Denver Summit FC's Lead Problem: How Boston Legacy Got Their First Franchise Win

Kate Hanson: Welcome back to the 5280 pitch women's soccer at altitude. I'm Kate Hanson Sigh. Man, what a heartbreaker. I didn't think things could get any worse than the way they did at the San Diego game. expansion team woes, friends. Expansion team woes. And here's what I want to start with. not the score, not the goals. I wanna start with what actually matters. Denver Summit has a structural problem with leads. And on Sunday afternoon, in Boston, ⁓ another expansion team that had not won a ⁓ game. And their entire franchise history, well... ⁓

Katie: I think the game management piece is the bit that we've got to learn and we've got to learn it quick, right? Because with 2-0 up, 2-1 up and we're not picking up points. So we have to learn lessons and... ⁓

Kate Hanson: That structural problem cost them three points for the second match in a row. Same script, different opponent. led 2-0 at halftime and ended up losing 2-3. Boston, Denver led

Katie: The results are definitely testing us at the moment.

Kate Hanson: two to one in the 77th minute. I thought we had made it past that weird 16 minute hiccup that we saw in the San Diego game, but at the 77th minute, everything changed. Denver ended up walking away with a three, two loss. they had two goals scored on them in four minutes ⁓ to stoppage time and

speaker-1: We're being ⁓ This is a challenging time for for our team ⁓ and you know we've played a lot of games on the road already this season and. We're doing enough to win games and I that's what the most frustrating thing is. It's one if you're getting played off the pitch and we're getting dominated in. ⁓ 90 minutes, but that's surely not the case. We're doing enough, creating enough opportunities, but you know, if we don't keep the ball out of our net and put it in theirs, then you don't win games. So, you know, it's, it's a difficult time. It's definitely frustrating. but this isn't a time where, where we fold, have to rise to the challenge. We have to get back on the training pitch next week, next week, because it only gets more difficult from here,

Katie: Yeah, I think we've got to figure that out. I think we've seen periods of games and longer periods of games, especially Seattle and on the road where we've been good with the ball and we've got to figure out as a staff why we're so sort of ⁓ patchy in our possession. And so we're oscillating from being a good team one week to a team with no control. For me, we looked like a team that was a bit tight today and we looked like a team that was not really at the freedom and the freshness. Like I say, they played Wednesday, we didn't. So ⁓

Kate Hanson: we're just letting things away when we shouldn't. Boston scored in the 90th and the 95th minute. ⁓ We had this game, we it. We had the game, we're gonna talk all about what went right, what went wrong, ⁓ and ⁓ what ⁓ we look the Summit to do to... ⁓

Katie: We have to figure that out and have to find out why because we knew Boston were going to be free today. think when you consistently lose, it is painful, but it gives you a freedom. It gives you a freedom to just go play. And that's why they played all the way through, right? And we will get that, but we don't want to get it through the results that we're having. So it's painful. it's, you know, for us, ⁓ it is unacceptable. It's unacceptable, but it's, we've got to, as a group, we've got to come together in these moments and we've got to make sure that I said after the

Kate Hanson: rebound after not one but two heartbreakers in the span of a week. So that's the conversation today. Yeah, we're not going to do a beat by beat recap of this match. I feel like that would break all of our hearts a little bit too much. We will talk about the goals. Yasmine Ryan's debut goal as a Summit player, Tosh Flint's third screamer of the season, but

speaker-0: I can't really remember it. People are just saying it's a banger of a goal but to be honest can't really remember when you come away from a 3-2 loss. That goal doesn't really count at end of the day. It's not even one that adds to the tally. I would rather contribute to goals and not even get a goal and get three points instead really. But maybe I just seen the opportunity that the left side of the goal was on and just went for it and went in.

Kate Hanson: We're just going talk about them as evidence that we do have things that are working. We do have things that are clicking.

Katie: the last game, the direction that you take out of these moments is the difference between the progress you make and the sort of, you know, how quickly we're going to get there. But these, for sure, these are powerful moments in the progression of us, but they're very, very painful.

Kate Hanson: Evidence of what is not structurally broken. Because here's the truth, Denver, Denver is not playing badly. They're not getting embarrassed. Their fundamentals, goalkeeping, defensive shape, individual quality on the counter, those are all largely intact. What's broken is more subtle than that. It is a question about how this team plays with the lead. what Cushing system actually asks of this squad in the final 15 minutes, and whether the personnel currently on the roster can execute that ask. It's really interesting because on social, there's been in all the forums, there's been a lot of comments about what needs to happen in order to get this team to finish a game. We're getting the lead. How can we finish? And one person said, well, Lindsay Heap's arrival will help us finish. It's a leadership problem. But we'll talk all about that. I'm curious on your guys' thoughts. Let me know. ⁓ know, comment on the social posts. Send me a DM. I'm curious to see what you guys think on it. But we'll break down everything in today's episode because it needs to be discussed. So let's. start with the shot count. Because the shot count is where the analytical case opens up. Boston had 19 shots, eight on target. Denver had nine, three on target. Boston had 62 % of the possession, four corners to Denver Summits one. And remember, this is a Boston team that came into this match with one point on the season and zero wins. This is a Boston team that took 27 shots against Chicago a couple weeks ago, leading the entire league in a single match. And they lost. They are a team built to generate volume and they're still figuring out how to convert. Now look at Denver's match against San Diego and Boston back to back. Two games, Denver's combined shot count about 16. Their opponents combined shot count north of 35. Denver is being outshot by more than two to one in matches where they have led. And that tells you something fundamentally about how this team is structured. Denver a counter-attacking team. They're not a possession team, we're learning. ⁓ I guess never were really going to be a possession team this year. And frankly, given the personnel in the timeline of this build, that was the right call. ⁓ They were to be a hard to break down opportunistic in transition, ruthless when chances arrive team. That's Yasmin Ryan, that's Olivia Thomas, Tosh Flint. That's what they were brought in here to execute. And that's why Abby Smith and Kurtz and Carson Pickett ⁓ anchoring. And on the counter, this team is genuinely good. Ryan's goal in the 18th minute, Flint plays it through her, Ryan dribbles into space, beats her defender, rips a right footed shot from the left side that finishes top corner. That's not a lucky shot. That is a designed action executed at top professional NWSL speed. That is a system working and congrats to Yes Ryan on getting her first goal as a Denver Summit player. Flint's goal in the 77th minute is even more revealing. Olivia Thomas had been on the field for 10 minutes. 10. Cushing brings her on in the 66th minute and within 10 minutes, she's pinging the ball into the channel. Flint takes it in full stride, takes a one touch to settle and absolutely buries it far post. ⁓ was such a pretty clean shot and the movement was clean, the technique is clean, that whole system was clean. So here's the question. If the system is producing those moments and against Boston, moments produce two goals and three quality looks at goal. Why is Denver still losing? The answer is that the same structural choices that make Denver dangerous on the counter are making them extremely fragile when they need to manage a game. You cannot be a low block transition first team for 90 minutes against a team taking 19 shots at you. Mathematically, the shots are going to start going in. Boston's expected goal output across the entire afternoon was huge. Denver got two goals on three real chances. that kind of finishing efficiency is exhilarating and it is also extremely difficult to sustain over the course of a 90 minute match, much less a 26 game season. This is ⁓ the bind. that Cushing is in. The system is producing wins moments. is not yet producing wins of matches. So let's get into the specific mechanism because I think this is where the diagnosis gets clear. When Denver takes a lead in the second half, they don't do what a top of the table team does. ⁓ A of the table team, think San Diego, They keep the ball. They make you chase, they take the air out of the building. Denver has not been doing that. Denver compresses, they drop their line, invite the opponent forward. They ask the opponent to break them down rather than trying to break the opponent's confidence by retaining possession. And the reason that Denver compresses is not because Cushing is a bad coach, he is a phenomenal coach, it's because the personnel that would let them keep the ball, particularly in the midfield, is not currently on the roster. So look at the midfield three on Sunday. We Delaney Sheehan. Yuna, Devon Lynch. And Yass was playing a mid, but but those were our midfield. Those were our midfielders. Those are box-to-box players. Lynch, she's ⁓ been doing great. She has some of the most minutes ⁓ as rookie in the NWSL so far this year, but she's rookie and she is... still catching up to the speed of the game. She started every game. Sheehan is doing work in the middle. is winning a job in the front three, ⁓ she's not a sit and circulate the ball for three minutes while we kill a game type of player. None of them are. And that's not a criticism of those players ⁓ ⁓ an observation about the shape of the roster Denver was able to assemble in expansion year one, which is why the July arrival of Lindsay Heaps is the most important date on Denver's calendar between now and the back half of the season. Heaps is a tempo controlling, possession securing, slow it down midfielder. She is going to be starting every game. ⁓ If she comes off the game, I would assume it's because we have a massive lead. But that player, ⁓ does not currently exist on this roster. So when Cushing needs to manage a game, he can't ask his midfield to manage it through possession. He has to ask his back line to manage it through structure. And his back line is now being asked to do a job that no back line in any league can sustain over the long haul. 19 shots, Boston had 19 shots, eight on target. Five of those eight required Abby Smith to make actual world-class saves. The save on the goal line and the opening minutes, the push away Kanyos header. She single-handedly extended Denver's structural model past its breaking point for 85 minutes. And eventually the structural model broke. And here's the thing about dynamic. Cushing himself in the post game named exactly what was happening. He was asked why Denver looks like a team in control one week and a team with no control the next. his answer was actually pretty striking because he turned it around and used Boston as the example. He said the problem is Denver's playing tight while Boston having dropped points midweek was playing free. So just listen to how he framed it. So that's the head coach saying in his own words that an expansion team with one point on the season was playing freer than his own team. And that's not a criticism, that's not a complaint, that is a diagnosis. The pressure of expectations on a Denver squad that came in with such high expectations. Playoffs is the goal for this team. They've sold 14,000 season tickets that had US women's national team media at preseason scrimmages that had the US women's national team coach attending games. That pressure manifests as tightness, as tentativeness, as compactness when the moment calls for confidence on the ball. And when a tight team meets a free team in the final 15 minutes of a tied match, the free team usually wins. There's also a marking concern that is worth flagging. Burgundy waves, Catherine Ammon wrote about it in detail this week and her observation is really sharp. The goals Denver has conceded this season have not been goals of overwhelming opposition quality. They've been goals of marking errors. So Leah Godfrey getting behind Lynch and Sonnis and the comeback against San Diego. ⁓ Sonnis losing track of Dedena the goal sequence. And on Sunday, Traore, Boston substitute, plays in the gap between Denver centerbacks in the 90th minute, shields off Gatino with her body and finishes in front of Smith. Different match, different opponent, same mistake. And when you're a low block, the margin for individual error is zero. You don't have midfielders pressing high to recover the ball. You don't have a possession structure to relieve pressure. The entire system depends on every defender winning every duel and tracking every runner. That is not a sustainable ask, especially in the final 15 minutes when the legs are gone. You've already burned your defensive subs and we used a lot of subs on Sunday. We saw some players take the field that I've been dying to see. Natalie Means took the field. had Olivia Thomas come on, Ali Brazer come on. There was a lot of players that came on that I've been asking to see. And it's really frustrating that when they came on, things kind of fell apart. So the structural problem is, it's not just one thing. It's two things stacked on top of each other. Denver doesn't have a midfield that can keep the ball, so they have to compact. Denver doesn't have the depth to rotate their back line late. So the legs that have been defending for 75 minutes are being asked to defend the most dangerous 15 minutes of the match. And every individual error in that final stretch is now a goal because there is no system around the individuals to clean up. And this isn't about effort. I mean, the team is trying. It's not. Janine Sanchez is captaining a team in transition and pouring herself into every single match. Again, Burgundy Wave, if you guys don't read Burgundy Wave, please go check them out. They're writing some great content about your Denver Summit. But the Burgundy Wave concern about Janine Saunders' marking, and let's be clear, is not about her commitment. It is about the cumulative exhaustion of being asked to do a job nobody else on the field can do for her in those late stages. And I wanna talk about Cushing a little bit more, because if the system is... constraining the team. The substitution patterns are revealing how Cushing himself is reading the game. His choices on Sunday tell you a lot about what he believes and where the limits of his belief currently are. So in the 57th minute, Cushing brings on Aoki and Emma Reagan for Yuna and Sheehan. Standard rotation, fresh legs in the 66th minute with Denver still tied 1-1. He makes a bigger move. He pulls Yaz Ryan and Carson Pickett, his goal scorer and his most experienced left wing back. And he brings on Olivia Thomas and Allie Brazer, two attackers. He was pushing to extend the lead and that move worked. 11 minutes later, Olivia Thomas assists Tosh Flint with the go ahead goal. That decision at the time looks brilliant. right? But here's the thing about the substitution that nobody is talking about. Cushing burned his defensive depth at the 66th minute mark in pursuit of a lead he hadn't yet earned. By the time Denver took the lead in the 77th minute, Cushing had Brazier on the field in attack, Thomas in attack, and his bench for the final 15 minutes was effectively just Natalie Means. coming in from Melissa Kessler in the 76th minute. He had no fresh legs to put into the back line. He had no defensive sub to specifically protect a lead. Compare that to what Boston did with their bench. Taylor brought in Carabali on the 55th minute, a defender who she repurposed into a more advanced role. She brought on Traore in the 71st. She brought on Ricketts. She brought on Gambone. Four substitutions, all of them tilting Boston more aggressive, more vertical, more dangerous as the game wore on. Cushing made his pivot in the 66. Patel was still making hers in the 81st. That is a very meaningful difference. That's the kind of game management margin that decides 3-2 results in stoppage time. Now, in fairness to Cushing, he was asked about this directly in the postgame, and his answer was honest in a way I genuinely respect. Cushing is so honest with the media. I absolutely love it. But here's what he said. Listen to how he framed this lesson. That's the head coach diagnosing exactly what we're diagnosing right now. Game management with 2-0 leads and 2-1 leads. He sees it. He is not in denial. The question is whether the personnel allow him to execute the fix in real time or whether the fix has to wait for reinforcements. I do think that there's a smaller tactical conversation to have here too with Gaetano back from her boot and crutches. Cushing now has flexibility he didn't have for the last few weeks. Gaetano. She came on as a sub last week against San Diego, against Boston. She started, which is a positive, but the Kurtz, Gaetano, Sonnis, Pickett, Spine isn't, it's not gelling yet. But it's just the chemistry of the back line that is they're trying to play through figuring out how each other play. And chemistry takes time. In expansion year one, unfortunately, time is not something Denver has the luxury of. All right, now before we close, I do want to be clear about something because I've spent 20 minutes telling you what's broken. ⁓ But that's only half the picture. This is not a complete doom and gloom episode. I want to talk about what Denver's doing well, really well, because it's really important. Abby Smith is full stop playing like one of the top three goalkeepers in the NWSL right now. The numbers do not lie. She came into Sunday tied for the league lead and saves. Her 250th career save came this She has played every single minute of every single Denver Summit match this year. When the structural problem we just spent the last part of the episode diagnosing finally breaks, it is breaking in front of one of the best goalkeepers in the league. Take Smith out of this team and Denver is not one three and three. Denver is something significantly worse. And Carson Pickett, she crossed the 15,000 NWSL ⁓ minute mark in the ⁓ 23rd minute of this match. The ⁓ 19th player in league history to that milestone. A week after being named Lauren Holliday Impact Award nominee, she is a culture anchor for this team. That's the kind of veteran presence that makes year three Denver Summit FC look fundamentally than a year one Denver Summit FC. Tosh Flint has been such a joy for this club. She has scored three goals this season from situations where the chance fell to her foot exactly. I mean, she is ⁓ an elite finisher and I am so excited to see her thriving right now in the Maohai City. and I think this is a moment ⁓ I to share because it's one of most human things anybody has said about the post-K. When Tosh was asked about her goal, she basically couldn't talk about it. Here, take a listen. That's a player who scored what was thought to be the game winner in the 77th minute. And she walked off the field unable to even remember what it looked like because the result hurt that much. That is the temperature of this locker room right now. They're not making excuses. They're not deflecting. They are devastated about not converting these ⁓ points. And honestly, that's the exact response you want to have from your group. The day the locker room shrugs off a loss like Sundays is the day you have a real problem. Right now, they're hurting because they care. And here's what I'll bring up. Finally, I had Yaz Ryan to score her first summit goal before kickoff. Yes, so I have been doing live pre-game shows if you haven't watched. Be sure to tune in because I'm doing pre-game breaking down what we can watch for, announcing the starting 11 and score predictions, with you one-on-one. So be sure to tune in to those live pre-game shows. But ⁓ on the pre-game show, ⁓ I said Yaz was gonna score her summit goal. And she got it in the 18th minute. 11 shots into her summit career. The breakthrough finally came. I'm so glad we have somebody else other than Tosh Flint and Cussler scoring some goals for us. It was the exact kind of finish that Yaz has been desperate to produce. A right-footed strike from the left wing, cutting it in on her stronger foot, top corner. ⁓ That is who... Yasmeen Ryan is and that's why she's here. for the rest of the season, that's a player I expect to be a regular goal scorer. So here's the case for patients. Denver has elite goalkeeping, elite veteran ⁓ leadership, a finisher in Flint Kessler who are scoring in flashes and will score more as the system creates more for them. breakout candidate in Ryan who finally got a goal added to her stat sheet. A rookie in Olivia Thomas, who has already produced in short stints off of the bench. And a midfield reinforcement in Lindsay Heaps arriving in just a few months who plugs the single biggest tactical hole on the roster. We're six matches in. We're ⁓ 12th in the table. wish we were higher. Bottom of the table is Boston still. They ⁓ just won. Really wish we could have gotten that expansion team duel. But the point is Denver is not in any kind of crisis position. Right now, they're in a messy middle. trying to figure things out in a very long season where eight of the league's 14 teams are trying to find consistency. But messy middle is also where seasons get decided. Patience and accountability are not mutually exclusive. Cushing knows that. Sonnis knows that. Both of them use the word unacceptable post game describe these back to back heartbreaking losses that They shouldn't have happened. was, they are not pretending that this is fine. They're naming it. They're taking this next week before heading to Houston to take on the dash to fix it. So Denver summit has built a team that is excellent on the counter, anchored by world-class goalkeeping and structurally vulnerable ⁓ in matches because the midfield personnel needed to retain possession with the lead and that that midfielders not on the roster yet. It's not a coaching failure, it's not an effort failure, it's just the predictable consequence of expansion year one with a roster that was assembled in a very compressed window. The fix is partially in the building. Again, back gives Cushing more options at the back. The fix is partially on the way. Lindsay Heaps ⁓ coming And the fix is also partially internal. Individual marking has to tighten. Communication. Man, leaving St. George all alone right in the middle of the field in extra time, that has to get fixed. And that helps by ⁓ how your players play a game, in a tight game. ⁓ And the substitution patterns. This where being a substitute, have to know, you have to be an even communicator ⁓ because you're coming into the game where some routines and habits have already been formed ⁓ with the starters. We have to protect a 15 minutes of the game, but it's been 15 minutes in two games in a row where we have collapsed. And what I'm watching for in this next match is not whether Denver wins. I mean, of course I want Denver to win, but I'm watching whether they hold the lead, whether the late game shape is going to change, whether Cushing reserves a defensive sub for the 75th minute instead of burning everything on attack. Whether the back line in the final 10 minutes looks like a back line that has been organized for late game protection rather than a back line that has been on the field for 90 minutes, hoping the whistle blows. Folks, the talent is here. The system has flashes of excellence, of being a top team. The leadership on this is real. What has to come next? is the discipline of finishing matches the way the best teams in this league finish matches. Allie Brazier came on, she had a number of opportunities. If she can keep getting those chances, she just needs to finish. We're getting the opportunities, we're getting the chances, we have to just gel as a team. And Janine Sonnis was asked in the postgame about the message in the locker room after these back-to-back heartbreaks. Her answer was the perfect place to leave this. Listen. We're being tested. We have to rise to the challenge. That's your captain, Denver. That's the message. And how this team responds in the next few weeks, before June, when we have that big, long international break again, it's going to tell us what year one of Denver Summit FC actually is. We'll see what they do. All right, we're to have another pregame show for you before the Houston-Denver Summit game this weekend. If you like this episode, you know what to do. 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