Current draw with Houston for 7th-straight unbeaten after weather delay
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — After a four-hour weather delay that began at halftime, the Kansas City Current collected a 1-1 draw against the Houston Dash to extend its unbeaten streak.
The Current haven’t lost in its first seven matches of the 2024 season, sitting 5-0-2, and are still the top team in the NWSL standings.
Midfielder Vanessa DiBernardo notched her fifth assist of the season with a cross in the box to Temwa Chawinga, who sent a slow roller past Houston goalkeeper Jane Campbell in the 24th minute for the match’s first goal.
DiBernardo leads the NWSL in assists and Chawinga is tied for second in goals with five.
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After the delay, Current goalkeeper AD Franch struggled to collect a Houston cross into the box. The ball bounced off of Franch’s hands, Franch ran into rookie right back Ellie Wheeler, and Houston rookie midfielder Amanda West scored her first professional goal and tied the match at 1 in the 71st minute.
The Current held the Dash to eight shots (three on target) while posting 29 shots (14 on target). Houston GK and U.S. national team player Jane Campbell saved 12 shots, while Franch collected two saves.
Head coach Vlatko Andonovski said he’s proud of the group, but thought they should have come out of Texas with the win.
“I felt that we created enough to win this game comfortable,” he said. “And on the other side, it’s not that they didn’t create anything. We gave them a goal, but that’s the game of soccer. Sometimes you’re going to win some that you shouldn’t, and sometimes you’re going to lose some that you shouldn’t.”
During the delay, forward Alexa Spaanstra explained the myriad of things that players were doing to stay busy.
“Juggling with some people, whether that was just getting your legs up, rewatching the whole first half watching some F1,” she said. “Playing some Exploding Kitten card games, some people are on the bike. Some people are getting soft tissue. There’s a lot of different moving pieces, but I feel like we handled it pretty well.”
“The worst part is that you cannot really organize anything because the delay is not four hours and we’re going to start,” Andonovski said. “It’s 40 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 10 minutes. You’re constantly on a move, like you’re constantly ready to go. And it’s a little bit, a little bit exhausting to be quite honest, but it is what it is.
“The league wanted us to get this game done today and here we are, we finished the game.”
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Andonovski has been vocal about the NWSL’s congested schedule and the Current have its first midweek match of the season on Wednesday when they face Seattle Reign FC on the road at 9 p.m. The delay made the Current miss their flight to Seattle and frustrated the team’s travel plans.
“We missed a flight, we got to figure out now,” he said. “We don’t have a hotel, we got to figure out a hotel. We don’t have flights for tomorrow, we got to figure out flights. We had trainings for some players that we believe needed training time to be able to perform on Wednesday.
“There’s so many things on the training schedule in Seattle, so we’re not going to be able to do that. Obviously, we lost the whole day of opportunity to recover. So, the schedule, like I said, it’s already challenging to start off with. We have, by far, the worst schedule in the league, and this just made it even worse.”
The Current will look to solve logistics issue to be ready to play on Wednesday night.
