Sydney Leroux continued her torrid pace by scoring\u00a0twice to\u00a0guide the\u00a0Boston Breakers to a 2-0 win over the Portland Thorns at JELD-WEN Field\u00a0on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Leroux scored her league-leading\u00a0ninth and 10th goals of the season\u00a0in the 11th and 38th minutes, while Alyssa Naeher kept the Thorns at bay to record her first shutout of the season<\/p>\n
The Breakers’ win extends their unbeaten streak to three (2-0-1), and puts them within striking distance of a postseason spot as the NWSL season enters the homestretch.<\/p>\n
Leroux wasted no time putting the guests ahead when she collected a\u00a0 short pass from Heather O’Reilly fired it past Portland goalkeeper Karina LeBlanc only 11 minutes into the match.<\/p>\n
Lianne Sanderson had a bid to double the Breakers’ lead in the 37th minute when she forced\u00a0LeBlanc to knock away a deceptive cross from a freekick that nearly snuck into the net.<\/p>\n
But\u00a0there was nothing LeBlanc could do\u00a0after\u00a0Leroux beat Kat Williamson near the top of the area, and pounded it into the net to make it a two-goal advantage before the interval.<\/p>\n
After Leroux’s heroics, Naeher stepped up to keep the Thorns off the board. In the 60th minute, she stopped an effort by Christine Sinclair\u00a0and denied\u00a0former Breaker Tiffany Weimer in the 70th and 80th minutes.\u00a0Naeher was called upon one final time in the 86th minute to stop a point-blank shot from Alex Morgan.<\/p>\n
The Breakers will play Sky Blue FC in New Jersey on July 13 before hosting Portland at Dilboy Stadium on July 21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sydney Leroux scored twice while Alyssa Naeher recorded her first clean sheet of the season in a 2-0 Breakers win over the Thorns. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[23],"tags":[1282,230,503,357],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20421"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20421"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20795,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20421\/revisions\/20795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}