Match Preview: NJ/NY Gotham FC vs. OL Reign
Red Bull Arena | Harrison, New Jersey – Wednesday, September 21 at 7:00 PM ET
Players to watch:
Gotham FC is led in the goalscoring department by the talented duo of forward Midge Purce and midfielder Paige Monaghan, who are tied atop the charts this season with three goals each. Gotham FC joins Orlando as the only teams this season without a single player with at least four goals.
OL Reign attacker Megan Rapinoe scored the game-winning goal on Saturday on a direct free kick from 36.9 meters away from goal. It was the longest direct free-kick goal in NWSL since 2016. In addition, Rapinoe has now scored in four of the last five games, with the Reign winning three in that stretch (D1 L1). The only other player to have scored more than once in the team’s previous five games is midfielder Rose Lavelle, who has scored in three of the last four.
Match facts: Gotham FC welcomes OL Reign to Red Bull Arena to kick off a packed midweek slate of action around the league, with the hosts Gotham aiming to avoid an 11th straight loss while the visiting Reign will hope to extend their unbeaten run to five games and win their fourth out of the last five with a victory.
In its most recent game, Gotham FC fell to Washington, 2-0, on Saturday for to push its losing streak to double digits and make it their 13th loss in the last 14 games (W1). It is the first time in NWSL history that a team has lost 13 matches in a 14-game span within a single season.
On the other side, OL Reign have enjoyed success as of late and secured a 2-1 win against the Courage on Saturday, winning three out of their last four matches (D1), while scoring multiple goals in all four games. That matches the amount of multi-goal games the club had in the first 15 games of the season (four).
Typically a high-scoring fixture, a total of 68 goals have been scored in the 23 all-time meetings between the two clubs (2.96 goals per game), which is the third-most goals of any NWSL fixture in the regular season (Chicago/Portland-78 and Gotham/Washing-70). There have been three times in NWSL history with each team scoring at least four goals and two of them have been in this matchup.
