After playing the North Carolina Courage in a preseason friendly last month, the Washington Spirit face one of the NWSL’s best teams again this evening in the Spirit’s third game of the season. At Richmond’s City Stadium, the Spirit fell 3-0 to the Courage, but that’s not necessarily a great predictor of how tonight’s game will end up.
Key player: Taylor Smith
One of the reasons that the last meeting isn’t the greatest predictor is that the Spirit had little time together as a full team before that game. The Courage, by contrast, have had most of their team together for at least a year, and had more preseason games under their belt.