Photo Copyright Joseph Buvid for USA TODAY Sports
To understand the understated excellence of Naomi Girma, take a look at this counterattack from the North Carolina Courage against the San Diego Wave last April.
It was a pretty standard North Carolina attack when the team chose to go direct, with Denise O’Sullivan feeding a galloping Kerolin into space. Normally, Kerolin would have free reign to attack the opposing center backs and get off a clean shot, and probably score. Here, the shot took a small deflection off of a covering Kaleigh Riehl and turned into a harmless save.
But why was it so harmless? How was Riehl able to get a foot to the ball at all? Go back and look again. Whereas most center backs might get turned around from Kerolin’s dekes and feints, instead, Kerolin is dealing with Naomi Girma, just named the NWSL Defender of the Year for the second consecutive season.
There is no space for Kerolin to shimmy by, because Girma doesn’t bite on any of those feints. There is no clever footwork that Kerolin can…
