Reign FC Hope To Write New Ending In NWSL Championship Game Rematch
— -- PORTLAND, Ore. -- Unbeaten in all competitions for longer than scores have been kept, time will break up one of the best partnerships in women's soccer by the end of the night Thursday.
The Seattle Reign will do their best to do the same a couple of hours ahead of schedule.
Stop FC Kansas City's Lauren Holiday and Amy Rodriguez in the former's final competitive game and the team that dominated each of the past two regular seasons will finally have a title to confirm its legacy.
Like most in women's soccer, Seattle players and coaches took an opportunity before Thursday's National Women's Soccer League final against Kansas City to both celebrate Holiday's contributions and character and lament that her career now comes to a close, by her own choice, at just 28 years old. That this game is her competitive farewell, a game she will play alongside one of her best friends in Rodriguez, is of no small sentimental significance.
"It's sad to see her go, especially at such a young age," Seattle's Megan Rapinoe said of her adversary in this game and her teammate on the U.S. national team. "Selfishly, I want her to keep on playing. I think she's such a fantastic player, one of the best players that I've ever played against and played with. And I say that having her, at least for the national team, not ever really playing her [ideal] position, which is a little unfortunate. I think she could have been one of the best in the world there. But she's shown that, in club she's always played at the [attacking midfield position] and just been pretty dominant there and shown what she can do. She's had an amazing career and deserves all the attention, the accolades that she's getting."
Rapinoe then paused and delivered the punch line.
"Don't want her to go out on a high note, obviously."
And that's the thing. This isn't a testimonial, that peculiar soccer tradition in which an exhibition game is played less as a competitive endeavor than an extended tribute to an aging or retiring legend. This is the NWSL championship game, and if Seattle's English coach, Scottish star (Kim Little) and Welsh heart and soul (Jess Fishlock) didn't fully grasp the peculiar American tradition of determining legacies by the small sample size of playoff games instead of the regular season when they lost to FC Kansas City in the final a year ago, they understand it now.
The Reign dominated the regular season a year ago, just as they did again this season. They scored as many goals this season, a schedule shortened to 20 games because of the World Cup, as they allowed in the past two seasons combined. They played well in the final a season ago, well enough against an excellent opponent to get a win some days. Just not that day.
So they are the team we say is still in search of a championship like the one FCKC defends.
"If you look back on the stats of last year, without knowing the score, you probably would have picked the other team had won the game," Reign coach Laura Harvey said. "So I don't think it's a tactical thing. I think it's concentration, taking your own chances, punishing Kansas with having so much possession, turn that possession into more chances for us."
Harvey also said that one of the central tenets of her soccer philosophy is that "goals change games." Seattle had all the possession it wanted early in last year's final, but it was FC Kansas City that took the lead when Holiday set up Rodriguez for a goal after 22 minutes. And no matter how well the Reign responded and resumed building their own initiative, it was FC Kansas City that expanded the lead to 2-0 when Holiday again set up Rodriguez early in the second half.
In two playoff games a year ago, Holiday had a goal and three assists and Rodriguez three goals. Add in a semifinal win against Chicago earlier this season, and the duo, Holiday the attacking midfielder sitting behind Rodriguez, accounted for six of the team's seven postseason goals the past two years.
Holiday and Rodriguez made the most of FC Kansas City's chances.
"They're phenomenal," Harvey said. "I think Holiday has proven over the last three years in this league, even in the first year without A-Rod, that she is one of the best players to ever grace this country in that position, in my opinion. And I think their chemistry together creates a lot of chances for A-Rod - her movement is great, her ability to finish is fantastic, but I think she would look back and say that [Holiday] has had a huge effect on that for her.
"The cutthroat answer [on how to break up that chemistry] is don't let them get the ball. That is, honestly, the only thing you can do. And then when they get it, just make sure that if they do get it, they get it as close to their goal as they do to your goal."
Holiday couldn't recall any details from the first game she played alongside Rodriguez, confident in her memory only so far as to suggest that it must have been in Sweden a decade ago with a junior national team. Pressed on the shared interests that first forged a friendship between the players who were also roommates on that trip, Rodriguez lapsed into silence. She didn't recall. That can be the beauty of friendships. Rather than remembering specific moments, they struggle to remember a world in which the other wasn't around.
Players don't have to be best friends to be prolific together on the field. They can probably even loathe each other for all but those 90 minutes on the field. But if two players whose skills complement each other also connect off the field to the extent that Holiday said soccer rarely comes up as a topic of conversation between them -- never if Rodriguez's son is around -- that can't hurt.
"I think Amy is just a world-class forward," Holiday said. "I think her runs are so intelligent. The way she moves off the ball is so smart, so she makes my life easy. ...
"Also I do think it helps that we're best friends. She's probably one of the closest people in my life, on and off the field. So on the field, we have a very open and honest relationship. We can tell each other what we see, what we want, what we need from one another, and I think it just flows from there."
In contrast to Holiday, who appeared almost playful and certainly at ease before the team's practice Wednesday, her 28th birthday, Rodriguez was subdued. She stood with arms tightly crossed and answered in polite but succinct sentences, perhaps a competitor eager to prepare rather than answer the same sort of questions she has heard since her friend announced her intention to retire. FC Kansas City defender Leigh Ann Brown (née Robinson) acknowledged the players feel a certain amount of pressure to make Holiday's farewell a successful one. No one would feel the weight of those emotions more than Rodriguez. Finally, as the team began warming up on the field, Holiday said something that coaxed a grin out of her teammate.
"I've cried over this way too much," Rodriguez, in a more expansive mood, joked earlier in the week. "Because it really does sadden me to think that I'm not going to play with one of my best friends anymore. I'm really excited for her, retirement after an awesome career is so amazing. ... But I'm also sad to be losing one of my most favorite players to play with.
"I can't tell you how many times she makes others and myself look good on the field."
It was Holiday, pulled off a national team bus for the phone call, who assured FC Kansas City coach Vlatko Andonovski that Rodriguez was worth the investment when the team acquired her from Seattle after the forward sat out the league's first season while pregnant with her son. The team's success since, both en route to a championship a season ago and in a torrid closing kick this season, is far from solely the product of those two players, yet they are its center of gravity.
The sentimental story Sunday night is thus one of two friends playing together for the final time.
"I don't think that I'm done with soccer, like I don't love the game anymore [or] I'm not passionate about it," Holiday said. "It's more so that there's other things I want to do. Soccer consumes me. I'm not a player that can turn it off. I'm not a player that can say, 'Well, OK, I'm going to focus on something else for this month.' If I don't work out, I feel guilty if I don't work out in the morning. I feel that constant desire to get better, and that consumes me. I was ready to focus on other things."
The tactical story is whether the league's best team can do anything to change the narrative.
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