by Alyce Collett (17/7/26)
Above: Angelina Anderson (green uniform) in action last weekend against the San Diego Wave. Photo: Angel City Football Club.
There’s plenty of positivity in the Angel City camp at the moment, and this weekend sees them off to the Windy City where they will be looking to beat Chicago for the second time this season.
“I think the mood has been great, as you could expect after a win like that” Interim coach Leif Smerud said about the mood in camp while talking to the media earlier this week.
“It was good to get the points and the way we did it as well, so I think that got translated into a good training week.
“It’s a good atmosphere. Everyone is smiling and happy and ready to go again.”
Although he was not in charge last time Angel City played Chicago, Smerud certainly has plenty of plans to help Angel City take down the Stars for the second time this season.
“Yeah, so it’s a couple of former colleagues and friends of mine coaching them, so I know they will be preparing well this week to play against me, and us” Smerud noted.
“We are focusing mostly on ourselves to be honest. I think if we can recreate the performance and the intensity and attitude that we have, I expect us to do well.
“We will probably have the ball a bit more. Might be a different kind of game to San Diego and Orlando. It will be an away trip, so new challenge, but a lot of opportunity and focus mostly on us.”
One person who was involved the last time these two sides met was goal keeper Angelina Anderson, who joined her coach at this week’s media event.
She confirmed that heading into the game that the mindset is “definitely more of a clean slate” rather than taking much out of the match between the sides earlier in the season, despite how well it went for her and her team mates.
“I think it would be naive of us to go into this game thinking that ‘oh, we’re just going blow them out of the water’” Anderson said.
“We know that they have attacking threats, and if we’re not on our game and if we don’t keep building on what we have been doing these past few weeks, we know how this league goes.
“So we definitely need to show up and be really sharp, really intentional, but I do think if we get a few early goals in the first half like we’ve been doing, that it’ll give us a really good shot to win the game.
“I think the only thing we can take from that four nil win is just how freaking good it feels to dominate a team and how it feels to get a shutout, and use that as some motivation.”
Anderson is in a good run of form since coming back from the mid season break, putting together two shut out performances in a row.
“I’m so proud of these two clean sheets” Anderson said.
“I feel like as a group we have put an emphasis on, like we’ve changed some things, but almost like simplified things a lot.
“Our back line has been playing really well, and then of course there’s going to be breakdowns, and it’s my job to make some saves when there are breakdowns.
“So I feel like it’s just been a cohesive improvement from everybody on the back line of just simplifying things down.
“It seems more calm in the back line. It seems like we’re very aware of our roles, and we have an intensity within that calmness and simple play. So that’s been really good, and it just feels like we’re really in control back there, and I feel like that’s the biggest improvement for us so far.”
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