Aïssata Traoré wrote her name in the Boston Legacy FC history book Saturday afternoon by scoring the first goal in franchise history.
But Traoré’s tally wasn’t enough to deliver a first win for the Legacy.
The Legacy fell to 0-3 in their inaugural season as they dropped a 2-1 decision to the Utah Royals in front of a crowd of 10,012 at Gillette Stadium. Boston is the only team in the NWSL that has failed to register a point so far this season.
After being shutout in their first two games, Traoré stopped the scoring drought in the 72nd minute. She cut a two-goal deficit in half when a through ball from Amanda Gutierres sent Traoré in on a breakaway and she finished her chance with a Royals defender on her back.
“If you don’t create, you’re going to be far away to score your first goal,” Legacy head coach Filipa Patão said. “And I think we create enough to do one, two, three goals. But again, I think we need to be a little bit more mature in the last third because we have the opportunities, we have the moments. … We don’t have the capacity during the last moments, the final pass, the last decision (and need to) get better and be better in that moment. We need to improve and I think again, if we don’t create the chances, I think it’s worse than not scoring the goal, and we are creating the chances.
“I thought at the time when we scored the goal that it was possible to score the second and the third. I was not trying to have the draw. I was trying to win the game because again, we’re not here in this league to try to not lose. We are here in this league to try to win every game. This is why we were frustrated because we want to win.”
There was also frustration from the Legacy with the officials. On a similar play to her goal, Traoré was taken down at the top of the 18-yard box on a breakaway in the 13th minute, but no whistle came her way. VAR review upheld the call.
The Royals did get a key call in the 50th minute when Legacy midfielder Annie Karich made contact with Mina Tanaka inside the box, which brought Tanka to the ground for a penalty. Lara Prasnikar netted the ensuing penalty kick with a shot into the upper-left corner of the net that beat the dive of Legacy keeper Casey Murphy.
“I’m not going to talk about the penalty because for me, it’s frustrating about the contact and everything inside the league because if we are going to say that’s a penalty, then we need to watch Aïssata, too, in the first half,” Patão said.
The Legacy also received four yellow cards in the loss and lead the league with 11 yellow cards issued to them in three games.
“We’re an intense, aggressive team,” Murphy said. “We want people to come to Boston, play at Gillette and hate it. Regardless if we win or lose, we want them to hate playing us. There’s multiple pieces to that. One of them is we’re going to leave it all out there from the first whistle to final whistle every single weekend.”
The next chance for the Legacy to try to notch their first win comes Friday when they host San Diego Wave FC at Gillette Stadium at 7 p.m.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.bostonherald.com ’
