Alex Morgan will move on from her soccer-playing career Sunday.
But I’m not moving off my forecast that the 12th-place Wave will reach the postseason by claiming one of the eight spots in the 14-team National Women’s Soccer League.
Morgan’s sport-elevating career will end when the 35-year-old striker walks off the field at Snapdragon Stadium to cheers from a large crowd, following what Morgan said will be a “limited-minutes’’ outing in deference to her being a few weeks pregnant.
Unless Naomi Girma, 24, and Kailen Sheridan, 28, were to call it a career, too, the Wave can cope with losing their star forward, who brings valuable leadership but hasn’t scored in her 12 matches this season.
Girma and Sheridan form the league’s best tandem at central defender and goalkeeper, improving the odds the Wave’s ongoing transition to a more attacking style — sought by Jill Ellis when she fired coach Casey Stoney in late June — will eventually bear fruit.
It’s no coincidence that, since Stoney’s exit, a softer schedule — in terms of opponents, rest and travel — has set the Wave up to improve.
As yet they’ve seldom taken advantage, going 0-3-1 and being outscored 7-2.
But the opportunities will continue to present themselves.
That’s how it works in America’s top women’s and men’s soccer leagues, where 57 percent (NWSL) and 62 percent (Major League Soccer) teams get into the postseason and there aren’t enough true stars to go around.
Of the eight matches ahead, the Wave stand to be the favorite or a pick-’em choice in six if Girma and Sheridan are backstopping the more aggressive offense sought by Ellis, who won two World Cups as a U.S. coach.
Today, the Wave stand as a pick-‘em choice despite being seven spots behind their opponent, the fifth-place North Carolina Courage, and having won none of their past 11 regular-season matches.
The explainer is Carolina’s deep struggles on the road, where they’re 1-8 and have been outscored 15-4. Perhaps road crowds unsettle the Courage, whose average home crowd of under 6,000 sits last in the league and not even a third of the Wave’s league-best 19,633.
Last-place Houston and middling Racing Louisville will come to Mission Valley, too.
Both shrink against Girma and Sheridan — Houston is goal-less in the five matches and Louisville showing just one goal in four games.
The Wave will play at Utah after Sunday’s match ends a run of three home games.
An expansion club that’s improving, the Royals nonetheless have been outscored 30-13 on the year.
In light of the long-stellar Portland Thorns regressing amid a lukewarm season, the Wave profile as underdogs in just two of their final eight matches — road tests against Carolina and Kansas City.
The Wave will soon regain their best offensive player, Jaedyn Shaw. “On the verge of being ready,” interim coach Landon Donovan said Saturday.
Opportunities still abound.
It’s just that Morgan, instead of watching from the field, will be cheering from a stadium suite or her home.
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