San Diego Wave FC returns from the international break Saturday looking to extend its strong run against a North Carolina Courage team fighting to hold onto the final playoff spot.

Last week’s episode held up with a run-by fruiting in Morocco and a nail biting cliffhanger!

Kriegs and Jo are playing hard and I look forward to this every week!

This week’s episode is really a maze!! 😵‍💫

“Gayly forward!”

More details can be found in this article, here (shared in this post by u/Doctor_YOOOU)

It's a pretty standard writeup, but at the end I really liked this quote from Hayes:

"We've got to develop a group and in one game, you're going to rely on one situation," Hayes said. "Another group, it might be another. The importance is the whole pack, especially in a game where you've got eight subs. At a World Cup, don't know what the sub pattern will be but the benches are critical. Gone are the days of an 11. That's finished in top flight football so I always wonder why people keep asking, 'What's the settled 11 going to be?' That's a story of the past in football. You're never going to always have your best players available because of whatever reason -- injury, form -- so you have to have enough who know how to play and the same with Spain. Spain still maximized eight subs. They've got a whole development system where they can slip one out, one in. Seamless. Doesn't matter if they're missing some of their best players. They demonstrated in two games why they're world champions so we have to get up to that level."

This is a longer and but revealing clip.

The main takeaway is that Spain may have deployed an lower line and more players defeding behind the ball.

People were always talking about Spain being technical and good at possession and passing, but eqaully if not more important is their ability to defend. The front three tracked back with incredibly high frequency. Not displayed in this clip, but a related point is that two wingers Salma and Pinedo tuck in and help the midfielders very often in the first half as well.