First road loss for Utah Royals in 2-0 loss in Portland

Coming into this match, the Utah Royals looked pretty impressive for stretches of the first half. They went into it with a lot of strength and got some gorgeous shots. If you look at the first half of this game just by the numbers, 5 shots for each team, 50% possession for each team, and about 75% passing accuracy, you wouldn’t guess Portland was up two goals.

Unfortunately, taking mistakes in the back and turning them into goals, Portland capitalized. The Royals may have been dominant and good with the ball for as long as they wanted, there were at least two mistakes in the first half, and that was the difference between these two teams going into the halftime break.

The goal scorers were Christine Sinclair, who scored in the 18th minute and Lindsey Horan, who score in the 39th minute. These goals seemed to be caused by a miscommunication along the backline. Nevertheless, going into the second half the Royals had a big mountain to overcome.

The second half eventually got a little chippy with a yellow card handed to Lindsey Horan in the 67’ minute for kicking away a dead ball, followed shortly by a yellow handed to URFC player Rachel Corsie. Corsie’s yellow was handed out for a shove to Thorns player Meghan Klingenberg. From that point on, both teams were just frustrated and you could tell they were incredibly tired.

In the end, the Royals were unable to find a goal or any point in this one. This being just their second ever loss, the Royals will surely need to bounce back next week when they take on Sky Blue FC on June 2.