The Pride Still Have Time For A Strong Final Act

I recently wrote about Barbra Banda’s injury forcing the Pride to find new band leaders, and my belief that they would do so. Since that article was published, the Pride have earned a disappointing one point from a possible 12 and have been outscored by six goals. That is bad, and some might even say it is super bad — not to be confused with the film Superbad, which was actually super good.

Before you go and place all the blame on me for the Pride’s run of bad form, I want to make two points:

1. The Pride have won two games in September, although both were in the Concacaf W Champions Cup and against weak competition.
2. The Pride’s issues date back to before Banda’s injury; it really has been almost like two seasons (an Apertura and a Clausura) with how the 2025 NWSL season is structured, and the Pride were strong in season one (pre-summer break) and have been — and continue to be — awful in season two (post-summer break).

Appropriating the Dickensian line and changing it to “it was a tale of two seasons” makes sense for the Pride this year, as the pre-summer break and post-summer break numbers are starkly different (all data from Opta’s tracking on fbref.com, and on a per game basis):

I said those numbers were starkly different, and they are kind of like Ned Stark-ly different, with the numbers during the pre-summer break time being like when he was the Warden of the North (hopefully you read and/or watched Game of Thrones) and then the numbers in the post-summer break time being like when he, spoiler alert, got his head chopped off.

The Pride still have their heads, but they are holding on for dear life to a playoff spot, and if they lose at San Diego on Friday, they could find themselves in a tie for the eighth and final playoff spot by the end of the weekend.

Unlike in MLS, where even with only a few weeks to go in the season there are some teams who have played as many as three games more/fewer than other teams, every team in the NWSL has exactly five games left to play, which makes evaluating the strength of schedule remaining for every team relatively simple. I looked at every team’s final five games and calculated their opponents’ average points earned at home and away thus far this season, and came up with the following rankings for the remaining schedules, based on where teams are playing one another in the upcoming weeks:

After a lot of discouraging news and results for the Pride, it was nice to finally see some good news, as while the Pride’s final games are all against teams squarely in the playoff hunt, they did get somewhat lucky with the locations of those games:

• Sept. 26 at San Diego: the Wave average 1.09 points per game at home.
• Oct. 3 at Houston: the Dash average 1.09 points per game at home.
• Oct. 10 at home vs. Portland: the Thorns average 1.20 points per game on the road.
• Oct. 18 at Washington: the Spirit average 1.5 points per game at home.
• Nov. 1 at home vs. Seattle: the Reign average 1.37 points per game on the road.

It is not ideal to have three away games and only two home games, and the Pride also have to travel to Mexico City on Sept. 30 to play Club América and play Pachuca at home on Oct. 15 in Concacaf W Champions Cup play. However, they have the fifth-easiest remaining schedule, and despite sitting in seventh place in the standings and being at risk of missing the playoffs, they also are only two points behind the team in third place and could quickly find themselves back in the mix to be hosting at least one playoff game at Inter&Co Stadium.

Considering how poorly they have played since the summer break ended, it is rather shocking that the Pride could still be a top-four seed, and with a winning streak could even jump all the way up to second before the playoffs start. The Mane Land’s Michael Citro shared in the most recent SkoPurp Soccer podcast that the Pride’s nine-game winless streak ties the club’s longest single-season winless streak in league play, which was previously set when the team opened the 2019 season with seven losses and two draws. The 2025 team’s streak is not quite as dire, with four draws and five losses, but it is really high time they put that streak to bed and go out and get a win in NWSL play.

Perhaps I am an eternal optimist, seeing the world through my purple-tinted glasses, but I still believe this Pride team can make a run. The great thing about the NWSL playoffs is that it is single-elimination, and the Pride just need to get into the playoffs, and then they can beat anyone.

Seb Hines still does not have a clear first-choice lineup, but big summer acquisition Jacquie Ovalle looks settled in her role and is starting to create shots for her teammates — something that has been desperately missing for much of the season. Carson Pickett and Summer Yates recently have found some goal-scoring form, and if Marta can dig down and recreate the way she played for Brazil in July and for the Pride in the 2024 playoffs, I do not think any team will be happy to see the Pride in their bracket once the playoffs begin.

A lot that has gone wrong recently will have to go right, but the Pride did not accidentally have a strong opening half of the season. There is talent on this team and in the coaching staff, and I think they just need to get that one league win — those three points in the standings — and then they can get a run going all the way through November and deep into the playoffs.

And that is something that we all would be (Mc)lovin.