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Nothing but respect for MY football team. In case you haven’t been paying attention Auburn’s soccer squad has been salting the earth for this entire season en route to a bonkers 9-0-0 record. The Tigers have not only set school attendance records, but they have exceeded the longest winning streak in school history. This is easily the best start in the history of the program and it has the Tigers sitting comfortably in the top 10 in the country.
In nine matches, Auburn’s ladies have scored an unfathomable 32 goals and have allowed a paltry three shots to reach the back of the net. A Goal Differential of 29 is bonkers. Auburn’s most dominant sports club is currently its soccer team and it isn’t even close. To put this in American Football terms, I like to think of each goal in soccer as worth around 10 points in football. A 10-0 lead isn’t insurmountable most of the time, but it ain’t nothing to sneeze at. A 20-0 lead should be fairly safe. Auburn is averaging 3.5 goals a game and allows .33 goals per game. Basically Auburn soccer is winning every game 35-3 in American Football terms. That analogy is imperfect but serves in a small way to express what Karen Hoppa’s team is doing. A better one is this: imagine each opponent has just built a house full of all the cute things Chip and Joanna Gaines dream about, and Auburn comes and burns the house to the ground with hot bacon grease.
Leading the charge on Auburn’s magical tour of soccer destruction is striker/forward Bri Folds AKA Brifoldinho if you’re an Orange and Truther. All she does is score goals and make assists. She has seven goals and six assists in the nine game season and is a terrifying player for opponents. Somewhat unusual for forwards not named Harry Kane, Brifoldinho takes corner kicks for Auburn. The Tigers are deadly at set pieces, but most of their goals come in the counter attack and from the never ending barrage of long passes and shots from the likes of Folds, Treva Aycock, or the howitzer attached to Angeline Daly’s left leg.
What Auburn does is difficult to describe. Sometimes high quality soccer teams look as if they are a sort of liquid poetry being poured on the field and that goals are merely a side effect of the brilliant play. Not Auburn. Auburn games look like one of those videos where a pack of wolves takes down a moose. Just a relentless, violent attack with no hope of escape. Auburn beat a decent Mississippi State team Friday night 3-0 and the game wasn’t as close as the score indicates. Every time the Bulldogs had a promising possession, Auburn would put a quick end to it like the sand-castle-hatingest wave at the beach. Let’s not even talk about the 7-0 immolation that happened Sunday night against Alabama State.
Auburn soccer is not playing nice. They are playing a ruthless, amazing and beautiful brand of soccer. They are beautiful in the way a forest fire can be. They are spectacular in the way a mushroom cloud is.
Auburn goes on the road vs LSU on Thursday and you can watch that match on something called SEC+ at 7PM eastern. Then the Tigers return to Auburn to take on Ole Miss on Sunday the 23rd at 2pm. Admission is free if you don’t get SEC+ and you should witness Auburn’s soccer team in person in the way you should go to a pig roast once in your life only to witness where your food comes from. This is my favorite Auburn sports team on campus right now because they show up to each match as if they are attempting to break the back of the opponent’s net. Get on the Auburn Soccer bandwagon as soon as possible.