Examining Orlando Pride’s Struggles Away From Home

The Orlando Pride have been two different teams this season. At home, they’ve been getting results, including wins over two of the top teams in the league in the Washington Spirit and Portland Thorns. They’ve struggled away from Exploria Stadium, losing to the Kansas City Current and Chicago Red Stars, who sit at the bottom of the standings. But why the difference in results?

The way teams play at home and on the road differ greatly. They’re more attacking at home, pressing to force the opposition into mistakes and keeping the majority of possession. But on the road they tend to sit back, conceding possession and attempting to score on the counter attack. 

Despite knowing what to expect from the opposition, the Pride have been unprepared away from home recently. This lack of preparedness has especially been on display during the two most recent road games against the Houston Dash and North Carolina Courage, both resulting in the Pride being outplayed by the opposition and never really threatening throughout the game.

On June 3, the Pride were pressed hard by the Houston front line of Maria Sanchez, Diana Ordonez, and Michelle Alozie. While neither of the goals in the 2-0 Dash win came directly from pressing the Pride into mistakes, center backs Emily Madril and Megan Montefusco struggled to play the ball out of the back.

“They made it difficult for us and they pressed us really hard,” Hines said after that game. “We looked like we weren’t prepared for that. That’s the most disappointing thing. If you want to play the way that we want to play, we have to dictate the game, we have to control the tempo of the game, and we didn’t do that.”

The Pride were much better last weekend in a 3-1 win over the Portland Thorns, but the away team didn’t press the way they did in the season opener, when Christine Sinclair was a nightmare for Madril and Caitlin Cosme. As a result, the Pride were able to dictate the pace and easily maintain possession.

Unfortunately, the lack of preparedness showed up again Saturday night in a 3-0 loss in North Carolina. From the early moments in the game, the Courage launched balls forward for Kerolin to run onto. It caused the Pride headaches throughout the game and one of those balls created the game’s first goal in the 32nd minute.

Similar to the Houston game, Hines said his team worked on defending those long balls, keeping up with the attackers, and closing the space. However, they didn’t seem ready to defend those plays in the game.

“Probably one thing that North Carolina did more than Portland was they played a lot more longer balls in behind the back line,” Hines said. “We worked on that quite often, dealing with long balls, making sure that we were ready, dealing with the space behind, and it looked like today, we just weren’t prepared for that.”

The result of the lack of preparedness is a poor away record of 1-5-1. It’s a much different story than the team’s home form, where they’re 3-2-0 and have won their last three. The regular season is more than half over and the Pride currently sit in eighth place. However, they’re only five points behind NJ/NY Gotham FC for the sixth and final playoff spot. If they want to climb into the postseason for the first time since 2017, they need to improve their away form.

“We’ve got to figure this out away from home,” Hines said after the loss in North Carolina. “And we need to start picking up points away from home. We can’t only rely on our home form.”

Fortunately for the Pride, part of the remaining schedule is in their favor. The NWSL will release players for international duty leading up to the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup on June 26. The Pride travel to Washington, D.C. on July 1 and face OL Reign on July 7. While the Pride will likely be without Marta and Adriana, they’ll lose fewer players than some of the teams they’re chasing.

Unfortunately, the schedule around the World Cup is primarily at home, where the Pride have been very good. Three of their four away games occur in September and October, when the internationals will be back. As a result, the Pride will have to figure out how to put together a home-like performance on the road in three of the final five games of the season.

The Pride have been one of the NWSL’s better teams at Exploria Stadium, but have struggled against some of the league’s worst teams on the road. That trend will have to change if they hope to make the playoffs for the first time in six years.