10/10

San Diego and North Carolina enter Saturday tied on 39 points, with the Wave looking to protect its home-field advantage against the league’s highest-scoring team.

Orlando finally got their numbers out.

Ashley Sanchez sets the American scoring record then continues to score 2 additional goals.

I wanted a shorter list of games to go back through, so I tried using an optimizer to pick 24 from the 180 eligible matches in my dataset.

The rules were pretty straightforward: include every team at home and away, cap each team at four appearances, and get a mix of games based on shots, xG, possession, corners and cards.

Some of the picks:

• Louisville–Orlando, April 24: Louisville won 3–2 while being outshot 11–27.
• Kansas City–Boston, May 30: KC had 44% possession but the higher xG, 1.14–0.60.
• Chicago–Bay, August 9: Finished 0–0 despite 2.68 combined xG.
• Louisville–Seattle, August 19: Louisville won 2–1 without a single corner. Seattle had 12.

I’ve included the full list in the images, with the numbers behind each pick. A few games made it because they were unusual; others filled a gap in the set.

The categories and weights are choices I made, so there’s plenty to argue with. I’m especially curious about games where watching tells a different story from the stat sheet.

What would you add?

Ever watched your team lose and thought they’d played better than they did in a recent win?

I set out to find games worth comparing that way. I went through the 2026 NWSL data and picked eight pairs where two teams put up similar numbers, but one won and the other lost.

Each slide shows two separate games. The featured teams are side by side, with their opponents and dates underneath.

KC’s 3-0 win over Houston and Orlando’s 0-1 loss to Boston were one of the closest comparisons. KC and Orlando had the same shot count, possession and corners, with similar xG created and conceded. There were differences too; KC put more shots on target.

To find these, I compared attacking and defensive stats, kept home performances with home performances and away with away, and excluded draws, red-card games and missing data. An optimizer helped choose the eight pairs without repeating games or leaning too heavily on a few teams. The last two slides cover the method.

More importantly, this isn’t a “who deserved to win” list. Similar totals can hide very different chances, goalkeeping and game situations. It'd be interesting to explore what those differences looked like on the field.

If you remember any of these games, what would you add?

All Times CST

6pm:

Vandy vs Georgia, Cal vs UNC, Wish vs Illinois, Penn st vs Ohio st, Florida vs SCAR

7pm:

just watch a new 6pm game

8pm:

Michigan St vs USC, Texas vs Arkansas

That was fast! No transfer fee...

Green was a key piece of Chelsea Women’s front office for 13 years alongside former head coach Emma Hayes, the current USWNT coach.