2 red cards leave Utah Royals with 9 in 3-0 loss to Angel City

SANDY — The Utah Royals lost Paige Cronin and Ana Tejada to red cards in the opening 24 minutes, forcing them to play nearly 70 minutes with nine players in a 3-0 loss to Angel City FC at America First Field on Pups in the Park night.

But head coach Jimmy Coenraets didn’t blame the referee.

Former Royal Ally Sentnor converted the penalty that accompanied Tejada’s red card in the 26th minute before second-half goals from Taylor Suarez and Sveindis Jonsdottir put the game away.

“If it happens on the opposition side, would you want a red card?” Coenraets asked rhetorically. “And I’d say twice, yes.”

Down to nine

Cronin was initially shown a yellow card in the ninth minute after bringing down Prisca Chilufya as the Angel City forward broke toward goal, with another defender racing back to provide cover. After a lengthy VAR review, the card was upgraded to red for denial of an obvious goal-scoring opportunity.

That forced Coenraets into an immediate change, removing attacker Jameese Joseph, who was only cleared to play 60 minutes, for defender Tatumn Milazzo.

Five minutes later, the situation got worse.

Tejada and Ary Borges tangled in the box on an Angel City corner, prompting another extended VAR review. The decision drew howls from the home crowd when Tejada was shown a red card for violent conduct and Angel City was awarded a penalty.

The overhead replay offered viewers little clarity, but Coenraets said afterward there was no question about what happened.

“She pulled hair. She pulled hair. It is what it is,” Coenraets said. “There is a hair pull. The head goes down. It’s a red card. Simple.”

His frustration was instead with what he sees as inconsistent application of the rules around the league.

“I’m not mad about the red card for Ana,” Coenraets said. “She knows what she did. But again, it needs to be balanced, and I think the league needs to look into that.”

Sentnor stepped to the spot and sent her penalty just inside the post. McGlynn read it correctly and dove the right way, but the kick was beyond her reach for Sentnor’s third goal in as many matches, all on penalties.

“The second you get a red card, you’re not in control of it anymore, but you control what you do next and how you react to it,” Coenraets said. “I think we reacted quite well.”

Despite playing 11 against nine, Angel City couldn’t add another before halftime.

Utah dropped into a compact defensive block and conceded possession, relying on dogged defense while looking for whatever opportunities it could find to move up the field.

“I want to give them a big shout-out,” defender Kate Del Fava said of Utah’s attacking players. “The work that they put in laterally, horizontally, it’s a lot of running.

“But they kept that game tight. The whole team did. And I think it could’ve gotten a lot uglier.”

McGlynn keeps it close

Back in the starting lineup after sitting out Utah’s 1-0 win at Houston, McGlynn repeatedly kept Angel City from turning the unusual circumstances into a rout.

She made seven saves, including a full-extension stop on Gisele Thompson shortly before halftime, and another late diving save to deny Suarez a second goal.

Coenraets said Utah’s goalkeeper coach told him that McGlynn had produced “one of the best versions of Mandy I’ve seen in practice” during the week.

“She earned a spot today between the posts,” Coenraets said. “She also shows that she has all the capabilities needed to be one of the best in this world, and that’s what we’ve seen today.”

At halftime, somehow, it was still only 1-0.

“You do hope,” Cloe Lacasse said. “You hope for that Hail Mary, and the longer the game lasts, I mean, you never know, right? But at the end of the day, it’s still a big ask.

“But this group has a lot of hope, and it has a big, big heart.”

That hope took a major hit almost immediately after the restart.

Suarez entered at halftime and made an immediate impact. Gisele Thompson drove down the right and sent a ball toward the penalty spot, where Suarez opened her body and redirected it first time beyond McGlynn and inside the post for a 2-0 lead in the 47th minute.

It was the second straight match in which the rookie scored almost immediately after coming off the bench. Four days earlier against Seattle, Suarez scored just 21 seconds after entering.

Jónsdóttir added the third in the 67th minute. The Iceland international pounced on Milazzo as the defender tried to control the ball about 30 yards from goal, won it cleanly and drove into the penalty area. Jonsdottir froze the recovering defender and McGlynn before calmly finishing low through the center of the goal for the final 3-0 margin.

Angel City finished with 74% possession, a 23-7 advantage in shots and 10 shots on target to Utah’s two. The visitors generated 2.80 expected goals to Utah’s 0.22.

Still, the scoreline never became the rout the circumstances threatened to produce.

“People were defending their butts off to keep us in the game,” Del Fava said. “The whole team really showed up today, and I’m really proud of the group, and I’m really proud of the defensive performance even though 3-nothing is not an ideal scoreline.”

For Coenraets, there wasn’t much reason to dwell on the rest.

“Reality is three points, you went down to nine, Angel City won, and you move on,” he said. “That’s as simple as it gets sometimes.”

The Royals host the North Carolina Courage next Sunday at 5 p.m. MT at America First Field.