Their air was crisp Saturday night as the Chicago Red Stars marched onto their home pitch for the first time this season accompanied by the chanting of 5,134 fans. But their passing was anything but crisp in the first half as they struggled to move the ball beyond midfield and quickly fell behind to St. Louis Athletica in just the third minute of play.

“I thought we played pretty well in the first half,” Athletica coach Jorge Barcellos commented after the game. “We dominated in the first half. We had opportunities to end the game in the first half but we didn’t take advantage of that. We actually had Chicago playing in their half of the field for most of the first half.”

Athletica scored early when a throw-in by Marian Dalmy was intercepted by Aya Miyama deep inside Red Stars territory. Miyama passed inside the box to Eniola Aluko who quickly slotted the ball to Tina DiMartino in front of the Chicago goal. Red Stars keeper Jillian Loyden blocked DiMartino’s point blank shot but Lori Chalupny caught the rebound and calmly pushed it into the back of the net.

Chicago nearly retaliated six minutes later when they intercepted a pass by Miyama and Kosovare Asslani launched a deep cross which barely missed the head of a charging Ella Masar. Julianne Sitch picked up the loose ball to the left of the Athletica goal but fired her shot wide of the right post.

In the 17th minute, St. Louis missed a chance to increase their lead when a corner kick from Miyama was headed just wide of the goal by Shannon Boxx. Four minutes later Cristiane fed Ella Masar inside the Athletica penalty box but she was unable to get her shot off before the defense closed her down.

St. Louis was able to keep the pressure on Chicago even while playing short-handed for several minutes while Elaine was being treated for an injury. Niki Cross was eventually substituted into the game for her in the 30th minute of play.

In the 37th minute, Kosovare Asllani showed some flashy moves as she spun around several Athletica players at midfield before passing the ball off to Ella Masar streaking up the right side of the field. But Masar’s shot was blocked as the St. Louis defense quickly shut the Chicago attack down. Five minutes later, Katie Chapman executed a clever back-heel pass to Julianne Sitch inside the penalty box but her shot was likewise blocked by the impenetrable Athletica defense. The Red Stars made one final attempt to tie up the score in extra time when Cristiane’s shot on goal was blocked by Hope Solo and Asllani fired the rebound wide of the net.

At the beginning of the second half, Casey Nogueira substituted into the game for Ella Masar and played on the left wing while Asllani moved up to pair with Cristiane on the frontal assault. “We wanted to get the ball out to the wide side a little more and move away from the congested areas,” Chicago coach Emma Hayes explained after the game. Her changes showed immediate improvement in the Chicago attack as Cristiane intercepted an errant pass in front of the St. Louis goal three minutes into the half and fired a shot that was saved by Hope Solo. Eight minutes later Asllani put Solo to task once more when she spun past the St. Louis defense on the right of the box and fired a shot that Solo was again able to save.

The Red Stars nearly evened the score in the 58th minute when Katie Chapman snuck a pass across the St. Louis goal line that Asllani fired against the crossbar. One minute later Chapman slipped the ball through the box again but this time Casey Nogueira was waiting unmarked to the left of the goal. She curled the ball into the top right corner of the net while the Noogieniks in the stands exploded into cheers. “I knew exactly what she was going to do when she took that shot,” Solo commented after the game. “She’s better than anyone I know at that.”

In the 67th minute, coach Barcellos substituted Madeleine Edlund into the game for Aya Miyama in an attempt to push Chicago back into their own half of the field but, by his own assessment, the strategy didn’t work. “In the second half things changed and they took over the game,” he admitted. “When you have players like they have, Nogueira for example, and they have opportunities, several opportunities, then sooner or later they are going to score and they did.”

Nogueira missed her chance to win the game for Chicago in the 75th minute when Marian Dalmy crossed another ball to her in the exact same spot to the left of goal but this time her shot flew over the net. “That was nerves,” she confessed after the game. “I should have just put it in but I sort of blasted it.”

Former Chicago favorite, Lindsay Tarpley, entered the game for St. Louis at the 88th minute to try and exact some revenge on her former coach for trading her. But the biggest threat she managed was to reach the top of the Chicago penalty box where her attempt to pass the ball inside was cut off by Marian Dalmy.

Chicago ended the game with a sustained attack when Cristiane fed the ball to Asllani on a breakaway but her attempt to lob the ball over Hope Solo flew over the net. In the 90th minute, Noogie had another chance to win the game when she rebounded an Asllani shot at the top of the 6-yard box but, for the second time, she launched her shot over the net.

“You know, this is about the sort of big-time moments in the game, that is, being sort of the first five and the last five of each half,” Emma Hayes waxed philosophically after the game. “The last week, two weeks in a row, you know, we got behind in the first five or six minutes. So we have to continue to learn from that because at this rate we may not get credible opportunities… We’re not the same team we were a year ago. We’re extremely different. I trust these players implicitly and I know even if they go behind, they’ll find ways to solve it. We have enough quality.”