Coming out of halftime in last night’s Orlando Pride match, Head Coach Tom Sermanni was always confident that his team would break a scoreless game wide open in the final 45 minutes of the match.
“We always felt the game would open up the second half,” Sermanni said after the game, “When it did, we would create opportunities and that’s exactly what happened. I was really delighted with our second half performance with how we played, how clinical we were with our finishing and then how well we managed the game after that. An extremely good performance in the 2nd half.”
It only took the Pride seven minutes from the beginning of the second half to score three goals in 12 minutes to secure a three goal advantage. One that the team wouldn’t look back from.
“We knew that Washington couldn’t high press for the whole 90 minutes,” Sermanni said, “Our finishing in and amongst that was really clinical, so the combination of the fact that the game started opening up, clinical finishing and good decisions to get behind them. Put all those together, and you score three goals.”
Now adding the three goals scored last night, the Pride have scored 17 of the teams 28 total goals in the second half of games, meaning about 61% of the team’s goals have come in the final 45 minutes of matches.
With the win, the Pride now sit in fifth in the NWSL standings, tied with Sky Blue FC, the team they next face this coming weekend.
