Five things I'd like to see for the next five games
The North Carolina Courage have dropped three of their last four games, with the only win being against last place Chicago. Where they were once in third place, they are now in seventh place, and only three points from falling out of the playoffs entirely. Things could be going better!
There are obvious, concrete areas that could lead to better results. Here are five things which can help them build towards a playoff run that I’d like to see over the next five games.
1. Get Gianna Paul more training sessions with the team #
When the Courage acquired Gianna Paul last week, I thought she might get a cameo substituting for Evelyn Ijeh late in the game. She had only played about three 90s worth of minutes in Kansas City across ten appearances, nearly all of them at center forward.
Instead, she slotted directly into the lineup, starting on the right wing. She became the eighth (!) Courage player to start at that position this year, after Payton Crawford, Shinomi Koyama, Cortnee Vine, Chioma Okafor, Lauryn Thompson, Ally Schlegel, and Erica Meg Parkinson.
On the wing, it was encouraging. She was more active and more productive than she was in KC. After getting six shots in her time with the Current, she had four against Gotham. She had roughly as many defensive actions in one game than she had in her entire KC tenure (13 vs 14). And she was involved in two goals… neither of which counted.
The first, well, sometimes offside happens. After Uno Shiragaki steps up to win a header in midfield, Paul presses Gotham’s Guro Reiten, wins the ball, and slips a one-touch pass into Ijeh who finishes. Ijeh is unfortunately barely offside (mostly her head and midsection). It’s just a good play by Gotham; Jess Carter and Tierna Davidson are both world-class centerbacks who timed their step forward well. Maybe Paul could have played a first time ball with her left foot, but I’m not sure she has the angle for that.
For the second disallowed goal, Evelyn Ijeh drops into midfield to hold up the ball and plays it to Ryan Williams. Williams finds Paul, who drops it back to her as she surges forward. Williams drives towards the box and crosses to Ashley Sanchez who finishes what everyone thought was a NWSL-record-tying goal. But then the VAR official calls down to the referee, who finds Paul as offside receiving the initial pass from Williams.
It’s the correct call, assuming the VAR booth properly synced this screenshot to the time the ball leaves Williams’ foot (and I have no reason to believe they didn’t). But this shows where some more time in training will help.
As soon as Ijeh passes it to Williams, Paul starts her run forward attacking Reiten. But Williams takes two additional touches before playing the pass, and by the time she plays it, Paul has to stop and come back to the ball from an offside position. Either Paul is expected to check her run rather than trying to be played in behind, or Williams isn’t used to Paul’s speed and needs to play that pass sooner without additional touches. Whichever way it is, more time on the training ground will help the two of them get in sync.
That disconnect happened a few other times as Paul made runs.
Here she picks up the ball after Ryan Williams wins it, drops it to Vilde Bøe Risa, and takes off looking for what could be a first-time ball into space. But it’s not played, and Bøe Risa turns it over.
In another example, the team wins the ball on the left half. Jess Carter is watching Ijeh and looking to see if she needs to step to Ashley Sanchez moving forwards. Tierna Davidson drifts towards Ijeh to cover. Paul looks to break forward behind Davidson. If Shinomi looks up and plays the ball over the top into space, Paul could be in on goal. But Shinomi does not play that ball, instead going back to defense. (They do eventually win a corner from this sequence.)
It’s worth noting that later on Kailen Sheridan did attempt to play a long ball over the top to Paul… just as Paul checked back towards midfield. Oops.
The common thread? The Courage haven’t really had someone attempting this run in behind from the right winger position on the right all season. Ashley Sanchez has been their winger that is played into space. They are not used to looking for or playing that specific pass in their patterns; the couple of times they’ve played in Lauryn Thompson and Ally Schlegel have been the exception rather than the rule. More time for the team with Paul, and Paul with the team, will grow dividends. In less than a week of practice, she stepped into the team and was a useful contributor. As she learns what her teammates expect, and they get used to the runs she will make from that position, they should be able to create real (non-offside) opportunities on goal.
2. Figure out the defensive coverage as runners come forward #
The first goal against the Courage in this game was a clever play by Gotham, but also a problem with the Courage’s defensive rotation.
Jordynn Dudley swaps with Midge Purce, dropping deep to receive the pass and drawing the attention of Feli Rauch. As Purce moves forward, Uno shifts over to cover as Talia Staude remains on Sam Kerr. Rauch presses Purce but she drops the ball to Dudley. With both Uno and Staude busy, there are four potential players who could track Dudley as she goes forward and plays a one-two with Kerr. But none do, and she is able to drive into the box past a last-ditch stab by Bøe Risa. Even if Dudley decides not to shoot, she has two different Gotham players open for a tap-in if she squares the ball, as Ryan Williams attempts to redirect to cover her.
I’m not sure who of Rauch, Shinomi, Sanchez, or Bøe Risa was responsible for tracking Dudley’s run. But at least one of them needed to be alert and do so.
This confusion of who to cover in defense also showed up against San Diego. To set the stage: San Diego is taking a goal kick out to Kennedy Wesley on their right side. The Courage are set up to potentially press, and Talia Staude is fairly high up marking Gia Corley.
A short pass baits Feli Rauch forward, and they play it wide to Brooklyn Courtnall who has a lot of space to dribble into. Courtnall pushes forward, and we see Ryan Williams (!) as the deepest defender, watching Trinity Byars but not particularly tight to her. Courtnall pushes forward and ends up playing a 1-2 with Godfrey that gets her to the edge of the box.
As Courtnall moves to play a cross, Staude appears to think Williams is tracking Byars, so starts to move between Byars and Corley to cover both. But at the same time, Williams moves away from Byars to try to cut off the service from Courtnall. The ball comes and, despite having three players below the penalty spot, none of the four San Diego players in the box are really marked.
On the replay you can see how both Uno and Shinomi hesitate and end up covering neither Godfrey nor Courtnall, opening two passing lanes.
In both cases, the team when moving back towards its own goal loses track of who they should be marking. This isn’t new this season; the transition defense has been a problem for a while. But now it’s turning what looks like normal, non-threatening attacks into what ends up looking like a fast break for the other team.
From the outside, it looks as if they are thinking and hesitating instead of just defending confidently. They did have Uno and Staude swap sides starting in the Chicago game; whether that’s a cause of tentativeness or an attempted solution to it is not clear to me. In any case, these losses in coverage have led to their largest chances against and the goals they’ve given up. Against San Diego the two shots that turned into goals accounted for 60% of the expected goals they gave up. Against Gotham it was 55% of the xG on two shots. Outside these breakdowns, they’ve been performing very well defensively; if they can just eliminate these breakdowns, their defensive performances will be actually pretty good.
3. Help Sheridan out of a mini-funk #
Kailen Sheridan has brought leadership, key buildup contributions, and sure hands to the Courage in 2026. But recently, she has had a rougher time on the ball. Her pass completion on longballs has plummeted in recent games.
| First 21 games | Last 4 | |
|---|---|---|
| Overall pass completion % | 80.8% | 73.7% |
| Long pass completion % | 45.5% | 27.2% |
| Long passes attempted/game | 13.4 | 8.2 |
Notably, these passing stats include a 22-of-23 performance (2/3 on long passes) against Chicago; it would be even worse numbers without that.
Looking at her pass distribution, a pattern emerges.
Earlier in the year she was passing everywhere and anywhere, and she was often passing from higher up the field as the Courage pushed their opponents back giving Sheridan space to find teammates even into the final third.
The past four games, all her pass starting locations have been pinned back into the defensive third, and only three passes have even reached the opponent’s half. Recently when Sheridan has been going long, it’s less because she has time to pick out an open player. More often, it’s because there is no one open and the team is under pressure.
In the below example against Gotham Sheridan, has picked up a loose ball in the box. She doesn’t have any great options and then immediately gets a return ball from Shinomi. Not liking either of her options to her side, she fires a long pass to the sidelines that Gianna Paul can’t quite keep in bounds.
Against Kansas City, Sheridan had a similar moment where she didn’t like her options. She hesitated a beat, got picked, and it led to a Croix Bethune goal. That’s a rare breakdown, but the pressure has prevented the team from building out as successfully as they did early in the season, which has knock-on effects for their ability to create offense and shots.
Beyond the passing, there is her aggressiveness when attacking the ball via shot or cross. Earlier in the season Sheridan had a number of confident saves attacking the ball. Multiple times she came out to smother Emma Sears or Barbra Banda. She had a couple of similar saves against Debinha to keep the KC game close as well.
Then there was the second goal in the Gotham game. This time as Kerr heads the ball towards the corner of the frame, she didn’t come with that same confidence and aggression. If Sheridan comes for this ball she has to get there and either catch it or punch it out of play. She doesn’t, Rose Lavelle heads it back across, and Dudley scores her second.
DUDLEY BRACE ✌️
Jordynn Dudley get herself a second goal and the lead for Gotham in added time!
— NWSL (@nwslsoccer.com) September 19, 2026 at 8:24 PM
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This isn’t all on Sheridan to fix. Her teammates need to move to give her clean options against the press when building out, and also need to not just use her as a bail-out option when they’re under pressure and don’t have another target. And on situations like the second goal from Gotham, multiple slow reactions by defenders to both headers doesn’t help Sheridan do her job either. But it’s not surprising that upcoming opponents will see the success KC, San Diego, and Gotham had pressing the Courage back and then try to do it themselves.
If they are able to get Kailen Sheridan back to being a weapon in buildout and a confident attacker of the ball in goal, it will help them both offensively and defensively, and do a lot to help the end of the season.
4. Get back to progressing the ball through the midfield #
Looking at the pass maps for the San Diego and Gotham games show a problem: the Courage midfielders aren’t really passing the ball forward through the midfield much.
For Erica Meg Parkinson, if she wasn’t already in or around the final third nearly every pass was sideways or backwards, and only one pass actually went into the penalty area.
Vilde Bøe Risa had a few more forward passes, but still not that many, and nearly none in/into the final third.
Shinomi was the most adventurous passer, but also completed the lowest percentage of the three.
At least Parkinson is also progressing the ball upfield via the dribble (neither Bøe Risa or Shinomi carry the ball much), but it’s notable that their midfielders aren’t really creating via the pass right now. Carly Wickeheiser has as many passes into the penalty area (two) as any other midfielder, and she’s played less than a third of either game. The four midfielders have also only combined for one shot over the past two games.
Between Ryan Williams and Feli Rauch on the outside, and playing through Ashley Sanchez, they do have other options in how they attack. But removing the route through the middle makes them more predictable, and also causes Evelyn Ijeh to be less involved in these two games. Bringing the forward lean back to their midfield gives them more options on how they create goal scoring opportunities.
5. Realize they’re close, and just get healthy #
Over the Courage’s last four games they’ve lost three games: against the top team in the league (Gotham), and the top two teams in the expected goals/expected points standings (San Diego and Kansas City). They’ve played those games without:
- their top two centerbacks
- their top midfielder (aside from one 20 minute stretch while injured)
- their top three right wingers
They’ve had two players walk into the clubhouse and immediately play minutes in the next game, one of whom started. Despite that, they have only lost by a single goal in all three losses. Imagine if they actually had their full complement of players?
You don’t want to rush anyone, and obviously Maycee Bell and Payton Crawford are on the season-ending injury list and not coming back in 2026. But you want to get more control of your defensive rotations and coverage? A healthy Natalie Jacobs likely fixes that. Not getting ball progression and passing through the midfield? Get Riley Jackson back and ninety minutes fit, and that problem may immediately solve itself. Get Ally Schlegel ready to play a good 45-60 minutes, and you’ll have a wrecking ball working to create chances and allows Gianna Paul to grow into the team as needed.
Sometimes the obvious answer is the simplest one.