Denver Summit FC's Defense is ELITE. But the Attack Has to Catch Up.

Kate Hanson: Denver Summit just made one of the best teams in the NWSL look scared. And they didn't score a single goal doing it. Welcome back to the 5280 pitch women's soccer at altitude. I'm Kate Hansen. Okay, so Saturday happened. Denver Summit FC, Seattle rain at one Spokane Stadium, zero goals. And I want to tell you something, I walked away from that match a little frustrated at first, but as the night went on and I woke up the next morning, I actually felt genuinely good about what happened and what we saw from this team. In a this team actually correctly sort of way, and that's what we're going to do today because now that we've got games under our belts and a two and a half week break ⁓ before San Diego comes to town ⁓ on April 25th. ⁓ This is the moment to take a real look at what we have. Not just what happened on Saturday, the whole picture. We're going to be breaking down this Seattle game tactically, how Denver neutralized one of the better attacks in this league. We're going to go through all five games from this inaugural season so far, and we're going to have conversation about Ali Brazier because ⁓ She's from the spring, she was the first signing for the summit and she's been on the bench. You're noticing it, I'm noticing it, so we need to talk about it. So let's talk about Saturday. Seattle Rain, they're not playing at Lumen Field right now. And if any of you watched my live pregame show at DNVR I talked about this a lot in the pregame show. ⁓ Quick side note, thank you to everyone who came down for the watch party at DNVR. Thank you to DNVR for letting me come down and do that live pregame show. It was a ton of fun. I'd love to do it again in the future and... We had a couple people from the 14ers on. had my daughters on. had, I mean, it was a great experience. I'd love to do it again. And I talked about it in the live pregame show about what we could expect to see from this Seattle rain team. So they're still playing in Spokane. This is their, this was their third and final game at Spokane because Lumen is being prepared for the FIFA men's world cup this summer. So the rain have essentially been a road team at home, kind of like what the Denver Summit are going to be doing for beginning of our season here. But they've been playing at that Spokane 1 stadium and 3,950 fans were in the building on Saturday night. It's a whole lot less than our 63K that we had here at Empower Field, but it was a surprisingly quiet environment for a team that is used to real crowd noise ⁓ and supporters and in Laura Harvey's group was clicking. They had Jess Fishlock pulling strings in the midfield and if you don't know that name, look her up. ⁓ She is one of the best players in this league and she has been in the for 14 plus years. All. ⁓ with the Seattle rain, which I think is pretty darn cool. this was not a soft opponent. Denver's record going in was one win, one loss, and two draws. They were coming off that huge home opener against Washington And now they're walking into another team's building. Nick Cushing sends out a 4-3-3, Abby Smith and goal. Pickett, Kurtz, and Sonis across the back. Sheehan, Flint and Lynch at the midfield and up top. Ryan on the left, Kossler in the center and Yuna on the right. Remember that front three. Cause we're going to come back to it. So here's what I want you to understand about this team before we go any further. They have allowed three goals in five games. Three. Bay FC, the Orlando Pride, the reigning champions, Gotham, the Washington Spirit, and then they have to go and face Seattle rain. All they've allowed so far this season is three goals. ⁓ That's pretty awesome. They're tied with San Diego Wave for the fewest goals conceded in the entire NWSL right now. For an expansion team in year one, that is not luck. That is a system and Saturday showed exactly how that system works. It starts with our back four, Carson Pickett and Kaylee Kurtz as those center backs. I want to talk about Kurtz specifically because I don't think that she's getting enough credit in these conversations. Going through the match coverage from Seattle carefully. There is a moment in the first half Mercado gets look at goal and Kurtz, ⁓ she read shot perfectly. She takes away the back post angle, gets her feet planted. woman not just athletic. She has phenomenal positioning, and that is hours of work on the field that turn into instinct in a real game. And Pickett it alongside her two-time NWSL best 11, six teams in this league. She's been around for a while. She has seen everything, and she is very steady. She is a voice back there and that partnership looks more established than five games together really should allow. Out wide, Megan Reed and Jeanine Sonis and Sonis, we have to talk about Sonis, she is the captain from Highland Ranch and she was absolutely everywhere on Saturday. 90 touches, yes you heard that right, nine zero 90. She nearly scored twice clipped the crossbar early and had a header in the 72nd minute that went straight at Dickey. She was creating chaos the left back. And here's the tactical piece that I find fascinating. Sonis functions like a second midfielder when Denver has possession. ⁓ pushes ⁓ real, real high. She creates overloads on Seattle's right side. She makes them ⁓ decisions that they don't want to make. And then, super important, she gets back. She recovers that discipline is what makes it work. You can only play aggressively from a defensive position if your center backs are solid enough that you trust leaving all that space behind you. Pick it in Kurtz, give her that trust. And then there's Abby Smith. I know I feel like I've been talking about her every episode, but I'm gonna talk about her again because she made. three really big saves on Saturday and one of them is going to live in my head for a while. Mercado gets clean on goal in the first half, fires in the lower left corner ⁓ and Smith kick it. Her body just does it below the level of conscious That is a goalkeeper operating on an elite level 23 Her goals against average is 0.6. The only keeper of her right now is Leah Freeman of San Diego who has played one fewer game and the NWSL named Smith to the best 11 for the month of March. A first year expansion team goalkeeper ⁓ on the league's monthly best 11. That ⁓ is incredible. But here is what I want to say about Smith that goes beyond just her many, many highlights. She's not just making saves in isolation. She is making the saves defensive set her up to make. The structure in front of her is compact and organized. And truly dangerous chances are rare because of how the team defends as a unit. When Smith does have to act, it's from a position that's been somewhat contained already. That's not an accident. It is a system working. The midfield did its part on Saturday too. Sheehan, Flint and Lynch were tasked with disrupting Seattle's buildup play. Seattle wanted to find Fishlock on the turn and wanted to run at Denver with pace on the counter, and Denver's midfield mostly said no. You know, and she's listed as a midfielder, but she's been playing right forward in this 433, which again we will get to the broadcast noted her movement pulling Seattle shape wide, creating options, baiting the defense into decisions. That is intelligent soccer from a 21 year old. That's not just running around and hoping to find space or hoping something happens. The results from all this Denver won the statistical battle. on Saturday, 53 % possession, more shots than Seattle, 18 attempts, the most they've had in any game this season. They were the more active team in the second half by a significant margin. They just couldn't put it in the back of the net. And that is the honest thing we have to keep naming because Seattle's goalkeeper, the US women's national team keeper, Claudia Dickey, who just. By the way, just set the Reigns all-time saves record, passing Hope Solo with 190 career saves. was but Denver also missed chances that they should have converted. Kossler few yards out in the 29th, Pickett's best opportunity in the 67th, Sonis' header in the 72nd, going straight into Dickey's hands. And Nick Cushing said it after the game, they need to create bigger chances. and be more ruthless. And Megan Reed, she said it even more directly, teams with good structures make it harder. She'll give Seattle that, but it shouldn't have stopped them from putting at least one in the back of the net. This team knows what the problem is. I love how honest Reed was. And I want to talk about Ali Brazier for a minute, because look, the starting lineup card from Saturday, Ryan. Kossler Yuna across the front. And that was the same lineup that we've seen for the game against Washington and the Gotham game. On the bench, Brazier, Bosch, Thomas, Bode, Garcia, Five attacking options, not getting onto the pitch. Look, Hallie Brazier, Colorado Springs native, 29 years old, championships on her resume from Australia and the NWSL. She played at zero minutes on Saturday, and when you look at her game log for the season, the picture paints it pretty clear. Game one at Bay, she plays 63 minutes. That's a real run. She's clearly in the starting 11, comes Then 15 minutes Orlando, 22 minutes at Gotham, ⁓ six minutes at the home at Washington, and then Saturday, nothing. The minutes have been shrinking steadily, game by game, until they disappeared entirely. And here's what I think is happening, and it's a tactical answer, not a character one. Yuna is listed as a midfielder, but she is playing right forward in Cushing's 4-3-3. ⁓ She's playing Ali Brazier's position. They are competing for the same spot the pitch. And Cushing has clearly decided that right now in this system, Yuna gives him something specific. The dynamic running, the ability to pull Seattle's defensive shape wide, then drive centrally. The broadcast specifically noted that movement. Yuna peeling out, creating an option, baiting the defense. That is a very particular tactical function and Yuna is doing it well. She's 21 years old and she's holding her own in an NWSL starting lineup. Does that mean that Brazler's done? I don't think so. The season is long. We're just getting started. Rotation becomes necessary. Kossler cannot play every single minute and when Lindsey Heaps arrives in June, the shape of this team's midfield entirely. There may be a role that fits Brazier better then. But right now, in April, in this specific 4-3-3, Yuna is winning that battle. What I will say is this, and I feel strongly about it, Cushing should find Brazier real minutes. Not six minutes at the end of a 0-0 game. She's a professional soccer player with a legitimate resume. When you are chasing a goal in the second half of a tight game, zero minutes for a forward with her experience is very hard to explain. I don't have every piece of information. There may be things happening in training that I'm not aware of, but the tactical picture explains the bench roll. The zero minutes in Spokane is a harder call to understand. ⁓ So. Let's go back to the beginning because we have a little bit of a break now because of national team play. We have five goals under our belt. Game one, March 14th at Bay, we lost one-two. This is the very first game in clubs history, road game in California against a team in its third year. Denver scored first, the first goal in Denver Summit FC history, and then Bay found two. But they competed, especially for a team that only had 10 players for the majority of the match. They didn't look like a team that didn't belong. They looked like a team that was figuring things out, which is exactly... what they were there. If there's a brand new team or a team that's, it's the first game of the season. is okay for them to look the way that they looked. Abby Smith has been a beast since that first game. Game two against Orlando, that was a draw one-one. they're the 2024 reigning champs. Barbara Banda, one of the most dangerous forwards on the planet. Denver goes to Florida and draws. I keep coming back to this result because I think it is genuinely underrated in how we talk about the early season. That is a real point against a very legitimate team. Game three, March 25th at Gotham, the reigning 2025 NWSL champs, they win two nothing. That's the first win for this team. And I want to be clear about what Gotham is. They won this entire league in 2023 and in 2025. Denver goes to New Jersey and wins two zip. Clean sheet, three points. That result is the one I'll point to in August when someone asks me if this Denver Summit team belongs. The answer is yes. They went to Gotham and won. That's your answer. Game four, March 28th, home versus. Washington spirit, Trinity Rodman, draw zero zero. This is a complicated one and I'm gonna be honest about it. In Power Field at Mile High, 63,000 fans, the home opener, one of the largest crowds in the history of women's soccer for this country. The atmosphere was incredible and. We scored zero goals. Washington is not an elite team right now. They're organized, they're fine, but they're not Orlando. They're not Gotham. They're not San Diego. And with that crowd at altitude in that moment, with all those people who showed up for the first time, I really feel like we needed to win that game. and that is a result that should stick with this team during the break. Not because a draw is a by any means, ⁓ we still the point, but because it pointed directly at the problem that has followed us ⁓ five of our games. game five, April ⁓ 4th, Seattle rain, draw zero. And we just, I just broke it down. Road game most competitive performance of the season, 18 shots, dominated the second half. It was a hard-earned draw. So where does that leave us going forward? We have one win, one loss, and three draws, six points. And here's what the table actually looks like right now. Denver is at six points through five games, same as Washington and Kansas City. ⁓ Utah Royals are of us with seven. The league is genuinely tight, but Denver is right in it. The defensive numbers are remarkable. Three goals allowed tied for the best in the league. Tackle success rate of 58%, efficient, not frantic, defending from a structure. Abby Smith, 23 saves, .6 goals against average. She is crushing it in this league right now. The offensive numbers tell a very different story. four goals in five games, 35 shots, 13 on target. That 37 % shots on target rate is the thing that has to improve. They are getting into positions. They're generating looks. The final touch, the composure in the moment, the ruthlessness in front of goal, that is what these three weeks off need to address because we don't play again until April 25th. San Diego Wave, Dick's Sporting Goods Park, Diego is first in the league right now. They lead the league in total passes, 2,580, which tells you everything you need to know about how they play. They are patient, they possess, they make you work. Silva leads the league in assists. Leah Friedman in goal has the best GAA in the entire league at .5. This is going to test Denver in a completely different way than Seattle did. Seattle wanted to hit off the counter, find moments of individual quality. San Diego is going to try to suffocate you with possession and make your defensive shape hold for 90 minutes. And if Denver's attack doesn't show up, if we're still generating good volume and zero goals at home against the league leader, then we have a different type of conversation to have. Three weeks, get healthy, work on finishing, figure out what this attack looks like when it's clicking, and then go prove it at home. So that is your five game retrospective. That's your Seattle breakdown. Here's where I land on all of it. Denver Summit is a real team. They have a defensive identity that is genuinely elite for year one. They have a goalkeeper who belongs in any best 11 conversation for this league. they have a captain in Janine Sonis. who would make highlights on any roster in the NWSL. They have a coaching staff that clearly knows how to build defensive structure and install it fast. The attacking piece ⁓ is the Kossler was our secret weapon for the first three games and she's not so secret anymore. I had Jordan Angelian a last week and she said it perfectly. She said she's not so secret anymore. People know. how she plays and how to shut her down. They're figuring her out very, very quickly. Those four goals, three of them came from Kossler, one from Tosh Flint. That's it. But it's only April. We have some time off to ⁓ recalibrate, find how to click. Cushing has won major trophies. He knows what this team needs and the schedule ahead will tell us a lot about whether this group can find it. And here's what gives me optimism from the attacking side, even with the numbers being what they are. Look at the volume. 18 shots against Seattle. That is the most Denver has attempted in any game this season. The chances are coming. The movement is improving. Yuna is creating mismatches. Sonis is getting forward making things happen from left back. Ryan, she is dangerous every time she gets the ball into space. The ingredients are there. The problem isn't that Denver can't create. The problem is the final moment. ⁓ decision the box, the composure when a chance arrives, and that is genuinely the hardest thing to coach. But it's also the thing that improves most with repetition, with familiarity, with players learning from each other's runs well enough that when Kossler checks away from her defender, Ryan already knows where she's going. That chemistry, takes time. this team has had five games together. Five. I think we sometimes forget ⁓ how new this all is. These players been together since preseason, yes, but there is a difference between Preseason reps and real competitive matches where every decision has consequences. The trust that turns a good attack into a dangerous one, the kind where a forward makes a run before the ball is even played because she just knows, that's built over months, not weeks. Denver is still in the early stages of building that. Kossler is carrying a lot right now. She is the focal point of this attack every single game. Defenses know it. They are scheming for her specifically. She still found a chance Saturday from a few yards out that Dickey got to. She hit the crossbar in an earlier game. The quality is there, but she needs someone to help take some of that defensive attention away from her. She needs a second option that forces defenders to make a real choice. Do you worry about Kossler or do you worry about the run in behind? That second option hasn't fully emerged yet. Could it be Tosh Flint? Maybe. Will it be Lindsay when she arrives? Ryan has moments, ⁓ real ones. She is dangerous she gets into space and she has shown the ability to manufacture something from nothing, is exactly what Cushing brought her in to do. But consistency... It's still coming. When Heaps gets here, do think that things are going to change in the midfield dramatically. ⁓ Heaps controls the tempo, she finds pockets, ⁓ makes the players around her better. When she walks into that building, the attack gets a completely different engine. But that's not until July. ⁓ now it's April, and Denver has three weeks before San Diego comes to Dix Sporting Goods Park. Three weeks of uninterrupted training time, no travel, no match prep, no recovery cycles, eating into the week, just work. and if Cushing, who has a reputation, he does, ⁓ that he built at Manchester City everything we've seen defensively so far, he is going to use every day of this break to address exactly what we've been talking about, the finishing, the composure. the final third decision making that turns 18 shots into two goals instead of zero. But the defense, that's done. That is established. Three goals allowed in five games does not happen by accident and is not going to fall apart. Abby Smith is not going to suddenly start letting in soft goals. Pickett and Kurtz are not going to lose the organization that they've built. That's part of this team that's real and it's not going anywhere. The attack... just has to catch up and I genuinely believe that it will. That's going to do it for this week's episode of the 5280 pitch. I'll be back plenty of times before the San Diego match. make sure that you are subscribed to the podcast because I do have some more fun player interviews coming up over this break between now and the April 25th game against the Wave. Make sure you're subscribed so you never miss an episode. Spotify, Apple, Podchaser, YouTube, all of it. If you haven't, make sure you're subscribed so you never miss an episode. And if you haven't signed up for the newsletter yet, head over to 5280pitch.com and get on it. You get match previews, stat breakdowns, everything in between the episodes. And then find me on Instagram at 5280pitch. That's where I hang out. am on threads now, which has been fun to play around with. So if you're on threads, follow me over on threads. And this is final reminder, if you're on the newsletter, you do get discounts for the merch. So sign up for the newsletter, check out the merch, all the things. We have one win, one loss, three draws, five games, a lot of season left. I'm Kate Hanson, this has been the 5280 pitch, women's soccer at altitude. I'll see you next time.