LOS ANGELES — Angel City Football Club coach Alex Straus said Friday that the game against San Diego Wave FC was another challenge for his young team.
In the end, Wave FC (6-3, 18 points) just had a little bit more firepower to sink Angel City FC (3-4, nine points) to a fourth consecutive loss.
Mimi Van Zanten’s header in the 81st minute stood up as the winning goal to give Wave FC a 2-1 win in front of 17,169 at BMO Stadium Saturday.
“We create, but don’t execute,” Angel City coach Alex Straus said. “The goals that we let in …it’s tough, honestly it’s tough and I’m just being honest and open.”
Angel City entered the game unbeaten (3-0-4) in the last seven against its Southern California rivals and after a back-and-first half, made it halftime scoreless. Then came the problems.
San Diego opened the scoring early in the second half as Dudinha’s shot went in off a deflection from defender Sarah Gorden in the 49th minute. Five minutes later, Angel City found the equalizer on a goal from Emily Sams.
“The second half was not as controlled as the first,” Straus said. “But it’s 1-1 and it can go either way.”
Unfortunately for Straus, the rest of the game didn’t go his way.
Nearly 30 minutes later, Dudinha, who had terrorized Angel City throughout the night, sent in a cross from the left flank that Van Zanten was able to get to, ahead of Angel City defender Evelyn Shores, knocking it past goalkeeper Angelina Anderson.
“At the moment, we have been over the last weeks, it was bound to go in that direction,” Straus said. “We need to control the box, our structure in front of the box before the cross is coming in …it’s those moments that’s difficult, just as last week (a 1-0 loss against Utah), when it’s a free kick and that’s the only chance for them.
“Those things are what we need to address and we need to sort out. The only thing we can do is go out and next week and practice it again and again, like we did this week, the week before and sometimes we need to also execute it, that’s the only way we are getting to where we believe we can be, back in rhythm.
On the other side of the field, former Angel City Becki Tweed, who joined San Diego after the 2024 season, served as the interim coach for the Wave with coach Jonas Eidevall serving a one-game suspension.
“Obviously, it’s been a little bit of a crazy day,” Tweed said. “I think coming back here, a huge amount of gratitude for everybody and everything. I’m really proud of the team, rivalry games are really, really difficult and I said at halftime, we definitely needed to kind of regroup and get our identity together.
“It’s three points in this league and three points anywhere in this league is massive and we really needed that win tonight, no matter where it was. It sets us up moving forward. It’s a league, you don’t have much time to dwell on anything, you’ve got to move forward and we have to enjoy it today, but we’ve got to move into the next game.”
The teams will meet again July 11 at Snapdragon Stadium.
Angel City will return to action Sunday on the road against the Portland Thorns.
“I think it’s not what we expected or intended,” midfielder Nealy Martin said. “But it doesn’t change our mentality in the way we train or the way we play. I think you can see the last four games, have been small margins, errors on our part and we’re looking to fix those and not just fix those and fix other parts of our game that we might be getting away with at the moment. I think it’s a good reality check for us and it’s still early in the year. We can choose to one or two ways and I’m really confident in this group and the culture we’ve built here and I think that we will stick together and tough it out.”