Denise O'Sullivan

Other than all that, nothing too major going on with Gotham.

At least O'Sullivan, Lavelle, and Talia Summer survived some international duty.

Summer actually notched a hat trick, so good for her.

The offense...

She was going at it with Carter early in that one.

And I think with all these players getting mixed up for Gotham and so much turnover in this starting rotation right now, it seemed like there was just a little bit of miscommunication there.

And I really noticed that when it came to Wrighton and O'Sullivan, because O'Sullivan is kind of tasked with pushing on to the left attacking midside with Gotham on the ball.

And it seemed like Wrighton and Herr were just in the same spot multiple times to open this game up, almost tripping over each other.

And Gotham, to their credit, even a little bit better than the US Women's National Team, actually created a functioning midfield for that role for Lavelle, not only in the width provided, they do a really good job of playing to their width, but they also put a two defensive midfielder system behind a player like Lavelle, which is sometimes held by Jalen Howell and Savannah McCaskill.

This week, it was Howell and Denise O'Sullivan.

These are two, I mean, Gotham has developed some of the best defensive midfield play in the entire league.

I think that's a huge part of their defense being as efficient as it is.

Katie McCabe missed the first leg due to suspension.

We saw Denise O'Sullivan return for that second game as well, continuing her record of scoring in cork and in front of our home crowd and it does set us up for the the second round against poland a team that we've good record against of the nine games that we've played them we've won five there's been one draw and three losses play them as recently as april uh three two win in poland was followed up with a one little win at home so I did think that they would find this tough against Belgium.

That's first leg in Belgium, but a 3-2 win at home meant that the game went to penalties with Poland winning 4-3.

Surprisingly enough, Barcelona's Ewa Pajor missed for the Polish after scoring twice in the game in normal time and in extra time.

So yeah, that's how I'll start as introducing myself.

I'm a, Former collegiate goalkeeper, obviously from England, but moved here at 18.

So I realized I'm getting to the stage where I nearly have spent half of my life in the U.S., which makes me feel really old, but also very proud to be in the United States as I love it.

I work as a play-by-play commentator now, mainly for Apple TV, for Major League Soccer, but also with the NWSL feeds.