How the Hell Did I End Up Cageside?: An Accidental MMA Writer’s Memoir is in the early stages, though I have a bit of a headstart because it will incorporate several interviews I did for a book on The Ultimate Fighter.
Single-Digit Soccer: Keeping Sanity in the Earliest Ages of the Beautiful Game wasreleased electronically in August 2015, with a paperback edition released in September. It can be ordered on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple or Kobo.
The book is a guidebook for parents and a reality check for coaches and administrators. It has colorful anecdotes from bumpy playing fields along with research, including interviews with top pro players and coaches, that questions the status quo and encourages families to find the best way to meet their needs in the sport.
See more at singledigitsoccer.com — including excerpts, a press release, a flyer and a video.
Enduring Spirit: Restoring Professional Women’s Soccer to Washingtonwas first released for Kindle and Nook but is now available at other outlets as well. The print version is available at Amazon.and Barnes & Noble.
To write the book, I followed Washington Spirit players, coaches and staff through the first season of the NWSL, from preseason tryouts to their final game of the first season. The team finished in last place, but the fans and players built relationships that have strengthened as the team has found more success over the next two years. And the book captures the struggle and sacrifice, leavened with good humor, that goes into building a team and building a sport.
Women’s soccer is more than just an occasional event on our TV screens in the summer. It’s an endeavor of hundreds of players putting aside higher-paying job opportunities to chase a dream and see how far they can go with their club teams while working their way into national team pools. The great drama of the U.S. women’s march to the World Cup trophy in 2015 was built in part from humble practice sessions on freezing fields and long bus rides after lost games. This book is not about the destination. It’s about the journey and the people who make it possible.
Long-Range Goals: The Success Story of Major League Soccer was first available, by sheer coincidence, the same day World Cup 2010 kicked off. It’s the history of the league from inception until early 2010, relying on extensive original interviews as well as the usual assortment of reports and documents.
The “success” of MLS is that it has survived so many obstacles. In the mid-1990s, betting money would have gone against the new league’s chances of outlasting every other attempt to make professional soccer take root in the USA. Then the league had to survive a thorny lawsuit and an economic downturn, and it still has to cope with staggering competition on the airwaves from soccer leagues around the world.
The book was well-received, and even though MLS has added a few more years to its history, I still hear comments and questions from new readers.
Never easy, but here’s what I’ve figured out so far from the WPSL site schedule:
Home teams listed first, where applicable.
West Region Champions of Northwest (Issaquah), Pac North (Spurs), Pac South (SoCal); plus Pac South runner-up (San Diego)
Playoffs (July 18) SoCal FC 5-0 Tottenham Hotspur Eastbay Ladies
Issaquah Soccer Club 3-1 San Diego SeaLions
Final (July 19) SoCal FC vs. Issaquah Soccer Club
East Region Champions of Northeast (Boston), Power 5 (New England), Mid Atlantic (Yankee); plus Mid Atlantic runner-up (Hershey) … news report said Seacoast United Phantoms would be in.
Playoffs (July 18) New England Mutiny 2-0 Yankee Lady FC
Boston Breakers Reserves 6-1 Hershey Soccer Club
Final (July 19) Boston Breakers Reserves 2-0 New England Mutiny
Midwest Region Champions of Midwest-Central (Chicago), Midwest-Great Lakes (Motor City) and Can Am (Empire); news report said Fire and Ice also would play
Playoff (July 17) Chicago Red Stars Reserves 5-1 Empire City FC
Final (July 19)
Motor City FC 0-2 Chicago Red Stars Reserves
2. Semifinals and final July 18-19, starting with
Sunshine vs. Southeast
Big Sky vs. South Atlantic
Sunshine played games listed as regular-season games July 11:
Tampa Bay Hellenic 4-1 Florida Sol FC
Florida Krush 0-2 Pinellas County United SC
Southeast played games listed as playoffs July 10: FC Nashville Wolves 4-0 Alabama FC
Knoxville Lady Force 3-1 Chattanooga FC
This Big Sky vs. Southeast game is listed as a playoff, not final (July 18) Knoxville Lady Force 0-2 Oklahoma City FC
According to WPSL Twitter, Oklahoma City FC qualified for national championship. They’re hosting.
South Atlantic champion ASA Charge played instead in the USASA National Championship with South Atlantic runner-up Fredericksburg FC, Power 5 runner-up New York Athletic Club, and something called Olympic Club. Winner seems to be Olympic Club.
So it appears we’ll have two NWSL reserve teams in the Final Four (meanwhile, the Washington Spirit Reserves are in the W-League Final Four), plus Oklahoma City FC and the West winner.
Not to take anything away from Carli Lloyd, a clutch performer of the highest caliber and someone who has worked very hard to get where she is, but something was missing in the Sports Illustrated cover story on her after the World Cup.
If you have yet to read the story, the upshot is that she got really upset after being cut from a U.S. youth team, so her family turned her over to James Galanis, who made her a good player by essentially telling her to quit the rest of her life.
“Forget about friends, forget about family, forget about boyfriends,” Galanis told her. “If this isn’t No. 1, let’s just walk off the field right now. What I’m saying to you, Carli, is that at 10 o’clock on a Saturday night, if I call you and say, ‘I’ll meet you at the field in half an hour,’ and you’re at a party with your friends, don’t tell me, ‘Sorry, Coach, I’m at a party.’ You’ll turn to your friends and say, ‘Sorry guys, I have to leave; I’m going to training.’ Do you understand the commitment here?”
Yikes.
We know hard work is part of world-class soccer. But there’s something else, something every bit as essential as running beep tests, maybe even more essential than ditching a party at 10 p.m. on a Saturday night because your private coach needs you right this very minute.
And like a lot of things in sports, that other essential thing can be found in an NSFW clip from Bull Durham:
Yes, fun. This game is supposed to be fun. FUN, BLEEP IT!
Who plays soccer and has fun? Megan Rapinoe, for one. She’s also the most creative player the U.S. women’s team has. That’s not coincidence.
Then there’s Crystal Dunn. If the USA wins the World Cup again in 2019 (FIXED from 2015 – see comments), maybe Dunn will get the nod for the big article, and we can hear how she streaked past a lot of dour German players for the winning goal. (Actually, that’s a stereotype — German legend Conny Pohlers is one of the funniest players I’ve ever encountered. But she’s retired.)
Dunn brought the fun to the SoccerPlex on Saturday night, tearing at the Seattle Reign’s back line and scoring a goal that looks like some sort of video game glitch in which a player suddenly zips from one part of the screen to the other:
— Our Game Magazine (@OurGameMagazine) July 19, 2015
The abrupt edit in that video doesn’t do justice to how quickly Dunn zipped past her defender to score that goal. It was as if a wormhole opened above the immaculate grass of the Maryland SoccerPlex just a few yards away from the beer garden.
“Oh sure, I’d have plenty of fun if I had wheels like Crystal Dunn,” you might say. But Dunn also plays a bit of joga bonito, the beautiful game. Look closely next time you see her with the ball, and you may see her make a subtle shift to unbalance her defender. Or she might put her foot on top of the ball as if she’s going to pull it back, only to slip it forward.
She’s got skills. And like an old-school soccer player who enjoys playing soccer, she likes to use them.
(Quick aside: Isn’t it funny that, for all the fuss over Anson Dorrance’s North Carolina program being behind the times and playing a physical brand of soccer while other college programs are focusing on soccer skills, three of the most skillful Americans — Dunn, Tobin Heath and Yael Averbuch — all played for Dorrance at UNC?)
And she’s a fun interview. She has a disarming self-effacing wit, joking about being caught offside so much. “I know I’m fast, but I just get so excited!” (I’m paraphrasing because my iPhone ate this interview. Bad, bad iPhone. Must have been worn out from all the tweeting I did on it while the Plex was Internet-less.)
Who else looks like she’s having fun out there? Diana Matheson. In her case, she’s just glad to be back after months of traumatic injuries. But she’s thrilled to be combining with Dunn as well.
Asked by Kevin Parker (@starcityfan) about that Spirit goal in which Matheson and Dunn took on four defenders, Matheson deflected all the praise to Dunn: “She probably took on three of them.”
Matheson also signed many, many autographs, as did many players. It was reminiscent of Abby Wambach after the 2011 World Cup, working her way through a line in Boston that snaked through the Harvard campus. Matheson didn’t mind, with one caveat:
“They were pushier, too. They were getting aggressive.”
So for the good of the fences at the SoccerPlex, maybe folks should back up a bit.
Other notes from the Spirit’s 3-0 win over Seattle:
– Seattle coach Laura Harvey’s comments could be summed up in three words: “We were poor.” She wasn’t angry, just stating the facts as she saw them.
– Washington coach Mark Parsons said he was wearing the same shirt he wore at the draft, when he also thought he got the better of Seattle and his good pal Harvey. My phone camera doesn’t do justice to how much he was sweating in that shirt on a steamy night at the Plex.
Parsons saw this game as a momentous achievement for the Spirit, stressing his respect for the Reign and Harvey. “Brave, intelligent and effort made that a complete performance. We’ve been striving to play soccer defensively like that, being hard to beat, hard to break down. … Offensively, we want to be a team that can build patient and can break and counter. I’ve said for a while until we beat a top team playing this style, we’re always going to fighting to get there. Tonight, we got there.”
– Speaking of the draft and the defense — at some point, those of us who cover the Spirit need to write about those players. Seattle’s Kim Little had her moments, but second-round pick Megan Oyster and fourth-rounder Whitney Church slammed the door on the top-scoring team in the league, and it’s no fluke. They’re only getting better. Estelle Johnson and Katherine Reynolds provide the experience, and now Ali Krieger and Ashlyn Harris are coming back into the lineup. The defense hasn’t often been seen as the Spirit’s strength, but we might need to rethink that perception.
– Women’s pro soccer SoccerPlex record 5,413 saw the game. The Spirit should probably take a page out of the Freedom’s book and put some concessions and portable toilets on the far side of the field as well when they’re expecting a crowd of that size. The concourse was borderline impassable at halftime, and I’m sure much of the crowd missed the first Spirit goal less than a minute into the second half.
Marion Reneau is just the latest MMA fighter who says she’s fighting to support her family / give her family a better life:
UFC women’s bantamweight contender Marion Reneau, who is pushing 40, started MMA in her early 30s to help finance her son’s college fund.(From MMA FIghting)
Let’s take a look at the money available in the UFC …
UFC 189, one of the biggest cards in history, paid most of its fighters $10-15K to fight, plus the same amount as a win bonus. (Conor McGregor made a bit more. Just a bit.)
Reneau was actually on a lower pay scale, the dreaded “8+8” scale, for her January fight. She got a bit more because her opponent turned up overweight.
I can’t find the numbers for her February fight, possibly because it was in Brazil. She did get a $50,000 performance bonus.
Then there’s sponsorship. With the Reebok exclusivity, a fighter like Reneau will make $2,500 per fight. A couple more fights, and she’ll make $5,000.
So she might gross $100,000 for the year so far. Not bad, right?
Now consider the following factors:
Fighters are paying managers, corner personnel, trainers, etc.
This might be a once-in-a-lifetime year for Reneau. Her loss last night to Holly Holm, in an unimpressive fight, put her back down the ladder. Half of her income is one performance bonus — if another fighter had a more impressive knockout or submission on that card, she wouldn’t get that money.
Many fighters don’t get three fights a year in the UFC. The roster is too crowded.
So Reneau might clear six figures if she has some other sponsorship that she can tout outside the Reebok-only cage. Or maybe she wins the virtual lottery to get a rare fourth fight this year.
Then next year, she might get two fights and end up with about $30K. And she’s almost 40.
Reneau’s other job was teaching in the Farmersville (Calif.) Unified School District. Minimum salary: $41,485.
This post isn’t about picking on Reneau, though. She picked up a nice bonus. Invest that wisely, then get back to teaching and push that salary into the $50Ks, and she’s on firm footing financially.
Reneau’s plan is much sounder than that of the typical UFC fringe performer you see on The Ultimate Fighter. These are the people who stare into the camera, cry a little and tell us they’re fighting so their families will have a future.
If you’re telling me that, please tell me you have a backup plan.
Reneau is both good — she’s one of the 20 best in her weight class — and lucky. That gets her one good year of solid earnings. A second is no sure bet.
So if you’re the 10th best welterweight in your gym, please do your family a favor and make sure you’ve got some way to make a living other than fighting.
— UltraViolet is not paying for this (@UltraViolet) July 10, 2015
That plane flew for three hours, over this route:
So here are some questions:
Is this the most effective means of protesting?
What’s the goal?
What’s the likely outcome?
Maybe I haven’t spent enough time in Manhattan, but I’m a little skeptical of an airplane banner as a means of protest with such a distracting skyline. When I think of airplane banners on the beach, advertising the latest seafood specials nearby. Planes sometimes fly over stadiums in an effort to get the coach fired. (I know, I know — the pro/rel guy wasted some money on it as well.)
But UltraViolet also brought its message to ground level, which looks a little more effective from a distance:
Another issue: Is this really taking the message to FIFA? To my knowledge, no FIFA officials went to New York to honor the U.S. team. I’d hope the money went toward the parade, not putting up some Executive Committee member in a five-star hotel. And it’s a safe bet Sepp Blatter wasn’t there.
Perhaps, though, the banners will inspire some people to join UltraViolet’s more conventional (by 21st century standards) protests, petitioning and reaching out through social media. Molly Haigh, whose tweet you see above, explained by email:
FIFA officials have been hearing from our members since we launched this campaign–in the form of petition signatures, comments, phone calls and social media outreach–and that will continue as we go forward.
The next question: Is pay equality an attainable goal? In some sports, yes. If you’re the overall winner in your discipline in track and field’s Diamond League, you get $40,000 and a nice trophy, whether you’ve won the men’s 100 meters or the women’s triple jump or anything else. Grand Slam tennis champions get equal pay, even though women play only three sets max.
Most individual sports in this BBC study were even — the exceptions were golf, ski jumping (if you don’t remember that fight, refresh your memory), certain cycling events, and the one we’re talking about here, football.
So give the International Olympic Committee and international organizations some credit. In most of our lifetimes, female Olympic athletes have had as much access to fame and fortune as the men. Think Lindsey Vonn, Michelle Kwan, Marion Jones, Misty May/Kerri Walsh, and so on. Even a Romanian like Nadia Comenici can garner global attention.
Team sports are trickier.
Part of the issue: Men’s team sports are huge. Gargantuan. Immense vortices of money and media. The Women’s World Cup does well in the USA. The men’s World Cup does well in every country with functioning televisions.
So asking for equality on the World Cup front is tough. We might be better off asking why FIFA gives prize money at all rather than sinking the revenue back into developing the game. Men’s players may strike if their home federations aren’t paying them (sadly, not all that rare), but I don’t think anyone is going to pass up the World Cup because the bonus money isn’t high enough.
In women’s soccer, the national team players in the USA and several European countries aren’t the ones who need the money. It’s everyone else.
Women’s soccer needs to catch up in so many ways. One is the talent pool for the national team. The U.S. men have entire camps in January — the now-legendary “Camp Cupcake” — that bring fringe players into the mix. Aside from Stanford player Jordan Morris, all of the men have solid salaries in MLS or Europe.
In other words: Women’s soccer needs the NWSL. We need an expanded player pool. We also need players to compete. The rust on Abby Wambach’s game during this World Cup should reinforce the importance of playing club competition, as other players were doing while Wambach trained on her own.
No one wants to be the one to advise well-intentioned protesters to scale back their demands. “A dream deferred is a dream denied” and so forth. In this case, though, it’s not necessarily a question of letting FIFA off the hook. FIFA does women’s soccer wrong in general. By all means, keep yelling at Zurich.
But the more immediate need is right here. The bonus money for U.S. national team players is as much about symbolism as anything else. The pressing problem is the salaries for NWSL players, many of whom play for less than $10,000 a season.
That needs to change. And you don’t get that done by yelling at people who’ve given a lot of money already to give a lot more. You get that done by getting the tens of millions of people who followed the Women’s World Cup in the USA to pay at least a little bit of attention to the league.
UltraViolet does have plans on that front, Haigh says: “Our members will be making their voices heard to any and every entity that has a stake in women’s soccer. We are huge fans.”
Great. Because if we don’t have a professional league in this country, U.S. players and fans are far less likely to see whatever checks they’re handing out to the winners, anyway. The countries that have figured out how to play pro soccer will gladly pocket that money.
The UFC couldn’t have picked a better night to unveil its new look.
Let’s face it — the UFC of a few years ago was big but a little predictable. Georges St. Pierre would take people down at will or methodically jab them to a pulp. Anderson Silva would dance around a little and win with a Matrix-style move if he was interested or win methodically if he was bored. Brock Lesnar would take someone down and pound them with the giant ham hocks he calls fists.
The stars faded, and the UFC seemed to be fading with it. A lot of up-and-coming fighters were boring wrestlers who just leaned against opponents on the cage. The recurring feature on The Ultimate Fighter is now Dana White’s exasperation with fighters who show little fighting spirit but just try not to lose.
Tonight, we got a new perspective on the UFC. Part of it was the UFC’s production — new graphics, the Octagon used as a video screen, live music for the main event. Part of it, sadly, was the personality-killing Reebok gear that makes everyone look like a character in the original Rollerball, in which the corporation tried to make sure no athlete stood out from the gladiatorial spectacle.
Then part of it was a wild main card — a bloody showcase for a sport that has reached new heights of competitiveness.
We got hints early in the main card. Massive underdog Brad Pickett picked apart Thomas Almeida until the young Brazilian landed a knee that sent Pickett tumbling backward to the mat. Jeremy Stephens was also bloodied before landing a flying knee of his own.
The co-main event was an instant classic title fight. It’s hard to imagine that, just a few years ago, Robbie Lawler looked like a plodding journeyman. Now he has had two terrific title bouts with Johny Hendricks, winning the second to take the belt. Tonight, he made an utter mess of Rory MacDonald’s face but absorbed some punishment himself through four rounds. He was trailing on all three judges’ scorecards:
He might not have known he needed a knockout, but that’s what he delivered, landing a left hand that sent MacDonald down slowly, as if his ability to fight back was ebbing from his body.
Each of those fights was a compliment to the competitive spirit of today’s elite UFC fighters. We see so much mixed martial arts on television that we forget what these top-tier fighters are capable of doing.
And that led us to … Sinead O’Connor. Really. She sang for the entrance of the favorite son of Ireland and possibly my distant relative, Conor McGregor. (I’m related to the McGregor clan of Scotland, which finished third in a two-way power struggle in the Scottish highlands. Maybe some of us hopped over the water and found a better life in Ireland?)
So far in his career, McGregor’s mouth has outpaced his fighting accomplishments. He has long talked as if he already had a UFC belt, and he broke all manner of protocol by grabbing the belt at a press conference.
But when he actually earned the belt, coming back from a ground-and-pound onslaught by Chad Mendes to get the knockout late in the second round, we saw a more humble McGregor. He and Mendes showed the sportsmanship we’ve come to expect from most UFC greats. And he seemed to realize he might not have made it through the fight without the support of the massive hordes of Irish fans who wildly cheered for him.
McGregor might not be the best fighter in the featherweight division. He showed some holes in his game against Mendes, a late replacement for injured champion Jose Aldo. With a full training camp, Mendes might beat him. So might Aldo, when the champion faces the interim champion in a bout that should approach Lesnar-type pay-per-view numbers. Frankie Edgar should also be in the conversation.
And on a given night, Lawler might lose. He was down tonight. He barely beat Hendricks.
But these fighters fully deserve their belts. The fact that they’re not as dominant as Silva or St. Pierre in their primes just means we might be getting better and better fights.
New presentation. New clothes (though they need to work on that, along with the contracts behind them). New competition.
The next few years should be as thrilling as any we’ve seen in combat sports.
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.
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.
And I think it's unfair that no #USWNT player was nominated for Best Young Player. "All the players are too old" — what an excuse.
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.
You need a little luck in the World Cup. That’s what you heard from Germany … Germany’s men, anyway, after the World Cup final last year.
Germany’s women, on the other hand, were not so lucky against the USA in the World Cup semifinal tonight. A couple of close officiating decisions went against them. Playing the USA so soon after dragging themselves to a grueling win over France is less than ideal.
So can you take anything away from the U.S. women tonight?
No. Not a damn thing. They earned this.
I joked on Twitter tonight that the USA had the advantage in rest because Germany just played 120 minutes against France, while this U.S. women’s team hasn’t played all tournament. Maybe not in the Ellis era.
They did it with a radical change. We all saw how the USA was playing to this point — even when Abby Wambach wasn’t playing, the team was still playing Abby ball. In this game, they went with two holding mids and one forward, winning the midfield battles rather than relying on their outstanding defense to clean everything up. They suddenly started playing the type of soccer everyone had hoped to see, with dazzling possession that made ESPN’s Kate Markgraf marvel at German defenders being spun in circles.
See Meghan Klingenberg strip the ball away, make a simple move and play calmly to a teammate. See Lauren Holiday win a tackle and play cleanly to a teammate. See Carli Lloyd come up with the ball and race up the field. See Alex Morgan take a sharp pass from Tobin Heath and force a stellar save from Nadine Angerer. It was marvelous.
So yeah — Julie Johnston could’ve and probably should’ve seen red for the foul that led to the penalty kick. Celia Sasic took a very un-German-like penalty kick, perhaps because Hope Solo psyched her out like a poker player staring down someone trying to bluff with a pair of 3s. And Alex Morgan launched herself over the top of the box and drew contact along the way to draw a dubious penalty kick for the first U.S. goal.
But consider this:
– Hope Solo didn’t make a save after the eighth minute. Germany’s offense was so rattled by the U.S. defense’s mastery and Morgan Brian’s shrewd midfield destruction that a couple of people in the third row end-zone seating may have touched the ball more than Solo.
– The USA would’ve been up 2-0 at the half if not for Angerer’s brilliance.
– The second U.S. goal was brilliant, even if it came against a clearly downtrodden German defense.
A 1-0 deficit shouldn’t have deflated Germany so badly. They were being outplayed by France but came back and won it. In this game, though, Germany wasn’t even close to finding its way. After the goal, they looked like Michael Scott following GPS directions into a lake.
The knockout draw has favored the USA, sure. The group stage didn’t. The USA may have looked sluggish and pedestrian in winning the Group of Death, but they had to beat three legit opponents. They weren’t merrily blasting 10 goals past Ivory Coast to fine-tune their offense.
On the Keeper Notes podcast a week ago, I said it’d be a shame in a way if the USA somehow powered its way past to the World Cup final playing the way it was — stubbornly sticking with Wambach as its offensive centerpiece, sticking with Holiday as a miscast lone defensive midfielder, playing unimaginative soccer as if they were pounding their way through some 2004 Victory Tour friendly rather than building up to face teams that had caught up, tactically and technically. What would we learn as a soccer nation if we could win the World Cup doing things in such backwards fashion?
After the China game, where Ellis was forced to change things up, I didn’t feel quite so strongly about it.
Now? I don’t know how they suddenly changed gears, changed personnel and changed styles, but they did it. And they deserve it.
If you had told me a week ago the USA would beat Germany 2-0 in the semifinals, I would’ve said it must have been all luck. Instead, it was a little luck. And a lot good, inspiring soccer.
This result is big for U.S. women’s soccer. The way they did it was even bigger. And it’s reasonable to think they can do it again and regain the World Cup after 16 years.
Jill Ellis made three lineup changes for Friday’s quarterfinal win against China, two out of necessity. The result: Still just a 1-0 win against a team that had little attacking punch, but the team looked better and felt better.
And it was the kind of performance U.S. fans had wanted to see. Amy Rodriguez was buzzing around making things difficult for China, Alex Morgan was a looming threat, and Carli Lloyd was unleashed. Not that the trio was perfect — A-Rod shanked a great chance like a beginning golfer, Morgan didn’t quite have the scoring touch, and Lloyd had a few giveaways. But this was not the lumbering attack we had seen in the past. Abby Wambach gave some inspiration from the bench and was ready to go if needed.
Then two players stepped up in surprising roles. The versatile Kelley O’Hara was a menace on the flanks, and young Morgan Brian looked like a composed veteran in a holding midfield role.
So now what? What happens when the USA takes a giant leap up in competition from a young, easily rattled Chinese team to a ruthlessly efficient German team that absorbed a couple of hours of French pressure and fought back to win?
Player-by-player:
Rodriguez: Did the German defense look a step slow against France? If so, they could be tailor-made for the speedy A-Rod. Then again, Sydney Leroux has some wheels, too.
Morgan: You just sense that it’s coming, don’t you? She made pivotal plays against Colombia and has the potential to create something magical.
Wambach: She may have another clutch goal left on her head or in her feet. She’d be perfect to bring in against a tired German defense in the second half.
Megan Rapinoe: Has to play. She’s the most creative winger the USA has.
Lloyd: Has to play in the same role she played last night. Don’t forget who scored the winning goals in the last two Olympics, and she scored again last night.
Brian: Clearly the best option at holding mid now. Lori Chalupny can play there at club level, but she hasn’t been tested there at international level in a long, long time.
Lauren Holiday: Unfortunate. She was miscast as a holding mid for months, and now it might be too late to get her back on the field in another role such as attacking mid or second forward. But we would’ve said the same about O’Hara before last night, right?
Tobin Heath: Just isn’t turning those nifty moves into anything concrete right now.
O’Hara: Maybe the best option on the right flank? Her pressure, passing and willingness to test China with an occasional medium-range bomb were outstanding last night.
Christen Press: Can she bring the same tempo-changing ability as A-Rod?
The defense isn’t in question — Meghan Klingenberg, Julie Johnston, Becky Sauerbrunn and Ali Krieger have been so outstanding that we often forget Hope Solo is even playing.
So those five are sure starters, and I’d add Rapinoe, Lloyd and Brian to that list. Everything else is up for grabs.
Here’s one reasonable lineup that builds on last night’s success:
And here’s one that’s a little wilder:
But I’m not sure Ellis needs to do anything that drastic. She has already shown the flexibility for which I was pleading at SoccerWire. They did not play “Whack it to Wambach” for 90 minutes last night.
And as a result, I’ve gone from thinking Germany is a sure bet to thinking we may see an epic on Tuesday.
Single-Digit Soccer: Keeping Sanity in the Earliest Ages of the Beautiful Game was released electronically in August 2015, with a paperback edition released in September. It can be ordered on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple or Kobo.
Enduring Spirit: Restoring Professional Women’s Soccer to Washington was first released for Kindle and Nook but is now available at other outlets as well. The print version is available at Amazon.and Barnes & Noble.
Long-Range Goals: The Success Story of Major League Soccer was first available, by sheer coincidence, the same day World Cup 2010 kicked off. It’s the history of the league from inception until early 2010, relying on extensive original interviews as well as the usual assortment of reports and documents.
Duresport.com 