Fort Lauderdale United Women beat Brooklyn Women 1:0 in their USL Super League Group Stage encounter on Thursday night. The result moves the hosts up the table while Brooklyn remain winless after three matches. N. Vernis ended a barren spell with the decisive goal in the forty-sixth minute, just after the interval.
Brooklyn had started brightly enough, but the home side held every card after the break. Vernis found space in the box and did not hesitate, slotting past the keeper to give Fort Lauderdale the lead they deserved. To be fair, Brooklyn's defence looked disorganised and could not close down the space effectively.
The yellow cards came thick and fast after that. K. Locklear received the first caution in the eleventh minute before the break, and K. Van Treeck followed in the fifty-seventh. S. Lowenberg was booked in the sixty-ninth and S. Gordon in the eighty-eighth, suggesting the game was getting a little tight around the edges.
Substitutions were made in clusters. Brooklyn brought on J. Richards and E. Thompson together at the interval, while Fort Lauderdale responded with J. Cudjoe in the fifty-fifth. By then the home side had settled into a comfortable rhythm, and the double changes at the seventy-minute mark — C. Giammona and C. Zimmerman — were clearly meant to see the game out.
The hosts came off the back of a heavy defeat to Sporting Jacksonville on August fifteenth, but this performance felt different. They had lost 4-0 to Dallas Trinity and 3-0 to Carolina Ascent earlier in the season, yet the defensive discipline was noticeably sharper. Three points from two games puts them sixteenth in the standings, though the table does not tell the whole story.
Brooklyn's situation is more urgent. They have lost all three matches so far — 1-4 to DC Power, 0-3 to Lexington, and 0-4 to Spokane — and sit bottom with zero points. And here's the thing: a result like this does not fix everything, but it gives them something to build on. The match ended without further incident, Fort Lauderdale saw it out, and the scoreline reflected the balance of the second half.
