnes said, "We need to learn what we need to learn from this game, but we can't keep dwelling on these past couple of games, it's literally do or die now."

Barnes is right – Seattle is in a position where every match is essentially a must-win to return to the post season. Anything less would be a disappointment for a season following a runner-up finish at the NWSL Finals last year.

Next Up

Seattle's next match is at home against Bay FC, Sunday, September 29 at 3:00 pm Pacific.