Month: July 2015

soccer

The U.S. women’s unlikeliest win …

Posted on by Beau Dure

No one saw this coming. Not at this World Cup.

Not after France picked this U.S. team apart in February. Not while Jill Ellis stubbornly persisted with Lauren Holiday and Morgan Brian alone in center midfield with Carli Lloyd shoved wide.

Not even after the round of 16 win against Colombia, in which the USA looked indifferent in beating an inexperienced team. Not with the USA persisting in playing a predictable direct style.

Not with the sense that something was wrong deep in the roots of this team, with the latest Hope Solo legal developments likely far less of an issue than the team’s institutionalized favoritism toward established players.

Maybe they’d get lucky against the winner of the France-Germany game, fans thought. At least the defense was playing really well, so if they could just get a goal, they could get to the final, likely against a Japanese team that hasn’t looked like itself.

No one expected the USA to outplay Germany by a considerable margin. And no one expected the USA to outscore Japan by such a wide margin, burying the world champions with a 16-minute outburst after kickoff.

None of the cliches apply. They didn’t answer their critics — they won by doing (surely unintentionally) what the critics wanted in the short term, and the long-term problems are still there. They didn’t win by sheer force of will — they won with intelligent soccer, mesmerizing the German midfield and carving up Japan’s defense with clever plays like Lloyd’s game-opening run on a corner kick and her audacious drive from midfield.

We may not fully comprehend what happened over this month in Canada until someone writes a tell-all book. How this dysfunctional team could suddenly produce three majestic games defies easy explanation. Did something happen in the locker room? Was Jill Ellis always planning to switch things up as needed even after looking so inflexible for months? Did Abby Wambach, as some have suggested, bench herself?

We’ll solve all the long-term problems with women’s soccer some other day. For now, we have a stunning victory to admire and a lot to celebrate:

– The U.S. media have grown up. All the talk of “Hope Solo this and Abby Wambach that” gave way to intelligent dissections of tactics and technique. Defenders like Becky Sauerbrunn and Julie Johnston got their due.

– Even this team’s biggest detractors have to smile at the thought of the likes of Sauerbrunn and Meghan Klingenberg, overlooked for so long but just plugging away through the death of WPS and the birth of the NWSL, getting World Cup medals and playing so well along the way.

– And then there’s Wambach. You might question much of what she has done or said in the past year. But she is still one of the five best players in women’s soccer history and someone who has fought for her sport. Now her demons have been slain, and her legacy is complete.

The future begins tomorrow. U.S. Soccer needs to take a good look at what went wrong and what went right. And they need to make sure people get out and support the league that is the USA’s only chance for keeping up with the powerhouse Europeans and staying ahead of emerging teams elsewhere.

The “Victory Tour” should be a series of warm welcomes as these players — and a lot of international players who excelled in this tournament — return to their NWSL teams.

Enjoy. Celebrate. And get back to work.

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soccer

Young U.S. women’s soccer players aren’t really young

Posted on by Beau Dure

The For The Win podcast looking ahead to the Women’s World Cup final made an interesting point about Jill Ellis finally trusting a young player like Morgan Brian to play a key role.

I listened to this the morning after a fun Twitter conversation.

https://twitter.com/sbethTX/status/616765936960299010

https://twitter.com/sbethTX/status/616766313046765568

So the two “young players” — Julie Johnston and Morgan Brian — who have made an impact for the U.S. national team in this World Cup are nowhere near the eligibility cutoff for the “best young player” award.

The team wasn’t always this way. The 1999 team had 20-year-old Lorrie Fair and 21-year-old Tiffany Roberts, with Kate Sobrero (now Markgraf) the third youngest at 22. The 2004 Olympic champions had three young Tar Heels: a 22-year-old defender named Cat Reddick (now Whitehill), 20-year-old Lindsey Tarpley, and 19-year-old phenom Heather O’Reilly.

Go back to 1991, and you’ll find precocious 19-year-old Mia Hamm and 20-year-old Julie Foudy. The oldest player on the team, April Heinrichs, was 27.

A lot has changed, of course, most notably the fact that women can make a living in the sport. The USA has a lot of experienced, talented players in their 20s and early 30s. The typical U.S. college player isn’t ready to be a major contributor in the NWSL, much less face off against Germany in a World Cup semifinal.

But you have to wonder if the USA is falling behind at the youth level. The last U.S. U20 team lost to Germany in group play and fell out of the tournament in the quarterfinals, losing to North Korea on penalty kicks. The U17s didn’t even qualify in 2014.

And other countries are producing players who can contribute. Canada’s Kadeisha Buchanan, herself a college player at West Virginia, is a Best Young Player nominee. China has no one over age 26. Norway’s Ada Hegerberg, who plays at Lyon, turns 20 next week. Most of the Costa Rican roster can’t rent a car in the USA — Gloriana Villalobos couldn’t even drive. Mexican goalkeeper Cecilia Santiago has been around forever and is still only 20.

All that said, this is still a tournament in which the 27- and 28-year-olds are dominant. Some U.S. players are no longer at their best, but Becky Sauerbrunn, who still seems like a newcomer in many ways, is in her prime at 30. So are Japanese captain Aya Miyama, who has been short-listed for the Golden Ball award, Swedish captain Caroline Seger, and Australian attack leader Lisa De Vanna. Only a couple of years younger, you’ll find the best European players — Celia Sasic (26), Lara Dickenmann (29), Vero (28), Steph Houghton (27), Elodie Thomis (28) and so on.

What do these countries all have in common? Solid professional leagues that allow players to continue playing until their athleticism peaks and their understanding of the game is complete.

So FIFA’s concept of a “young player” differs from the U.S. perception of that term. Certainly the USA could stand to give more opportunities to the early-20s players like Brian, Johnston and Crystal Dunn. But the “young player” as FIFA knows it is almost extinct. They’ll need to redefine that award or else hand it out by default to the youngest player in the tournament.

 

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