If there's anything we've learned about this season through the first 12 weeks, mostly it's that a lot, if not everything we thought we knew is wrong.
There are some things that have gone the way they were supposed to, the way history predicted they would. Seattle turning a slow start into something good, construction never quite getting completed on FC Kansas City's rebuilding, Houston starting a season with hope only to have it all come crashing down thanks to some unforeseen stroke(s) of bad luck.
But for all that predictable stuff — and don't forget this is a league that, with one Washington Spirit-sized exception, has seen some combination of the same four teams in the championship game every year — this season also feels kind of crazy, like the stone we thought so much of our knowledge was set in turned out to really just be a hunk of styrofoam painted to look like a rock.
Last week, with goals called back, comebacks, hat tricks, penalties and red cards both justified and maybe not so much, felt particularly nuts. But it isn’t just last week. That Sky Blue, the team that’s usually the league’s most reliably boring, is currently the most fun to watch feels weird. That Portland’s hovering somewhere outside the four, though now only by a point, seems wrong somehow. That Orlando is having an equally defiant season, though theirs in the other direction, with the Pride signing Marta and then embarking on a slow climb up the table, is like we’re in some kind of alternate timeline.
For both Sky Blue and Orlando, these things, however out of place they may feel in the context of history, also feel kind of right, right now. No one is having a better season than the one Sam Kerr is having for Sky Blue, and that the team stuck with Maya Hayes is starting to pay dividends three years into Hayes’ pro career. They’ve got a goalkeeper in Kailen Sheridan that’s making a solid case for Rookie of the Year. Similarly, Orlando managed to bring Marta back to the U.S., and the five-time FIFA World Player of the Year hasn’t just delivered on the individual promise that comes with her name, she’s also somehow made the Pride, a team that looked pretty dysfunctional at the start of the season, better as whole, too. Seattle, also, and even after losing Jess Fishlock until August due to injury, has climbed into the playoff conversation, the Reign’s suddenly good season in large part the result of Megan Rapinoe finding her game again.
Because of these things, perhaps predictably, Kerr, Marta and Rapinoe are all mid-season favorites in the MVP conversation. And that’s not wrong. Without any one of those players, their teams aren’t as good. It’s something that’s easily backed up, too, with the most obvious on-paper stat: those three players are also the league’s top three goal scorers.
But for all any one of those players has done, whether it’s scoring goals or making everyone else look good, too, or some combination of those things, there’s one thing that, so far, none of the three have been able to do, and that’s propel their team past North Carolina on the table.
The Courage claimed the top of the table in week one, and 13 games later, they’ve yet to relinquish that spot. But unlike the Sky Blues, Seattles, Orlandos or Chicagos, you won’t find a single player from North Carolina in the top five in either scoring, assists, or saves. But for whatever those things — the obvious stats — are worth, the Courage, too, have a player that deserves to be in the MVP conversation, and that’s McCall Zerboni.
Zerboni is hardly a stranger to NWSL, or the pro game in general, though before last season her most notable moment may have come when, as a member of the Thorns, she received a red card and two-game suspension after stepping on Shea Groom's back as Groom lay on the ground following a collision with one of Zerboni's Portland teammates.
Zerboni, who turned 30 in December, started her pro career with the beginning of Women's Professional Soccer. After playing at UCLA, Zerboni was drafted by the LA Sol in 2009, WPS's inaugural season. The following year, after the Sol went to go live on a farm with our childhood pets, Zerboni landed in Atlanta, playing 20 games for the then-expansion Beat. After two seasons with two very different teams -- the Sol was very good, Atlanta was very much not -- Zerboni moved on again, to another expansion team, though this time one with already a bit of history.
Zerboni signed with the Western NY Flash ahead of the 2011 season. The Flash, though new to WPS, was already building a legacy in Rochester. And yes, Western NY won the WPS title its first year in the league, Zerboni's second trip to a title game in three seasons.
Following WPS's demise after the 2011 season, Zerboni opted to stay in Western NY, winning another championship with the Flash, this time as a member of the WPSL-Elite version of the team. And when the Flash became one of the NWSL's original eight teams in 2013, Zerboni was there, too.
Zerboni spent two seasons playing for the NWSL-era Flash before being traded to the Thorns ahead of the 2015 season.
After an unremarkable year with the Thorns, Zerboni was again on the move, this time to the NWSL's own version of Atlanta, the Boston Breakers. But Zerboni made it less than half a season in Boston before being traded again, and her destination this time was a familiar one: Western NY.
Zerboni landed back in Western NY in June of last season, and reunited with Paul Riley, who she'd first played under during her season with the Thorns, things started to take off, both for the Flash as a team, and for Zerboni individually.
Zerboni wasn't just a key piece of the Flash's midfield, she was also an important veteran presence on a team full of a lot of youth and inexperience. Beyond that, and despite registering just a single assist, Zerboni's return to Western NY last year was also the beginning of the Flash laying the groundwork for what's become one of the Courage's biggest strengths this year: a high pressure game that's been somewhere from very difficult to impossible for other teams to solve.
That part of the Courage's game is huge part of why, through 13 games, North Carolina is still the team to beat. And at the center of all that high pressure stuff, the player you'll find is Zerboni, who’s among the league-leaders in both duels won and tackles. She’s also recorded 758 touches so far this season, more than anyone else on the Courage other than Sam Mewis, who plays alongside Zerboni in the midfield, and defender Abby Dahlkemper. With so many players — Kerr, Marta and Rapinoe among them, but certainly not the only ones — starting to establish themselves as serious offensive powerhouses — shutting down attacks before they can even get going is becoming increasingly essential.
Zerboni, who’s played every minute of every game for the Courage this season, isn’t exactly slacking off in the more obvious offensive stats department, either, with three goals and an assist. But North Carolina also isn’t without plenty of other scoring threats, with both Lynn Williams and Jess McDonald still running things offensively. That’s freed up Zerboni to be, alongside Mewis, some kind of combination of playmaker and midfield commander.
We talk about Kerr, Marta and Rapinoe as MVP candidates, both for the stuff each has done individually and because they’ve all elevated the games of their teammates along the way. And though it may not be as evident in the box scores, just watch the Courage play, because McCall Zerboni’s doing all that, too.
All times Eastern
Saturday
Portland Thorns FC vs. North Carolina Courage, 3:30 PM, Providence Park (Lifetime)
Sky Blue FC vs. Chicago Red Stars, 7:00 PM, Yurcak Field (go90)
Orlando Pride vs. FC Kansas City, 7:30 PM, Orlando City Stadium (go90)
Houston Dash vs. Washington Spirit, 8:30 PM, BBVA Compass Stadium (go90)
Seattle Reign FC vs. Boston Breakers, 10:00 PM, Memorial Stadium (go90)