Orlando Pride Have Built Something Special and Sustainable

The Orlando Pride are your 2024 NWSL champions and NWSL Shield winners. These awards capped a season where they set the league records for longest win streak, longest unbeaten streak, most points, most shutouts, and most wins, among many other accolades. That level of success was deserved after a years-long rebuild, both in personnel and club culture.

In a league like the NWSL, it can be difficult to sustain such performances and stay at the top for long. Despite the challenges ahead, Orlando showed in the NWSL Championship, as well as the whole 26-match season, that due to the team’s talent, playing style, and strong culture, this is a club that will continue to fight for trophies for years to come.

Saturday night in the NWSL Championship, the Pride showed all the foundational elements of their record-breaking season, including that trademark gritty defense and the lightning quick attacking transitions. On the defensive end, there just aren’t many more ways to write about how dominant the Pride are. The win over the Washington Spirit was Orlando’s 14th clean sheet of the season and its eighth 1-0 victory in 29 matches.

While the Pride conceded 26 shots in the match, only five were on target for the Spirit, and their efforts got more and more speculative as the minutes wore on. Trinity Rodman had some success against Kerry Abello in one-on-one situations, but Kylie Strom and NWSL Defender of-the Year Emily Sams were lively in snuffing out the danger early. Behind it all, Anna Moorhouse was commanding in the box, coming out to collect several crosses and free kicks to kill off the opposing attack.

When it comes to next year, there will not be any relief for the rest of the league’s attacks. For how elite the Pride defense was, it can be surprising how young the group is. In the NWSL Championship, Orlando’s back four featured a rookie (Cori Dyke), a second-year player (Sams), and a third-year player (Abello), who are all 25 years old or younger.

Add in starters Kylie Strom, Anna Moorhouse, and critical depth pieces Rafaelle — actually a starter when healthy, but a defender who missed the rest of the season after the Olympic break — and Carson Pickett, and Orlando’s most reliable defenders are all under contract through next year as well. With this ideal mix of experience and youth and a full year playing together as the league’s best defense, the expectation is that the back line will remain dominant next year as well.

On the attacking front, the Pride showed once again that they only need a handful of chances to get the winning goal, especially with a player like Barbra Banda. Their chances don’t need to come from intricate buildup play either, as it has felt at times this season that the Pride would rather cede possession and attack off the counter than waste time working the ball slowly up the pitch. Against the Spirit, that’s exactly how it went. For the match, the Pride had 43% possession and completed 100 fewer passes than the Spirit. Orlando only managed nine shots, with three on target, but once the Pride had the lead, they were even more content to play in transition, limiting their offensive output but still creating several threatening situations.

Statistics aside, most of the big opportunities on the night for Orlando, including the lone goal, came from similar situations. These plays started with Orlando winning possession off of the Spirit in the Pride’s defensive third. From there, the Pride played long balls forward and let Banda or Marta go to work. First, in the 15^th minute, Banda was able to gather a loose ball in her own half and drive forward. Once she had committed the Spirit defenders to her, she fed the ball out wide to Marta, who was able to create space for a shot that ended up straight at the keeper.

On the goal, only two players in purple touched the ball. Angelina won the ball off of Leicy Santos and heaved it forward to Banda, who chased it down, beat her defender in the box, and rifled a low and hard shot past the keeper. Later in the match, there was potentially the best opportunity of the night but it did not end in a shot. Banda was in a similar position to the first big chance, with three defenders around her, driving towards net. However, she was unable to find a pass to Marta, who was open in space near the top of the box.

This chance showed that there is still room for improvement for Banda, as crazy as it sounds. Improvements to her passing and finishing with her feet could take her even higher, and as she is just 24 years old, she will have years to sharpen those areas of her game in Orlando. This year she showed that the sky is the limit. To score 17 goals across all competitions in her first season, including a record-setting four goals in the postseason, is an incredible accomplishment. While Temwa Chawinga won league MVP for her record-breaking debut campaign of 20 regular-season goals, Banda is sure to be happy to have the NWSL Championship MVP award instead. It is absolutely wonderful for the NWSL and women’s soccer as a whole, to have those two going head to head for years to come.

The culture in Orlando may be the biggest factor in the Pride’s success in 2024, but the foundations were laid in prior seasons. In the aftermath of Amanda Cromwell’s suspension, the club turned to an unknown commodity in Seb Hines to lead the team in an interim capacity. While he was unknown as a head coach, those at the top of the organization felt they knew his character well enough to trust him to take care of the club through the end of 2022. That off-season, Haley Carter joined as general manager and vice president of soccer operations — recently swapping out the “general manager” part of her title for “sporting director.” The duo of Hines and Carter deserves much of the credit for the rebuild.

These two have been instrumental in establishing a culture of hard work and creating an environment that values each player as a person above all. It was that ethos that led to the club sanctioning the trade of 2023 Rookie of the Year candidate Messiah Bright to Angel City, a move that seemed like a risk at the time, but one the player requested. The club demonstrated that it values players as individuals and also wants players who want to be in Orlando — something that likely helped convince several free agents to join the team, such as Morgan Gautrat and Angelina. With the players more bought-in to the club than ever before, Marta, the longest-serving member of the club (staff included) and Strom acted as captains and as a bridge between the staff and the players both in the locker room and on the pitch.

For all their hard work and togetherness, the players played for each other and unlocked even more in this already talented roster en route to the NWSL Championship. Now that the staff and the players have created a strong and positive culture in Orlando, they will know what it takes to continue to keep the culture going and can grind for more results and more trophies. These players who have been through it will also be able to demonstrate to any new faces just what it means to be a part of this winning organization.

While playing style and club culture have set the Pride up for success, continuity of the staff and the roster can be a huge factor to ongoing success in the league. While it’s always unknown exactly what the Pride squad and starting 11 will look like next season, it is a massive benefit for Carter that only one starter, Marta, is not already under contract for next season. She is the only player who was on the pitch for more than 300 minutes this NWSL season that is out of contract.

It has to be said that Marta was a vital leader and a massive part of the Pride’s successes this year and for years prior, but if the club must try to fill a hole left by her potential absence, it is much easier to concentrate time and funds on one big piece as opposed to a total rebuild. With the increased revenue and exposure from an NWSL Championship and rising ticket sales, expect the club to make a splashy signing or two to cement its position at the top of the league.

Roster continuity also allows for continued growth of the players that remain. As mentioned above, Banda, Summer Yates, and the young defenders all played big roles this year and already showed improvement as the season wore on. There is no reason that these players can’t continue to learn from Hines and his staff and benefit from another off season to hone their skills. Behind these players is also a cohort of young athletes who may not have played as much as they hoped this year, but are primed to push for more minutes in the future. This goes for players like Evelina Duljan and Ally Lemos, who showed flashes this season, and Amanda Allen, who should be learning a lot on her loan to Lexington Soccer Club. This winter will also be the first without an NWSL draft, and the Orlando Pride should be a desired destination for more top young players.

Looking forward to 2025, one of the loftiest goals for the Pride would be to play soccer as well as they did in 2024. This NWSL Championship and Shield were well-earned; the club went through an effective and focused rebuild led by Hines and Carter. The players picked up along the way, either free agents, draftees, or big-name acquisitions, all played phenomenally well this year, especially in the playoffs. The performances on the pitch matched the culture that was built in the locker room, leading to something special. For all the club’s hard work, the Pride will know that the foundations are solid, and the team will not relinquish its spot among the best in the league anytime soon.