Orlando Pride finally break into playoff spots with Alex Morgan at the top of her game

Alex Morgan’s only been back in Orlando for seven games, but the Pride’s marquee player is having one of the best seasons of her NWSL career and forming an incredible partnership with Marta.

In 2011, the Western NY Flash drafted a young striker out of California named Alex Morgan. The Flash, Women’s Professional Soccer’s newest expansion team, took Morgan with the first overall pick. By then, Morgan had already started to establish herself as the USWNT’s next big thing, the heir to the throne that Abby Wambach would, surely, soon be vacating.

By the time the Flash scooped up Morgan in January of 2011, she’d already scored two massive goals for the USWNT.

The first, in October of 2010, was an 83rd minute strike to salvage a draw with China in what should have been a meaningless friendly ahead of CONCACAF World Cup qualifying. Morgan’s goal was significant for two reasons. First, it was only Morgan’s third cap with the senior team, and her first international goal. Second, the U.S. hadn’t played well, and down 1-0, the sparsely filled PPL Park had already started to buzz with the possibility that this would be the night the U.S.’s then 47 game home unbeaten streak would be snapped by the time Morgan entered the game in the 71st minute. Her very late goal not only salvaged the draw and kept the streak alive — it would be, coincidentally, broken by China in 2015, at 105 games — it also announced Morgan to the world.

The second goal came little more than a month, and halfway around the world, later. The U.S. had, embarrassingly, crashed out of World Cup qualifying, a loss to Mexico forcing the team to into a two-leg playoff with Italy to determine who’d grab the final World Cup berth. In the first leg, in Padova, Italy, the two teams played 94 minutes of scoreless soccer before Morgan, who’d entered the game in the 86th, found the winner. There was, of course, still another game to play, but returning stateside with a lead was a huge advantage for the U.S., and the goal — the original Alex Morgan stoppage time miracle — instantly became a thing of WoSo legend.

It also made Morgan, still only 21, a superstar overnight. And now she was joining a Flash team that, thanks to WPS’s ever, uh, evolving, roster of teams, also boasted the likes of Marta and Christine Sinclair, who’d both landed in Rochester after their previous team, FC Gold Pride, had closed up shop after winning the 2010 WPS championship.

With a front line of Morgan, Marta and Sinclair, the Flash hardly looked like an expansion team, and predictably, didn’t play like one either. Instead, Western NY’s first year as a fully professional team ended with them lifting a trophy as WPS champions. Sinclair and Marta scored ten goals each that season, and Morgan, who made only 14 appearances due to the World Cup, added four of her own.

A year later, WPS was gone. Marta went Europe, Sinclair returned to Canada and Morgan went to Seattle. Eventually, Sinclair and Morgan would face off on opposite sides in one of the greatest games ever played, the U.S.’s 4-3 win over Canada in the 2012 Olympic semifinal.

In 2013, as the NSWL started, Marta remained in Sweden, but Morgan and Sinclair put the rivalry that Olympic semi had stoked aside, and became teammates again, this time in Portland. Without a major tournament to get in the way of league play, the Thorns, packed with stars, were automatic contenders, and it was Morgan and Sinclair that were expected to lead the way.

Mostly, that’s exactly how things worked out. The Thorns finished the regular season in third, but beat Western NY in the final to the claim the league’s inaugural title. Morgan and Sinclair each scored eight goals on the season, and Portland, with two of the league’s greatest goal scorers, was officially the team to beat.

Neither the Thorns, or Morgan, was able to recapture that magic though. Over the next two seasons, because of a series of bizarre choices from new head coach Paul Riley, who’d taken over for Cindy Parlow Cone following the 2013 season, preparations for the World Cup, and some injury issues, Morgan never was as effective as she’d been her first season in Portland, and the once-dynamic duo of her and Sinclair spent whatever time they were on the field together now looking mostly disconnected.

By the following season, it was all over. Riley went to Western NY, and Morgan, perhaps trying to recreate 2011, headed for another expansion team, this time the Orlando Pride.

Morgan’s first season in Orlando went about as well as her last one in Portland had though, and with only 4 goals in 15 appearances, it was starting to look like the Alex Morgan era might be wrapping up way earlier than anyone expected.

By the time this season started, Morgan had, along with several other high profile USWNT players, left the NWSL. Morgan, like Carli Lloyd, Crystal Dunn and Heather O’Reilly, went to Europe, though unlike Lloyd, who was on loan to Manchester City, Dunn and HAO, who all went to England to play in the FAWSL, Morgan went to France, joining Olympique Lyon. With OL, Morgan won both a Champions League title and the Feminine Division 1.

Morgan did eventually return to the U.S., rejoining the Pride in late June. But the team she returned to was one still struggling to find its way in an increasingly competitive league.

With Morgan in Europe and Ashlyn Harris injured, the Pride spent the early part of this season struggling to do anything any better than they had as an expansion team. Through the first few weeks, Orlando looked, at times, straight up dysfunctional. And then the Pride made the one big move they hoped would change everything. In mid-April, Orlando signed Marta.

Photo by Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images

At first, the Pride didn't look good, even with one of the world's best players now donning purple. Marta was surely an improvement, but offense was hardly Orlando's biggest problem, and with a disjointed midfield and shaky defense behind her, things initially looked like they weren't going to get much better.

Slowly though, that started to change. Probably, it’s in part because that's just what happens as a season goes on, a team starts to jell, things come together. Some of it though was that the addition of Marta made everyone around her somehow play better, too.

Still, even as Orlando started to slowly climb the table, there was a feeling that one other big piece was still missing, and that was Morgan.

There was a chance that combining Marta and Morgan would send the Pride's offense back down into some strange too many cooks scoring drought the way combining Sinclair and Morgan had in Portland, but there was also a chance that things would go the other way, too, like they had back in Western NY.

After missing two games due to injury, Morgan made her 2017 NWSL debut on July 1st, coming in as a second half sub in a 1-0 loss to Chicago. While the Red Stars may have spoiled Morgan’s return, since then, Orlando’s become one of the league's hottest teams, Tom Sermanni indeed capturing only the good parts of combining two star strikers. With Morgan, Orlando finally looks like a complete team, neither relying too much on Marta or Morgan, but also more comfortable with the knowledge that yeah, these are some pretty good offensive options.

Since returning to Orlando, Morgan, individually, has looked more like her old self too. She's registered 5 goals and 2 assists in seven games, including a brace on Saturday in the Pride's 5-0 win over Sky Blue (Marta also scored twice and Dani Weatherholt scored the other). Morgan (and Marta) also scored in the Pride’s 3-0 win over Washington on Tuesday.

Orlando hasn’t been perfect since Morgan returned, but in the seven games she’s appeared in so far this season, they’ve lost only twice, once in her first of the season and the other, also to Chicago, on July 22nd. Still, it’s a huge improvement from the early part of the season, when the Pride spent a lot of time hanging out near the bottom of the table, with just five wins in the 14 games pre-Morgan’s return.

On Saturday, Morgan’s first goal, which came just four minutes in, was the epitome of what happens when you’ve got two star strikers who are playing well, together. It was Marta, with a ball over the top, to Morgan, who took a touch around Christie Pearce before sliding a shot past Kailen Sheridan. Morgan’s second goal, though not officially assisted by Marta, was only possible because of the work the Pride’s No. 10 did to maintain possession earlier in the sequence.

Later, in the 58th minute, with the Pride already up 4-0, Morgan returned the favor, playing a long through ball to Marta, who was able to calmly put the ball past Sheridan.

Saturday's win was huge for Orlando for a bunch of reasons. Putting up five against — and shutting out — one of the league’s best teams is a big deal. The Pride got to give the retiring Maddy Evans a proper sendoff in her final game for the club. Ashlyn Harris returned after missing 11 games due to injury, making three saves to earn the clean sheet. Biggest of all though was that the win put Orlando, for the first time probably since everyone had zero points, into the top four.

Orlando now has six games remaining, but with a two point lead on fifth place Seattle, a schedule that includes two games against Boston and one against FC Kansas City, and the best version of Alex Morgan that we’ve seen in a long time, that shaky start to the season has, finally, given way to the playoffs being a real possibility.

One of the coolest things about the NWSL is that largely the star players aren’t who you’d expect. The names we know as impact players here mostly aren’t the USWNT’s biggest stars, or if they are, it is from some breakout stuff they did in the league first that got them there. The names we most often find ourselves repeating here are ones like McCall Zerboni, who’s never been with the USWNT, or those of Lynn Williams, Jess McDonald and now Taylor Smith, all ending up on Jill Ellis’ radar after doing some solid work for their club teams. Sometimes, they’re not American, and thus weren’t as recognizable to most of us and our USWNT-centric brains before. Now though, we all know Sam Kerr, Nahomi Kawasumi, Jess Fishlock and Kim Little.

How McDonald spent so much time on so many teams before finding a home with Paul Riley and Courage. How Fishlock instantly became a fan favorite on an otherwise very bad Seattle team. How Kerr gave Sky Blue fans, finally, something to have hope in. These are all fun stories to tell, and in a season where there's no major tournament and USWNT is around full-time, it’s nice that it’s still the unexpected players who are making some of the biggest impacts.

Sometimes though, it is exactly the player you expect, the story about a star that’s truly doing the thing that lives up to the reputation the name on the back of their shirt carries. Orlando, and maybe all of us, have been waiting a long time for Alex Morgan to be that player again, and though it’s only been seven games, her presence has, once again, become hard to ignore.

Scores

Tuesday

Orlando Pride 3 - 0 Washington Spirit

Thursday

FC Kansas City 0 - 1 North Carolina Courage

Saturday

Washington Spirit 2 - 2 Boston Breakers

Orlando Pride 5 - 0 Sky Blue FC

Chicago Red Stars 2 - 3 Portland Thorns FC

Sunday

Houston Dash 0 - 1 FC Kansas City

Seattle Reign FC 1 - 2 North Carolina Courage