SkoPurp Soccer Episode 85: Portland Rewind, North Carolina Preview, and More

The Orlando Pride have not played well for 2.5 of the last three matches, falling 1-0 on the road at Portland Saturday night. Scoring is an issue, as is breaking out of their own end. The Pride simply aren’t creating enough clear-cut scoring chances, and when they do, they’re not being clinical with those opportunities.

We break down Orlando’s second loss of the season — tying last year’s total already — discussing some of the game’s big moments, looking back at our predictions from last week, and making our selections for Player of the Match.

This week’s mailbagbox wants to know about NWSL announcers and officials, Pride cohesion, and the season-ending injury list. Remember, you can ask us anything by hitting us up on Twitter at either @TheManeLand or @SkoPurpSoccer and using the hashtag #AskSkoPurp. You can use that same hashtag and hit @TheManeLand.bsky.social up on Bluesky. Or you can visit our show page, scroll down, and fill out the handy form. We’d also appreciate any ratings or reviews you can leave wherever you get your podcasts, and if you do that on Apple Podcasts, we’ll find them easily and read them on the show.

Following our mailbagbox segment, we look ahead to the Pride’s trip to North Carolina to take on the Courage. It’s a tough place to get a result and a quality opponent for Orlando, but you have to play everyone in their place at some point. A result against North Carolina might be just what the doctor ordered for the Pride to get back on track and go on a run after falling in two of the last three games. We break down the all-time series, preview the Courage, provide our key matchups in the game, and try to predict the final score.

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Here’s how Episode 85 went down:

0:15 – The Pride are not in the best form at the moment, but they’re still in first place, so there’s that.

17:26 – A bunch of questions were found in this week’s mailbagbox, so we answered them.

35:30 – The Pride head to another difficult place to get results with a trip to North Carolina on the schedule for Saturday. We preview!