Emily Sams

They wanna be a part of a, a franchise that sits in a certain place.

Um, Emily Sams, I, I think as well, trying to get into the national team at a club that had a lot of center backs, like looking for a specific role, going out to Angel City.

And then some of it's lifestyle.

Some people wanna move and live other places and, and, and things like that.

Yeah, I just would've given, uh, Chicago a little less of a grade.

Yeah, I think that's fair.

Um, and then the last one is Emily Sams, who moved from Orlando to, uh, Angel City.

We've talked about this a couple times.

And it feels wild to look through and just be like, oh, wow, this is actually just a really good group of players.

We didn't get to the fact that Emily Sams is no longer playing silly defense and Sarah Gordon has been playing great defense the whole way.

Yeah.

Gordon, like, people say that she deserves a national team call-up, and I'm not sure I disagree.

On Orlando they're not winning.

They're not doing very well, and it's because I think they let far too many players leave to expansion teams or to trades with Emily Sams, and now that Seb Hines has left, they're only starting to do well again.

And I mean, Brendan, you're in Orlando, so you have a lot more to potentially say about them.

But, you know, they also have like Marta, and when Marta was hot a couple years ago, you know, that helped get them to a championship.

And we don't have the players in the midfield and the, in, on our defensive lines that are going to keep games close enough that allow us to really succeed with that over the top to our fast technical strikers and win that way.

It's just we don't have the players to be able to do it.

And we saw with Orlando this year when they traded away Emily Sams, who was one of the best defenders in the NWSL-

Yeah

It just wasn't.

necessarily the right fit or whatever in louisville but ari and karina laguerre arena learned from ari is insane and you can see how quickly karina said oh i've got my shot i'm gonna take it and she's fitting the system so well obviously you have sarah gordon and emily sams i mentioned it earlier the center back pairings but like Their push pull of when Sarah charges forward to catch up with somebody so that she dispossesses them further away.

Or when Emily Sams does that and Sarah's there to sweep because she's so fast.

Like they understand each other without having to outwardly communicate.

You don't see the frantic, oh, go that way.

I mean, to shut down people like Trinity Rodman and all of the Spirit's attacking threats is super impressive.

Savvy King, Sarah Gordon, Emily Sams did great.

Evelyn Shores did great.

Um, so I feel like Angel City is just really getting it together.

I also think there are some questions in the back line that could lead to some opportunities.

I think Emily Sams hasn't had quite as strong of a year in LA.

I think Tara Rudd has had a good year in Washington.

But also we've seen those two players kind of struggle to get serious time with the US.

... that we actually have to go.

Well, I remember we had Emily Sams on, and she ended up getting called up.

I think she was, like, an alternate or somebody got hurt-

Yeah