angela-host96_1_09-01-2026_212340: We were
in- a little injured, a little knocked up.
Nope, knocked up sounds like we're
pregnant, and that's not what that means.
no.
Rewind.
Take that out.
That was so bad.
Knocked
up.
Dude.
I'm so sad Mario wasn't here to hear that.
Hi, everyone, and welcome to
Casual FC, an Angel City match
preview and footy therapy podcast.
I'm your host, Angela Morales,
and tonight I'm flying solo.
Mario had some last-minute big family
stuff come up, ca- come up, came up.
Stuff happened.
Today's been weird, this week's
been weird, but I'm here.
So tonight we're gonna recap a couple
matches, talk about our matchup
against Racing Louisville that will
be taking place on Saturday, September
5th at 3:30 PM Pacific Time at
Lynn Family Stadium in Louisville.
And the game will be broadcast on
ION TV as well as on iHeartRadio.
Angel City's doing a watch
party in downtown LA.
We'll make sure to post
the details about that.
And yeah, let's get into it.
We had two matches this last week.
First one was against Racing
Louisville on Wednesday.
Super short rest 'cause we
played on Sunday, Saturday.
We played over the weekend, and then
we had to travel to the opposite
side of the country and play one
of the most prolific scoring teams
right now in North Carolina Courage.
We were on short rest.
We had injuries, things were
happening and it was weird.
Folks were out of town.
It was just funky.
It wasn't it.
We reallyâ¦
I really wish we had won this match.
It was our biggest loss to date,
meaning that we lost by two goals.
Every other loss up until this
point, we'd only lost by one.
So our goal differential went from
plus seven to plus five, which is
insane given that we are just out
of playoff contention right now.
The game itself was a little lackluster.
I'm attributing it to the fact that
it was hot as shit in LA and then it
was hot as shit in North Carolina.
So, like, it takes a toll on you whether
or not you have recovery time or not.
I can guarantee you on Wednesday in
LA every single person was just, like,
wasting away like they needed, like,
a, a fainting couch while sweating
and not wanting your body to touch.
So dealing with the heat has been
incredibly difficult for a lot of us, and
even though the players have so much at
their disposal, it doesn't mean your body
necessarily recovers perfectly or quickly.
but then came off that
loss and frustration game.
Fast-forward to Monday night, we're
playing Boston Legacy for the first
time, weird match up as it was.
it was not the Boston Legacy team
that we were used to seeing, like,
collectively as a fan base of the league.
They didn't come out as physical or
as aggressive as they normally do.
We put up five goals real quick.
three of those came in the first half.
We were all joking that this was
all the balls, too many balls
for Boston FC as, you n- you do
the Balls FC marketing campaign.
It will never die.
So yeah, it almost felt like a
revenge match against, soccer balls.
It wasn't even the Legacy because
we hadn't played them before.
It was just aggressively
good offensive soccer.
I think a lot of it was
that we were rested.
The lineup switched a little
bit, so we got, SveindÃs back.
We had Nealy Martin in the midfield.
Ary was out.
I believe, fingers crossed, there should
be a baby Borges any minute, based on
everything online, all that good stuff.
So really hoping everything for
the best with Ary and her family.
She wasn't with the team on Monday.
Um, we're not sure if we're gonna
see her on Wednesday when weâ¦
Or excuse me, not Wednesday,
Saturday when we play Racing.
Quick recap of all the scores.
Like I said, we lost to
the Courage two-nothing.
Gotham and Portland were a draw, which I
think everybody is expecting this season.
San Diego Wave beat Louisville 3-2.
I was watching the game with
Eva and my mom over the weekend.
Louisville's up and I said,
"Watch, they're gonna lose
3-2," and then they did.
So I don't know, maybe I'm a witch.
Who, who knows?
Kansas City beat the Courage 3-2.
Utah played Orlando on Saturday,
I believe it was, before the
news of Seb Hines broke, 2-1.
Utah won probably because the
team knew and it was weird, 'cause
it was a weird game overall.
The Stars lost to Denver 6-1,
which is an insane scoreline.
the Spirit beat the Bay 1-nothing.
Seattle beat Houston 1-nothing, and then
our game, 5-2 against Boston, was the cap
off of the weekend and it was wonderful.
Chaos Award this week goes to us
scoring three goals in 15 minutes.
So it was great.
It was amazing.
If you haven't already, I posted on
my personal Instagram, we posted it
on the Casual FC Instagram, go to
Isaac Lowenkron's account and watch
his compilation of all the goal calls.
They are perfection per us'.
And just go watch it.
It'll make you feel better.
Prisca had a brace.
We all know how much I love Prisca,
and to see her score twice and
have a hell of a game was amazing.
Everyone was hoping she was gonna
get a hatty, but I'll take two.
We can get three this
next game in Louisville.
right now in standings we are securely
in ninth place, two points out of the
playoffs but not out of it entirely.
There's a lot of soccer still to play.
We have nine more matches on the
season, two more matches before we are
tied up with the rest of the league.
Right now, we still have a game in hand.
We have to take advantage of
every single game going forward,
especially, especially this one.
We have a plus eight differential,
so if and when we win on Saturday,
Seattle's also matching up against
San Diego this week, and that's who's
right above us in the standings.
So it's Seattle in eighth
place with 31 points.
We have 29.
My hope, I don't care about the top
four in the standings right now.
They're gonna do what they're gonna do.
They are light years ahead of us, and
in a perfect world, we make it up that
high, but realistically, give me like
sixth or seventh and I'm, I'm chilling.
Eighth place just makes me nervous.
So with the rain, they're
matching up against Seattle.
The rain is on the come up and San
Diego is getting a little wibbly-wobbly.
But the game against Racing
was really fun to watch.
We had friends at the game,
and he was bummed out.
He's like, "I can'tâ¦"
'Cause he's who went to the game when
Eve and I went down to San Diego.
He's the one that came with
us and was super bummed.
He's like, "I'm never gonna come
to a San Diego Wave game again.
They're down two-nothing."
And I told my mom, "Guess what?
Don't be surprised if San Diego wins 3-2."
And that happened.
So I'm really excited for our matchup
against Racing, Seattle's matchup against
San Diego, because I think these could
both go in our favor in the sense that the
rain lose, we win, we flip-flop, and weâ¦
Even if we- they were to catch
us on points and we're tied with
points, we still have such an insane
goal differential, we would win
out easily to take the top spot.
So Saturday we're playing
Racing Louisville at Lynn
Family Stadium in Louisville.
When talking about the team as a whole,
they're in that, and we know it well
as Angel City fans, they're in that
place of just like, "I don't know.
Sure."
But they have great pieces on a team,
I just don't think they have all
the pieces they need to really put
everything together, and not everybody
has league experience in ways that they
need, and there's some pieces missing
in ways I don't know how to explain.
But Jordan Bloomer in goal
has had a really fun career.
A friend of the pod, Lindsay in
Nebraska, loves Jordan Bloomer.
We joke she and I are about the same age,
but we joke that we want to hang out with
her and we want to be her friend, but
then realize she's like half our age and
go, "I don't have the energy for that."
But she's really, really
funny, so that's fine.
last year she became the first goalkeeper
to block multiple PKs in one game.
It was the August 9th game against
Orlando if anybody wants to look it up.
But this year is different.
This year Louisville has no clean
sheets, and I would like us to
severely take advantage of this and
really just light up the scoreboard.
No offense to Jordan Bloomer, she's
a fantastic keeper, but, like, what
if you just didn't do a good job?
Sorry for your stats, happy for mine.
it'll be curious to see how her stats
play out because I fully believe that
when goals are scored, a lot of the times
it's because of a defensive breakdown
and the goalie's just the last person
in line and they kind of get the brunt
of that in the goal being scored, but
there were multiple pieces that, the
ball got through to, to get in the goal.
moving up into the midfield, we
have Taylor Flint who is, as Eva
told me in my notes, 'cause she was
writing notes while I was making
dinner, she said, "Tall as shit."
So I'm 5'10" and a half at this point.
I was 5'11" but I shrunk.
So Taylor Flint is 2-
5'10", 11, 2 1/2 inches taller than me.
She's 6'1", so a l- she's tall
for a midfielder especially.
we have to keep a mark on her
during set pieces, so corners,
free kicks, all the things.
Somebody n- of relatively same
height needs to be near her,
so SveindÃs, Evelyn Shores.
Think that's the, the two we've
got, unless it's Angelina.
she is known to get her head on the ball,
and she's really starting to light up
again in her scoring capacity, similar
to how she was in, San Diego and when
she was getting national team call-ups.
We just gotta keep an eye on her because
she has five goals on the season.
So many of those are from
headers off a corner, headers
off a set piece in some way.
Our defending set pieces has gotten a lot
better, but when you have somebody who's
six inches taller than most players on the
pitch, you have to keep an eye on them,
make it hard for them to do anything.
And then you have Emma Siers,
who has seven goals this season.
Super, super hungry.
Not only has she declared that she
wants to be traded from Louisville,
and they've agreed at the end of
the season, she's fighting for
a spot on the World Cup roster.
We have to shut her down.
She's starting to light up again.
She's starting to score more consistently,
and I don't want her to do that.
So we need to shut her down.
We need to keep, defensively stopping
her from getting in position.
It's not just necessarily
blocking the shot, it's
preventing the shot from the jump.
So the midfield's gotta make sure the
ball doesn't get to her side of the pitch.
Our defense has to make sure that if she
gets the ball, it's then dispossessed,
which is probably my favorite phrase
in all of sport, is you possess the
ball and then you dispossess it.
So it's kind of like exercising demons,
one of the interesting things I learned
during the Gotham broadcast or the,
the game against Gotham was that their
goal is to if they are dispossessed,
if they lose possession of the ball,
they wanna have it back within six
seconds, and I think that is an insanely
short amount of time, but it's soâ¦
it makes so much sense as to why they're
able to regain the ball so quickly re-
and contain their offense so well and
also just keep their composure when
things are getting stressed, 'cause
they know they might have lost the ball,
they're gonna get it back within the next
couple seconds, and there's not a lot
of time lost in between, you know, just
shuffling the ball back and forth, like
in the midfield or along the sidelines.
But when we're looking at this
matchup, honestly, the biggest thing
is that we have to score, and we have
to score more goals than they do.
Angelina has had an amazing season.
I would love for her to
have another clean sheet.
She should've had one when we
were playing Racing in BMO.
norm- no more goal droughts.
We had four different players score
on Monday night, and that's wonderful.
Like, do it again.
So we have the fourth-best goal
differential in the league at plus
eight, and yet we're in ninth place,
which makes no sense but all the
sense in the world at the same time.
Racing, again, no clean sheets.
We need to take advantage of that
vulnerability, and we need to be able
to keep pushing the ball so that we can
rack up goals because That's how you win.
You win by scoring more
goals than the other team.
Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully we
can see more of that from our team.
We played so well with a, a
different lineup on Monday, and I'm
excited to see who comes out in the
starting 11 for us this weekend.
I do want to spotlight
one player on Angel City.
There's been a lot of conversation about
her, and she is near and dear to our
household because Eve is from New Jersey.
and yeah, Riley Tiernan has had a
little funky season in the sense that
she's had less playing opportunities.
the change in offensive structure
when Straus was here and now the
continuation of that, but also
changes in that with, Leath.
Like, we need to remember that everything
is constantly in flux, and it's not
necessarily due to quality of play, it's
what do we need for this upcoming matchup?
And she's had a goal thisâ¦
one goal this season, but
she hasn't been unproductive.
She just hasn't had as
many playing opportunities.
I think coming out of WAFCON and
Prisca getting a little, more into
the starting lineup, I think is
another, not necessarily a setback,
but I think it's interesting because
Prisca has more league experience.
She's got a couple years on Riley.
Riley has last season with Angel
City, and it- it's like this weird
push-pull of who do we put in and where?
So I'd love to see her get
more time on the pitch.
She continues to draw defenders whenever
she is in, so regardless if sh- if
she has the ball, other teams are
really, aware of her scoring ability.
So she has the footwork to create space
and allow for opportunity for the rest of
the attack to catch up or to get in the
right place so she can pass the ball off.
Not every major forward or, or
attacking player is gonna score
a million goals every season.
So that's another thing to remember.
We always want a golden boot, just
because who doesn't want every player
on their team to score a million goals?
But- Assists are super important, pulling
the defense away from other players.
When you get double or triple teamed, that
allows an- two, three other people to be
open and allow more scoring opportunities.
So we still have, like I said,
nine games left in the season.
That is plenty of time for her to
get m- on the goal sheets and to
start contributing more offensively.
I'm hoping we get to see her for
a few more minutes than last game.
Um, she's been a late game sub,
so fingers crossed we get to
see more of our Riley girl.
And yeah, that's my reca- or
recap of this Louisville game.
Our history with them is real weird.
It makes no sense to me, but
we've won twice, we've drawn
twice, and we've lost five times.
So here's hoping for a third
win after this weekend, and
yeah, that's pretty much it.
These are really short episodes when it's
just me because it's really weird talking
in a vacuum, so thank you so much for
listening to this super short episode.
And if you're anything like me and you
speed up everything you listen to 'cause
nothing moves as fast as your brain,
sorry that this episode was five minutes.
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See you on Saturday, guys.
Bye.