The game is the judge
A week after Swanson stood on a podium in Tokyo alongside Brian and Ohai as world champions, the three of them took the field again, this time as rivals, when UVA faced off with UNC in an early season ACC clash at Klockner Stadium. The game would be a yardstick for the team after a successful start to the season.
Without Brian, UVA was 8-1 and scoring goals in bunches, with senior forward Caroline Miller and freshman standout Mackenzy Doniak notching seven apiece. Five of the country’s top 10 teams are in the ACC, including top-ranked Florida State. UNC is not one of them, sitting at No. 18, but Anson Dorrance’s team is the gold standard in women’s college soccer, having won 20 national titles in the 29 years it’s been contested.
For me, it was a chance to watch Brian square off against Ohai, two of the best players in the world in their age group. I knew Brian was tired and feeling the pressure of having missed the first few weeks of her sophomore year in college.
“Right now school is really hard. I have a ton of stuff to do and I’m really stressed. Soccer is always fun. It’s always the best part. But I didn’t know my schedule or where my classes were. This week was hard,” Brian had said.
Swanson thinks his team has a huge upside. He gives all the credit for the good start to his assistant coaches Ron Raab and Kerry Dziczkaniec. He worries about injuries in his defense and about the team’s ability to apply pressure to opponents when they don’t have the ball.
UNC’s team is full of talent. And then there’s Ohai, who scored two huge goals in the World Cup and is everything that Brian is not. She looks fast standing still, a pure goal scorer. Like Thierry Henry, she is always on the verge of being offside. When she is on, she is impossible to catch.
It took her only 10 minutes before she latched on to a pass from senior playmaker Ranee Premji and was through clear on goal, bearing down on UVA goalkeeper Danielle DeLisle and firing low from eight yards out. DeLisle got down well and denied the chance, but it was a menacing start. A minute before, Brian and Miller had collided during a miscommunication in transition, and you could see the frustration on both of their faces as they tried to get in synch.
UNC had assigned senior midfielder Amber Brooks, who is incredibly strong physically, to track Brian, with Premji free to wander. UVA plays a 4-1-2-3 formation, which means Brian and another midfielder share creative duties and senior Julia Roberts plays behind them in a defensive and distribution role.
The team was having trouble finding Brian early in the game, and when they did, she looked strained, trying to force play. In the 20th minute, Ohai got free in the box again, beating Morgan Stith and getting to the line before cutting a neat cross back to the six yard box. Minutes later she and Premji exchanged a give-and-go and she was nearly through again before being whistled for offside. Brian had to assert herself.
You could almost see her will her way into the game. Thirty minutes in, she arrived, chasing a play 60 yards, making a hard tackle to win the ball, stepping away from two defenders with a cute double touch dribble, and clipping a perfectly weighted pass behind the defense into Doniak’s stride.
Fox Soccer Channel analyst Christopher Sullivan likes to say of Spain’s magnificent midfielders—Xavi, Iniesta, Fabregas, Silva —that their passes come with information on them. Brian is this way. The placement and weight of her passes tell players which way to turn, how fast to move, what the window looks like.
But Ohai was too much for UVA in the first half. Her game does not depend on her teammates or on the opponents. She is fast and she looks for the inside channel, creates footraces. A good midfielder will find her often. A better midfielder will find her more often. She broke free again in the 37th minute and came in alone on goal, shooting low and at the far post, but was denied again by DeLisle. Minutes later a defensive lapse allowed her through a third time, and she buried her chance, 1-0.
Brian was angry. In the last minute of the first half, she did something special. With her back to goal 20 yards out and a defender on each hip, she flicked the ball up in the air between them as she turned and then used the space to lay the ball neatly into the path of Gloria Douglas. Douglas tried to cut the ball back to her right foot and the chance was gone, but there are very few women in the game who would think to make that play in that situation and fewer still who have the skill and athletic ability to pull it off. UVA went into the locker room trailing by a goal, but it could have been much worse.
As the teams warmed up during half time, Brian approached Roberts. She was unhappy. The conversation wasn’t heated exactly, but it was insistent. The senior midfielder listened to her younger teammate, tried to explain what was breaking down. In the first part of the second half it was those two players who took control of the midfield together, upping the defensive pressure and speeding play. UVA got a tying goal when a UNC defender misplayed a cross and Miller buried the chance.
Then, only five minutes later, Brian conjured more magic. After taking an uncharacteristically poor first touch near the left sideline just past midfield, she recovered, walking out of a tackle away from two defenders, turning inside, and feathering an inch-perfect 40-yard pass over the defenders’ heads into Miller’s stride. The senior forward volleyed the ball off the bounce over the onrushing keeper and UVA was in command, 2-1.
The game was far from over. After a 15 minute stretch where UVA’s midfield controlled every phase, Ohai beat Stith on a counter and leveled things. It finished 2-2 after overtime, and Ohai could have scored four goals at least. Still, there were positives for UVA. The control they showed after their second goal is what kills opponents and makes great teams.
Ohai’s success at the next level will be determined by how well she can play when she is not the fastest person on the field, on how many chances she buries, not how many she creates.
For Brian, the challenge is always the same: How can she plug into the rhythm of the game and control it from end to end? To a certain extent, she relies on her teammates. The better they are, the better she will be. The more times she touches the ball, the more she will affect the game.
Swanson’s job is to make that easier for her, so the team can reach another level. The highest level. He’s seen it happen before–in Japan, just a few weeks ago. When he and Brian beat the world.
“We trained very hard for that, but we were learning right along with the tournament as well,” Swanson said. “I think that’s what this team needs to do now. We have to continue to grow now that Morgan’s back. We’ve got to get her back in and integrated.”