The Pride’s season starts Friday…kind of. The Pride definitely will play a game on that date, wearing their uniforms in front of fans, but the game will straddle the line between being meaningful and meaningless.

It is an NWSL game, but one that has no bearing on the standings or playoff qualification. However, if they win, they will win a trophy — the NWSL Challenge Cup. Players will not accumulate any official NWSL statistics, but if they perform well or poorly, it very well may have a bearing on their roles once the regular season starts. A soccer game should in no way be similar to Winston Churchill’s famous line about the Soviet Union being a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside of an enigma, except for when it is.

Perhaps that was a bit hyperbolic. Ok, very hyperbolic.

What is truly still a mystery, however, is who will take the mantle from Adriana as the team’s third offensive focal point? The clear top two are Barbra Banda and Marta, who combined for more than 20 goals last season, but the third is up for grabs. As a quick reminder, here are the top performers from last year during NWSL regular-season play (data from Opta’s tracking on fbref.com, SCA = shot-creating actions):

Adriana’s departure leaves nearly 1,700 minutes to fill, in addition to around four shots per 90 minutes and the third most goals on the team. The Brazilian also was a heavy possessor of the ball when the Pride were in the attacking third of the field, touching the ball as often as Banda and almost as often as Marta.

The Pride do not have to directly replace all of those statistics, but being that they brought back many of the key contributors from last season, they are likely to play in a similar fashion as they did in 2024 (and, um, they won the shield and the cup so why wouldn’t they?). So, many of the shots and touches taken by Adriana will be there for someone else to take.

Grace Chanda was recently removed from the Season-Ending Injury List, Simone Charley likely will be removed soon, and the team signed Prisca Chilufya in the off-season, but I think it will be Yates who makes another leap and ascends into a major role in the Pride’s attack this season. Head Coach Seb Hines clearly already trusts her, giving her 17 starts during the regular season in 2024, and despite receiving little national attention and playing only slightly more than 50% of the available regular-season minutes, she proved herself to be one of the league’s elite attacking players, placing in the top 20 in several critical metrics.

Here is where she ranked in the NWSL during the 2024 season in several attacking statistics:

A quick trip down dictionary lane for these metrics:

• Shot-Creating Actions — the final two plays that happened immediately prior to a shot.
• Season Game Score — I explained this metric in detail in this article on Orlando City, but it amounts to a measure of the contributions of goals, expected assists, and attacking plays per game.
• Goals — Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooals.
• Plus/Minus per 90 — the differential between goals scored and goals allowed while a player is on the field, normalized over a 90-minute period.
• On-Off — the differential between goals scored and goals allowed while a player is on the field as compared to the goal differential when they are not on the field, normalized over a 90-minute period.

For all of these metrics, the goal is to be positive, and the more positive the better the performance. Yates is a skilled dribbler and passer, and those skills in particular helped her create exactly four shots per 90 minutes for her teammates last season. Despite playing nearly 350 fewer minutes than Adriana last season, she had more key passes (32 to 30) and one-on-one dribbling wins (28 to 24), and her win rate on those one-on-one dribbling take-ons was much higher (45% to 35%).

Those same skills helped contribute to her high season game score as well, as expected assists and progressive passes come from well-played passes, and progressive carries (dribbles) can only happen if a player has excellent touch and can dribble at speed at an opposing defense.

If you scroll back up to the first chart, which showed goals and shots, you will notice that Yates scored five goals on only 25 shots — a 20% success rate and the best on the team. The full team average, excluding Yates, was 9.9% and the NWSL average was 10.0%, so she was in a class by herself in terms of making the most of her shots when she took them.

The final two metrics I showed, plus/minus and on-off, are tied into goal differential, and those therefore take into account both the offensive and defensive performance of the player and the team while on the field. Yates was better than +1.00 in both metrics, and while soccer is a game played by 11 players, it is still telling that the team performed positively while she was on the field and was better with her on the field than when she was not on the field.

Yates cannot play all of Adriana’s minutes, but I think if healthy she should definitely pick up at least 400-500 of them. Extrapolating is a dangerous business, best left to mathematicians (oh hey, that’s me) and gamblers (not me, though I did like seeing that the Pride are the favorites to win the NWSL this year). An increase of 400-500 minutes would be an increase of around one-third for Yates and would correspondingly put her on track for seven goals and three assists during the regular season.

Only 14 NWSL players had at least 10 goal contributions in 2024, and I think that is possible for Yates to achieve in 2025. I think she deserves the minutes, and if she gets them, she will deliver goals all….summer….long. The competition will be fierce with the firepower the Pride have on the offensive side of the ball, and I am excited to see how Hines divvies out the minutes once the season starts.

Perhaps the NWSL Challenge Cup will be a harbinger of things to come, or perhaps Hines will use that game for experimentation or even as a shiny diversion, like covering a barnacle with bioluminescent algae, with the whole league watching. Only he knows, but one thing we all know is that he is smiling while thinking about whatever strategy he is planning to deploy in the season opener.

Until then it is is mystery, but my hope is that he will read the clues and solve the case by selecting Summer Yates on the field with a 90-minute timepiece.

The leaked images do not do the Orlando Pride’s new home kit, dubbed the “Decennial Kit,” justice. The Pride unveiled the new uniforms today, showing off the new home purple threads with Eola Blue accents, drawing inspiration from the club’s original kits from the inaugural 2016 season for Orlando’s 10th year in the league.

The purple kit is trimmed with the Eola Blue on the sleeve cuffs. The crest on the front will stand out for several reasons.

• The crest is irridescent gold and purple. The irridescence is to commemorate the Pride’s 2024 double of winning both the NWSL Shield and NWSL Championship.
• The crest has a gold star above it, commemorating the team’s NWSL Championship in 2024.
• The crest is in the middle.

Yeah, it’s in the middle. Just like the leaked kit showed. I generally don’t hold strong opinions on soccer jerseys, as I find most of them to be fine, with a few of them truly great and some just plain awful, however, I need that crest to be over the heart, especially coming off a championship. Nevertheless, the badge is where it is, smack dab in the center, topped by a gold star, and then…the Nike logo is at the top of that center stack. I’m not crazy about that either, but at least it’s a bit muted.

Pride fans will get their first chance to buy the kit in person at the club’s 10 Years of Pride Kickoff Party Sunday at Inter&Co Stadium. It is already available on ShopOrlandoPride.com. The first 200 fans in attendance at the 10 Years of Pride Kickoff Party to purchase the jersey or add customization to their 2025-26 kit will receive a complimentary patch. Season Ticket Members will have the opportunity to enter the party early at 2 p.m., as this will
be their first opportunity to pick up their complimentary jerseys as a part of their 2025 benefits package. The general public will be able to enter at 3 p.m.

“This kit is special in so many ways,” Orlando Pride Chief Marketing Officer Pedro Araujo said in a club press release. “From honoring 10 years of Pride by taking inspiration from our very first kit design in 2016, to celebrating the most historic season in NWSL history and adding our first championship star. We are so excited to share this kit with our fans to kick off the 2025 season.”

In addition to the ubiquitous Lake Eola fountain badge, the jersey also features a new wordmark in the jock tag at the bottom right that commemorates the team’s 10th season. The number 10 is cleverly embedded within the word “Pride.”

Unlike the leaked kit that many have seen online, the Decennial Kit’s shirt is a beautiful shade of purple and a pattern that, while I have no idea what it’s called, adds a lot of depth and texture. It’s another knockout of a kit for the Pride, who have truly stepped up their game in recent years in that department. It would be one of my favorites with the badge in its “proper” place, but it’s still one of the better ones and hopefully not everyone is as picky about the badge location as I am.

Here’s a look at the new duds:

We are one week away from the season opener for Orlando City and three weeks away from the season opener for the Orlando Pride, wrapping up what has felt like a long off-season. Oddly enough, both off-seasons were the shortest in club history, but they have felt extra long, probably because of the elongated conversations around several players and whether these players would stay in Orlando, leave Orlando, or come to Orlando.

At this point, the rosters are probably pretty close to being locked in to what they will be when the seasons open, but there still may be some final changes, and if there are, hopefully they will be positive ones for the teams in purple.

Several weeks ago, I wrote about how the Pride were bringing back all of their goals and nearly all of their minutes played from 2024, and while that has changed now with Adriana’s departure to Al Qadsiah FC in Saudi Arabia, the Pride are still bringing back most of their goals and minutes and will likely be among the favorites, if not the favorite, when sportsbooks start posting their NWSL futures odds. As of this moment, I cannot find anyone who has odds posted, and very few sites have released their season previews and power rankings, but I have a hunch that the defending champions, bringing back nearly every key contributor, will be near the top of those lists. And they should be because, and let’s revel in this once again, they are the defending champions!

The Pride are bringing back two players who combined for 28 goals in NWSL play last season. If we include the playoffs, then Barbra Banda scored 17 goals and Marta added 11, and they ranked second and fourth, respectively, for most goals scored. What interested me, however, was that they only combined together to create four of those goals as a partnership.

Using Opta’s tracking and fbref.com’s database of goals, I was able to create a ranking of the most prolific partnerships during the 2024 NWSL season. For every goal scored, Opta tracks what they call goal-creating actions, which are the two plays immediately preceding a goal that led to a player scoring a goal. For example, let’s flash back to the playoff semifinal when Banda gave the Pride a 3-1 lead against the Current by smashing a ball into the net harder than a home run off the bat of Elly De La Cruz (my son’s favorite baseball player). In related news, I am also excited for baseball season.

In the video below, Banda is the goal scorer, and the prior two plays are a completed pass by Haley McCutcheon to Kylie Strom and then the assist on a completed pass from Strom to Banda. Opta tracks those as the two goal-creating actions for Banda’s goals, with Strom’s pass being the final action preceding the goal.

Staying in that same game, I am sure you remember Marta’s wondergoal (wondergoal is still underselling how great of a goal this was — this was an all-time great run down the field) that made the score 3-1. On that play, Banda received the assist, as she passed the ball to Marta, but the two goal-creating actions were actually both by Marta as she beat multiple defenders and the goalkeeper off the dribble to get herself into shooting position. Opta’s tracking shows this goal as scored by Marta, from two consecutive goal-creating actions of Marta take-ons. Yes Banda passed the ball to Marta, but this goal was created by Marta’s magic, and the GOAT taking on and beating multiple defenders.

Opta tracks the following seven different types of goal-creating actions:

• Fouled
• Interception (stealing a pass)
• Pass (live-ball)
• Pass (dead-ball)
• Shot
• Tackle (stealing the ball directly from the other team’s player)
• Take-On (beating a defender off the dribble)

During the 2024 NWSL season there were 502 total goals scored, including the playoffs and including own goals. Opta’s tracking does not have an assist for every goal, nor does it have a goal-creating action for every goal, and that makes sense for how soccer is played. Sometimes goals happen unassisted, as a player, usually a striker, makes a tackle or interception themselves and then is in on goal and scores unassisted, or a player wins a loose ball in the box and slots it home, or a player finishes a rebound and the official scorer does not give the asisst to the player who took the original shot.

Opta’s tracking shows 481 non-own goals in 2024, with 312 of those goals (approximately 65%) having an assist. Of those 481 non-own goals, 447 (approximately 93%) had a primary goal-creating action, and this also makes sense, as it is much more likely, based on the list of goal-creating actions, that there was one of those than there was a true assist. I am much more interested in the goal-creating actions than I am the assists, as I believe they are better descriptors of how goals happened.

Looking at the Pride, which I know is really why you are here, the following table lists the player combinations that led to more than two goals during 2024:

For these counts it does not matter who created the goal and who scored it, these were the two Pride players involved in the final product. It may be a bit of a surprise to see that the top combination was Adriana and Banda, but Adriana scored three goals in 2024 that came directly from a foul on Banda (5/11 vs. Bay FC), a rebound from a Banda shot (6/30 vs. Angel City), and a foul on Banda (10/20 vs. Gotham). Banda scored two goals that resulted from an Adriana live-ball pass (5/19 vs. Seattle) and a rebound from an Adriana shot (7/6 vs. Kansas City). Adriana and Banda’s five goal combinations tied them for fourth in all of NWSL in 2024, with the combination of Esther González and Yazmeen Ryan of Gotham FC leading the league with seven.

It is a fair criticism of this statistic to say something along the lines of, “Well, Adriana did not intend to miss her shot and for Banda to score the rebound, so who really cares if it was an Adriana shot or someone else’s shot that Banda rebounded?”. Conversely, Adriana had to put a shot on target and have struck it well enough that it could not be saved and held, and Banda had to beat other players to the ball to score it, and both players had to have earned the right to be on the field at the same time.

I do not think goal-creating actions are the be-all, end-all, but I do think they tell more of a story than just assists. As another example, the action that immediately preceded five of Banda’s 17 goals was her winning a take-on against her defender. That total led the league in 2024, and she and Portland’s Sophia Smith were the only two players with more than three take-ons that led directly to goals in 2024. Two of those five goals for Banda had teammates credited with assists, but just as with the Marta goal against Kansas City when Banda was credited with the assist, the goals really came more from the effort by Banda as the goal scorer rather than from the pass that gave her the ball initially.

On a different note, those top combinations I showed tally up to 19 of the 54 goals scored by the Pride in 2024. The Pride benefitted from three own goals, meaning they scored 51 goals themselves, so those top combinations did not even account for half (37%) of the team’s goals last season. That is the sign of a team that is diverse in its attack, and even though Adriana is gone, they bring back everyone else who was involved in all of their goals, plus they will have Grace Chanda, Simone Charley, and Prisca Chilufya as additional offensive options in 2025. Losing Adriana will hurt, but I think the Pride will have her departure covered.

Goals are exciting, and of course are how teams win games, so as watchers and analyzers of soccer, we spend a lot of time thinking about how they happened. I like goal-creating actions as a statistic but I know on many goals there are different plays that happened in succession that led to the goal, and the goal-creating action stat only shows the final two plays. Those final two plays are critical though, so I think it is a good statistic to analyze, just in conjunction with others as well.

It is no accident that Banda was all over that list of top Pride combinations, she led the league in goal-creating actions and goal-creating actions plus goals, and with her available for the full season in 2025 I expect that she is going to be right near the top again this season, if not the league leader for the second consecutive season.

I cannot wait to watch the Pride’s offense this year. I think they are going to be creating goals and goal-creating actions at an even higher rate than last season.

Vamos Orlando!