The Orlando Pride concluded a grueling road trip since our last show, with stops in Mexico City and Houston after last week's win at San Diego. The team returns home, where it will play three competitive matches out of the remaining four on the schedule at Inter&Co Stadium, with a trip to Washington sandwiched in there as well.

We open this week's show with a brief discussion of a forgettable Concacaf W Champions Cup match at Club America that saw the Pride fall flat in a 2-0 loss, handing the group to the Liga MX Femenil side. We then turned our attention to the NWSL match Friday at Houston, where it appeared the Dash would hold on for a 1-0 win until Simone Charley's storybook finish stole a point back for Orlando near the end of normal time.

We break down the draw in Houston, check on our score predictions from last week, and make our selections for Player of the Match. We also touch on the difficulty in the remaining schedule, with a tough home matchup against Pachuca in Champions Cup and three NWSL opponents that are all above the playoff line.

This week's mailbagbox was short and sweet, asking us whether all of the Pride players who are going to score goals this year have already done so. Remember, you can ask us anything by hitting us up on Twitter at either @TheManeLand or @SkoPurpSoccer and using the hashtag #AskSkoPurp. You can use that same hashtag and hit @TheManeLand.bsky.social up on Bluesky. Or you can visit our show page, scroll down, and fill out the handy form. We'd also appreciate any ratings or reviews you can leave wherever you get your podcasts, and if you do that on Apple Podcasts, we'll find them easily and read them on the show.

Finally, we previewed the Portland Thorns match coming up Friday in Orlando. The Pride haven't fared well against the Thorns over the years, but the teams are quite evenly matched. Orlando needs three points with a trip to play the Spirit looming. We look at the series history, preview the game, provide our key matchups, and try our best to predict the final score.

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Here’s how Episode 104 went down:

0:15 – The Pride stepped on a lot of rakes at Club America, but grinding out a result at Houston at the end of three away games in eight days was a decent enough result.

15:08 - The mailbagbox did not overstay its welcome this week.

21:19 - The Pride prepare for Portland. Poison tells us that every rose has its thorns, but will the Thorns provide Orlando with a sweet-smelling rose of a result?