Category: pro soccer
Welcome, drive-by pundits. Can we introduce you to the NWSL?
I’ll toss this into the “maybe tying pay to revenue isn’t such a good idea” argument, and please don’t take one part out of context …
Over the past week, per the daily Soccer America newsletter, eight MLS games and one CONCACAF game had better attendance than the WNT’s game in Tampa.
What does this mean? Let’s ponder.
Marketing: You may argue that the WNT game wasn’t properly marketed. Possibly. I don’t know how to quantify it. I just know people said that about MLS for years.
If I knew where to advertise, my books would sell more and my blog would’ve made money. So I’m the last guy to ask about that, and I’m interested in hearing ideas.
Maybe MLS teams have the advantage of being in town all year every year. But at the same time, fans can see them play whenever, and how often is the WNT in Tampa? Shouldn’t fans be taking advantage of that rare opportunity?
No, MLS isn’t the MNT. Maybe the MNT isn’t properly marketed outside of Mexico games, either. You can support the WNT’s legal case and still say the MNT games should be treated better – or ticket prices should be lower. If it becomes either/or, everyone suffers.
But in any case, drive-by media pundits who only know World Cups and Olympics miss the boat with WoSo attendance triumphalism. They have no idea that tens of thousands show up to see Zlatan. Rooney. Martinez. Tim Howard’s farewell tour. Jordan Morris. Efrain Martinez. (Google him.) Would you rather see the since-departed Almiron or the MNT? Thought so.
Maybe it would help if everyone, including the drive-byers, paid more attention to the NWSL. Then they’d have the advantage of a consistent community presence that MLS teams enjoy.
Not that the NWSL has done particularly well in marketing, either. Maybe a new broadcast deal will help. Assuming they get one.
The international challenge: Women’s soccer won’t thrive on the SheBelieves Cup alone. Nor can it rely on a big boost every quadrennium with a win or thrilling run to the final in the World Cup or Olympics. Not with European teams turning up the heat. England has crashed the party. France, propelled by two big-spending clubs, has been there for a while. Germany and Sweden never really left. Then all those teams were bested in Euro 2017 by the Netherlands and Denmark. Then those teams fell far short in the Algarve Cup, in which Norway beat Poland in the final.
Yikes. Then factor in Canada, Brazil and Japan. Don’t count out Australia.
And this isn’t a bad thing. We all want the game to grow internationally. Look at the struggles softball has endured because it’s basically a three-country sport (USA, Japan, Australia). No one’s kicking women’s soccer out of the Olympics as they did with softball. The competition’s too good.
The revenue argument: So suppose the WNT and MNT both tie their salaries (WNT) and bonuses (WNT and MNT) to revenue. Looks great for the WNT — now. Suppose the WNT doesn’t make the final in either the World Cup or Olympics over the next two years. That’ll make a dent in revenue, and that’s actually when we’ll want U.S. Soccer to spend more on women’s soccer.
If U.S. Soccer was really as dastardly as people say (and, at times, it has been), they’d say, “Oh, tie it to revenue? Sure!” Then they’d cackle as the revenue drops when 2016 proves not to be a fluke.
As I said in the last post, I don’t have answers here. I just know that yelling “equal pay for equal play” and other slogans won’t solve the problem. It’ll take some serious attention to detail.
So I’ll write these wonky posts. And maybe the handful of you who read them will be able to ask questions and advocate for things to be better — not just with a short-term victory for Jeff Kessler but (also?) a long-term victory for the sport.
A dual thought experiment: 1993 players in 2019 and vice versa
In my conversation with Dan Loney, we somehow wound up talking about the Colorado Foxes and the old APSL/A-League.
Dan made the case that if the 1993 Foxes played in MLS, they would eventually fall off the pace because of a lack of depth and resources, but they would win until that happens.
So that brought to mind two thought experiments …
1. Would the 1993 Colorado Foxes fare well if they were transported into MLS today?
I found 1993 rosters and stats on the old A-League archive, which still exists at Tripod, which still exists.
The Foxes had two goalkeepers splitting time, both of whom wound up in MLS. Mark Dodd fared pretty well down the road. Jim St. Andre had a rough time.
The biggest name on the roster is Robin Fraser, who had a very good MLS career and a lot of meaningful games with the U.S. national team. You may also recognized Tom Soehn, Brian Haynes, Chad Ashton and Mark Santel. (Basically, Foxes coach Dave Dir took a lot of his players with him to the Dallas Burn. Yes, Burn. 1996 was a weird time.)
Top scorers were Scott Benedetti, whom I remember, and Taifour Diane, whom I do not. Ted Eck wasn’t far behind. Diane went to Germany to play for a long time and then go into coaching.
Fraser, Eck and Diane made the All-APSL team.
Now that I look at that roster, I don’t think they would’ve been competitive. But I don’t remember them quite as well as some people might.
The APSL at the time had eight teams, three of them in Canada. The year before, it had five teams, all in the USA. The next year, the APSL added the Seattle Sounders. (The Montreal Impact were already in the league.)
So that brings us to a second question …
2. What would MLS teams look like if we only had eight teams?
Let’s assume 10 or so American players are in Europe, as they were in 1994. At that time, U.S. national teamers who had gone to Europe included John Harkes, Tab Ramos, Eric Wynalda, Roy Wegerle, Juergen Sommer, Frank Klopas, Paul Caligiuri and Mike Lapper. U.S. players who had grown up in Europe and stayed there (until a few years later): Thomas Dooley and Earnie Stewart.
So let’s assume John Brooks and Cameron Carter-Vickers stayed put in Europe. (Or Europe and England, if Brexit goes through.) And let’s assume bright prospects like Christian Pulisic, Tim Weah, Josh Sargent and Weston McKennie are in Europe, along with DeAndre Yedlin, Ethan Horvath, Matt Miazga, Shaq Moore and Eric Lichaj.
Let’s assume the three Canadian teams take eight U.S. players each. The five U.S. teams take 18 U.S. players each, filling the other spots with internationals. That’s 114 U.S. players condensed onto eight teams.
What would that look like?
RSD 2-7-19: Dan Loney and I don’t talk about promotion/relegation
Dan Loney and I have three things in common. First, we’re parents. Second, we have a goofy sense of humor. Third, we’re on the Enemies List of people who push promotion/relegation as The Big Issue That Will Save U.S. Soccer and Make Us A Consistent Global Power.
The funny thing is that Dan, unlike most of us who point out inconvenient facts that make a pro/rel system difficult (but not impossible) in this country, actually hates pro/rel itself. I actually get caught up in the romance of relegation escapes and promotion chases. (I miss you, Coventry City.)
So we spoke for an hour and talked about the Athletes’ Council (in which he and I disagreed on whether Carlos Bocanegra should be on it), the Muppets, Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist, and conspiracy theories — including the accusation that we are the same person.
We did not discussion promotion and relegation in any detail whatsoever.
Enjoy …
That time MLS (and many others) was sued for $50 million
A bit of hilarity from the California court system …
In 2014, one James C. Maxey sued Major League Soccer, alleging a conspiracy that involved “John Does 1-1999.” It’s hard to say exactly what Maxey claimed MLS did. He says he was injured on Sept. 11, 2001, and that the injuries were caused by “George W. Bush and associates affiliated with Queen Elizabeth II, English Football Association, English Premier League, United States Soccer Federation, Republican Party, Kevin Campbell, Phillip Wright, Gary Messing, Jerry Zanelli and Peter Reynand.”
There are some wild Sept. 11 conspiracies out there, but it’s hard to imagine one that includes Zanelli, who founded the WPSL. (He passed away in 2018.)
Two months later, a California judge dismissed that complaint, along with various other complaints from Mr. Maxey against Mitch McConnell, Barack Obama, John Boehner, several Republican Party county offices, John Ashcroft, a fire department, Mitt Romney, John McCain, James Comey, the National Labor Relations Board, “Michael” Platini, Sepp Blatter, Costco, Hillary Clinton and … Cy Curnin? The lead singer of The Fixx?
In between the filing and the dismissal, another judge noted the following paragraph recurred in each suit: “The plaintiff, James C. Maxey, suffered injury due to the actions of the [space provided for plaintiff to inserts the names of individuals or companies] on, or about [space where plaintiff inserts a date]. The plaintiff’s injuries were caused by [blank space where plaintiff identifies different parties or companies] associates affiliated [another blank space].”
Here’s the complaint in its entirety:
The top 100 women’s soccer players, by the numbers
The Guardian has released its annual list of the top 100 women’s soccer players in the world, drawing votes from an outstanding panel.
It’s a diverse group of voters. The only U.S.-based journalists on the panel are Jennifer Gordon and Jen Cooper, both terrific choices. (You might also include Jordan Angeli, a former player now doing broadcast commentary, in the journalist category as well — a great choice as well, no matter how you classify her.) I don’t see any U.S. managers/coaches on the list — the three from the NWSL are all from Europe, though they’ve certainly been here long enough to know the talent pool. Three former U.S. players, including Angeli, are on the panel. They’ve found voters based in Asia, Africa, Australia, South America, Central America and New Zealand in addition to the usual hotbeds of the USA and Europe.
Fortunately for me, the timing is excellent. I’m writing the women’s soccer portion of my book now, and this data fits perfectly.
I’ve uploaded my spreadsheet to Github if you’d like to dig in for yourself. Here are some highlights …
BY COUNTRY
The USA is still No. 1 in terms of numbers of players on the list. FIFA rankings in parentheses.
- 16 USA (1)
- 11 England (4)
- 11 Germany (2)
- 9 France (3)
- 6 Netherlands (7)
- 5 each for Australia (6) and Sweden (9)
- 4 each for Brazil (10), Japan (8), Norway (13) and Spain (12)
Fifth-ranked Canada had two players on the list. No. 11 North Korea had none.
I also wanted to look not just at the overall depth but in terms of where the top players ranked. To analyze that, I used the same scoring system that cross-country meets use — a sum of the top five. The lower the score, the better.
- 75 USA
- 98 France
- 114 England
- 116 Netherlands
- 151 Germany
- 265 Norway*
- 311 Brazil*
- 334 Australia
- 375 Sweden
- 390 each for Japan* and Spain*
The asterisks are for countries that had four players on the list. I added a hypothetical fifth player ranked 125th — seems likely that those countries would have another player somewhere around that rank if it continued for another 50 or 100.
So by either measure, the USA leads the way despite all the progress made in the rest of the world. The biggest surprise is that England and the Netherlands have raced past Germany.
BY LEAGUE
One caveat here: Players on loan from the NWSL are counted in both of their leagues. That means several players, such as No. 2 Sam Kerr, contribute to the rankings for the NWSL and Australia. No. 28 Jess Fishlock counts for both the NWSL and France. (I filtered out the second reference to each player when I calculated the county rankings.)
I’m a little surprised that the NWSL held onto No. 1.
- 30 NWSL
- 21 France
- 18 Germany
- 16 England
- 6 Australia
- 5 Spain
- 4 Sweden
- 3 China
- 2 Norway
- 1 each for Japan and the NCAA
The cross-country rankings don’t really tell us much. Five players can form the backbone of a very strong team, but they don’t reflect the strength of a league. Still, I was on a roll, so …
- 26 France
- 45 NWSL
- 92 England
- 93 Germany
- 266 Spain
- 331 Australia
- 417 Sweden (again using the hypothetical fifth player ranked 125th)
As expected, France’s success rides mostly on the ridiculous strength of one club …
BY CLUB
- 14 Lyon
- 10 Wolfsburg
- 8 North Carolina (Courage, not NCAA)
- 6 Seattle
- 5 each for Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and PSG
- 4 each for Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Chicago, Orlando and Portland
You’re not expecting the cross-country rankings to be close, are you? Asterisks once again mark the four-player teams with a hypothetical 125th-ranked player added.
- 26 Lyon (3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th)
- 93 Wolfsburg
- 145 Arsenal
- 201 Chelsea
- 209 Seattle
- 235 North Carolina
- 243 Portland*
- 276 Manchester City
- 328 Chicago*
- 342 Barcelona*
- 343 Orlando*
- 347 PSG
- 383 Bayern Munich*
As you’d expect, the salary-capped, parity-driven NWSL spread its talent across far more clubs than the other leagues did.
NWSL: 30 players — 8 at North Carolina; 6 at Seattle; 4 each at Portland, Orlando and Chicago; 2 at Utah; 1 each at Washington (Pugh but not Lavelle) and Houston
France: 21 players — 14 at Lyon, 5 at PSG, 2 at Montpellier
Germany: 18 players — 10 at Wolfsburg, 4 at Bayern Munich, 2 at Essen, 1 each at Turbine Potsdam and Frankfurt
England: 16 players — 5 each at Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City, plus 1 at Birmingham
Australia: 6 players at 5 clubs
Spain: 5 players — 4 at Barcelona, 1 at Atletico Madrid
Sweden: 4 players — 3 at Rosengard, 1 at Linkoping
China: 3 players at 3 clubs
Norway: 2 players at 2 clubs
ODDS AND ENDS
- The players in China’s league are from Brazil, Nigeria and Malawi.
- The five nominees for U.S. Soccer Female Player of the Year rank 7th (Morgan), 10th (Rapinoe), 12th (Horan), 25th (Heath) and 32nd (Ertz). The nominees did not include No. 21 (Dunn).
- The U.S. players who played the most international games in 2018 without being ranked in the top 100 are Lloyd (19), Sonnett (14) and Lavelle (13).
- Adrianna Franch is ranked (65th) despite making no appearances for the USA in 2018.
Again, the full spreadsheet is at Github.
NPSL turnover and why we need youth clubs to build up, not vice versa
Stop what you’re doing and read the excellent SocTakes analysis of turnover in the NPSL.
…
Are you back? OK.
If you’ve followed lower division soccer over the years, you know this isn’t a recent phenomenon. Go back and look up the names in the old A-League on Wikipedia, where some kind soul listed each team’s dates of birth and death. For many of the teams, that doesn’t tell the whole story — the Carolina Dynamo existed and thrived for several years before the A-League and USISL merged, and they retrenched as a successful PDL team. But if gives you an idea.
If you wanted to do a spreadsheet akin to the one SocTakes did of NPSL teams, you’d run into a lot of complications along those lines. Teams rebrand, change leagues, go on hiatus, etc. I thought about it and then realized I had other things I really had to do. (I’m doing live curling commentary on Friday. Check it out.)
…
OK, fine, I did one.
This should cover every team that played in the nominally professional USISL/USL leagues (which launched in 1995) and the NASL. It does not include long-standing teams that have only played amateur soccer in the PDL or elsewhere (apologies, Des Moines Menace). Nor does it include APSL teams (apologies, San Francisco Bay Blackhawks) that didn’t stick around to play past the USISL/A-League merger.
I cross-checked Dave Litterer’s archive, Wikipedia and official team sites until I was blue in the face. If you see any corrections, please let me know. Going back to, say, 1990 or even 1985 would be the next logical step.
I’ve also ignored MLS reserve teams, including MLS Project 40, which existed.
The next step was the toughest. I tried to figure out how many of these teams have or had youth programs. I’d be happy for any crowdsourcing help here. As it stands, it’s not all that easy to figure out if a club named, say, “Dragons” is (A) a youth program that existed when the Jersey Dragons played in the USISL in 1994-95, (B) a youth program named after the Dragons, or (C) just coincidentally using the same name.
Then try to figure out whether the youth program preceded the senior team. I’m not even completely sure whether that’s true for the Richmond Kickers, a gargantuan youth program with a senior team attached. Both have existed since the mid-90s. Which came first?
So I’ll keep plugging my way through it. I’m pretty sure I have all the relevant teams and their histories, though perhaps some of them are still plugging away in amateur leagues. I’ll happily take help on that and youth programs.
But what I’d conclude so far:
Having multiple options is a good thing. Self-relegate if needed — note all the teams that dropped out of the pro ranks and started playing PDL or other amateur leagues.
My hypothesis: Teams are better off if they’re organic outgrowths of a existing club.
Or maybe the whole club is formed at once.
That’s the idea. Input welcome.
Who goes from Academy to USL?
Three coincidental bits of reading today (for two of them, thanks to Jason Davis for mentioning them on today’s show):
- At The Athletic, Will Parchman ranks all 23 MLS-affiliated academies.
- At SoccerWire, Charles Boehm has news of a new D.C. United partnership and a nice pyramid graphic showing players progressing from these partner clubs to the new USL side in exurban Loudoun County to the Chris Durkin-esque heights of the senior side. (A few stray thoughts on this later.)
- On a local message board, one anonymous parent reacted to this news by asking which Academy kids get to play for the USL side.
My first reaction: What do you mean — who gets to play for the USL side? It’s pro soccer. Who gets to play pro soccer? Really good players!
Second reaction: Wait a minute. Who does get to play for the USL side?
So I figured I’d do a case study on Will’s No. 1 academy — New York Red Bulls. Who’s playing for NYRB II?
The results:
Former Academy players – 8
- Amando Moreno (signed directly from Academy; years ago)
- Ben Mines (signed directly from Academy)
- John Murphy (signed directly from Academy)
- Evan Louro (homegrown contract after college)
- Kevin Politz (homegrown contract after college)
- Steven Echevarria (homegrown contract after college)
- Andrew Lombard (free agent after college)
- Chris Lema (free agent after college)
Played for PDL Under-23 team – 3, all from 2018 draft
- Brian White
- Jared Stroud
- Jose Aguinaga
- (also: Lema, Louro, Politz, Echevarria, Murphy)
Lived in NY/NJ, then drafted – 3
- Ryan Meara
- Ethan Kutler
- Jordan Scarlett
Developed in OTHER MLS academies – 2
- Jean-Christophe Koffi (D.C. United)
- Tommy Redding (Orlando)
Then two other draftees, four free agents who just finished college, and six from foreign clubs.
I used a loose definition of an NYRB II player. A couple of these guys have recently been called up to the MLS side, and they’re not the only players to move up in the last few years. (Think Tyler Adams.)
So that’s eight Academy alumni out of a pool of 28 players. The ages of those players: 23, 22, 22, 22, 22, 21, 18, 18.
Sources:
- NYRB II site
- Transfermarkt
- Anything else I could find, starting on Wikipedia and digging from there
Back to the Boehm piece (January 2018 podcast guest): D.C. United’s partner clubs here are:
- Arlington: Current DA through U15
- Loudoun: Current DA through U15
- PPA: No current DA
- Pipeline: No current DA
- Virginia Development Academy (itself a partnership that includes my hometown club, Vienna): Current DA through U19
So what does this mean for VDA’s older age groups?
(Side note here: VDA’s girls moved from the DA to the ECNL, but they didn’t rename themselves “VECNL,” which sounds like a horrible health insurance company. I didn’t include girls’ DA teams in the breakdown above because United’s program here is boys-only. We’ll talk about the Spirit some other time.)
U.S. Soccer coaching education: One foot forward, one foot firmly stuck in the mud
U.S. Soccer just unveiled its new grassroots coaching modules for 7v7, 9v9 and 11v11, making it much easier for parent coaches to learn what they need to know for working with players who will go on to become elite players, travel players, adult rec players, youth coaches and fans. It’s an important —
… What? Something else happened?
OK, let’s get back to those coaching modules. They’re worth discussing. But what you may have heard about was the first of two Soccer America interviews with U.S. Soccer technical people about coaching education and youth development. The interview didn’t have any specific quote saying, “Hey, Latinos aren’t interested in doing coaching education,” but the USSF’s bureaucratic language certainly came across as a little dismissive. Something along the lines of “mission vision proactive hey they’re just not signing up assets leverage activation.”
Herculez Gomez, the retired MLS/Liga MX player now doing commentary (including an excellent podcast with Max Bretos) for ESPN, pounced on Twitter.
One of the many great things Gomez is doing these days is following up on his initial reaction. U.S. Soccer offered up conversations with the people in this interview, Nico Romeijn and Ryan Mooney, and Gomez reported on the conversation on the Aug. 20 Max and Herc podcast.
Romeijn and Mooney clarified and apologized, and Gomez seemed to be satisfied that they didn’t intend to slight any persons of color. That’s not to say USSF’s outreach is as good as it could or should be, and diversity efforts will always require watchdogs.
In any case, the conversation shed light on several other issues, many of them at least indirectly related to diversity.
First: Cost. Excluding travel, which is going to be a significant cost in itself, someone moving up the coaching ranks will pay (according to Gomez — I’ve contacted USSF to confirm, and they did):
- C license: $2,000
- B license: $3,000
- A license: $4,000
- Pro license: $10,000.
Yikes.
Now, in fairness, if you’re working for a half-decent professional club or the federation itself, your club will pick up the check. We’d hope. But if you’re trying to break through to those ranks, well …
Second: Difficulty getting pros involved. Here’s where the MLS union got involved …
MLS Players Union executive director Bob Foose will be talking about that with Glenn Crooks on SiriusXM’s The Coaching Academy on Wednesday.
The good news: The NWSL has taken steps to get its players a good headstart on this path. Details are confidential, and any dissatisfied players should certainly feel free to contact me, but it seems promising.
The Max and Herc discussion took a couple of wrong turns. Gomez was surprised U.S. Soccer didn’t have data on the number of minority coaches taking their classes, saying all employers should have that data. But people don’t take coaching courses to be employed by the federation (excluding Development Academy jobs). They take them to be hired by youth clubs. In some cases, up through the D and maybe even C licenses, they take them to be volunteers. That sounds extreme, but in other countries, you’ll find B-license volunteers. All that said, perhaps U.S. Soccer will consider gathering such info in the future, not because of employment law but because it’s simply a good metric to see how their outreach efforts are faring.
Also, Max and Herc seemed surprised that the federation hired Belgian consulting firm Double PASS. That’s definitely not breaking news.
But the discussion did indeed get a much-needed push forward. And it’s clear from the Soccer America interviews — first with Romeijn and Mooney, then with Jared Micklos of the Development Academy — that we’re still not getting much by way of illuminating conversation from people in Chicago. They’ll tout their new training center’s central location in Kansas City, which is indeed a vital asset if all their prospective coaches are traveling by horseback.
And yet, somehow, progress is being made.
The new “grassroots” modules will never get the attention that the Gomez/MLSPA tweetstorm got. That’s understandable. But they’re giving coaches a good way to get started, and they’re giving parent coaches — usually the first coaches a player will encounter — much firmer footing than in the past.
Sure, I still miss the old F license video series. The new grassroots series, though, is better than the old E and D license.
In the old path, the older the kids you were coaching, the higher the license. So, in theory, you needed a D license just to coach rec soccer from U13 on up. Now we can take the corresponding grassroots class, which is (A) less of a time imposition, (B) can be taken online and (C) presents a new practice approach that is already making my life easier.
The approach is “Play / Practice / Play.” As kids show up to practice, you get them playing small-sided games. (Pause to have them do some dynamic stretching once they’ve warmed up a bit.) Then do a half-field activity — 7v7, 8v6, etc. Then a scrimmage. The biggest difference from practice to practice isn’t so much the “drill” you’re attempting as it is the coaching points you make during each practice.
This is an improvement over the “Warmup with a drill that takes a little bit of time to explain / Small-Sided Game that takes a little bit more time to explain / Expanded Small-Sided Game that’s ridiculously complicated and will never be explained over the course of this practice / Scrimmage” approach, in which we were all supposed to develop practice plans like we’re Fabiano Caruana prepping to face Magnus Carlsen for the world chess championship in November.
It’s certainly not perfect. For one thing, United Soccer Coaches’ Soccer Journal seems like a relic now — it’s full of all the triangles, circles and squiggly lines that take us 10 minutes to understand and half of a practice to explain to our kids. (I did like the “secret goals” exercise in the preseason issue, where each side has to do something before scoring — possibly a cross, possibly a certain number of passes — but the other team doesn’t know what the opponent’s restriction is.)
The bigger issue for many (see “Rondos, The War On”) is the insistence that everything has to “game-like.” And it’s a slippery definition. Having the defense try to clear the ball to any one of three “counter goals” is game-like. Having a neutral player is not.
And the jargon is mind-numbing. We have four “moments” of a game — attack, lose the ball, defend, win the ball. So can you come up with a practice that prepares you for … losing the ball? (Don’t even get me started on the “six tasks of a coach,” which include “Leading the player,” “Leading the team” and the redundant “Leadership.”)
But if you can cut through that, you’ll find something quite useful. The video examples in the 11v11 online course are terrific.
So maybe we could sneak an editor into Soccer House to translate bureaucratic talk to plain English?
Does firing Jim Gabarra really help the wayward Washington Spirit?
When the WUSA went away, Jim Gabarra stayed.
He coached a mix of kids and pros who were hanging around D.C., still wearing the name Washington Freedom. He lugged ball bags around the Maryland SoccerPlex. Along with longtime D.C.-area youth coach Clyde Watson, he worked with local youth clubs to create something of a club system. When pro women’s soccer came back in 2009 after a five-year absence, he remained in charge. He finally resigned after the 2010 season, but the Freedom didn’t continue without him, packing up for south Florida to spend a colorful year under the name magicJack.
He was busy with Sky Blue in New Jersey when the next women’s league launched in 2013. But when Portland lured away coaching phenom Mark Parsons after the 2015 season, he returned to the Plex to take up his familiar position on the sideline.
Today, the Washington Spirit fired Gabarra, who leaves behind a underperforming club with bright attacking stars, an in-form goalkeeper and two big questions:
- Given Gabarra’s long service to D.C. women’s soccer, did he deserve better than to be dismissed with three games remaining in the season — all at home, one of them at D.C. United’s new Audi Field?
- Will firing Gabarra solve anything at a club that has fizzled horribly since it was seconds away from winning the NWSL championship in his first season less than two years ago?
Former Spirit trainer Pierre Soubrier — also the fiance of Crystal Dunn, who won MVP honors with the Spirit in 2015 before moving on — threw what the kids would call “shade.” Then he deleted his tweet. Gotta love screenshots.
An anonymous source gave The Washington Post’s Steven Goff the standard “lost the locker room” quote. Hard to tell how much stock to put in that. In “locker room vs. coach” disputes, the natural inclination is to side with the locker room, but it’s not always right.
The biggest issue, of course, is the scoreboard. The Spirit have two wins, four draws and 15 losses — kept out of the bottom only by winless Sky Blue, coached by former Gabarra assistant Denise Reddy. They’ll need a few results to match or beat their abysmal 2013 season, where a late surge under midseason replacement Parsons saw them move up to 3-5-14. If young superstars Mallory Pugh and Rose Lavelle had been healthy for more of the season, perhaps the team would have more of a cushion above the NWSL basement, but it’s unlikely that the Spirit would’ve made a playoff run.
The timing of Gabarra’s ouster could be related to the upcoming downtown debut at Audi Field. Interim coach Tom Torres surely can’t turn the Spirit into a monster team in five days, but perhaps the recent 4-0 loss in Houston was the sign of a team that had quit on its coach. Maybe a nice, hard-fought 1-0 loss will do more to win over any newcomers to a Spirit game.
Spirit president Chris Hummer, who now assumes the general manager role he also held in 2013 before a two-year exile (disclaimer: I’ve written for Hummer’s SoccerWire in the past), called Gabarra “100% class” and explained the move as such:
We have a horrible record and everyone is responsible top to bottom. 2017 was to be a re-build. 2018 we had a roster that scared a lot of people on paper, but then never got them all on the field at the same time between injuries and call ups. 2019 has to be better, so we just decided to start that process now so we can learn what we can from coaches and players alike in these remaining weeks. All eyes forward.
We have exciting players and a competitive team that has the capability to be very dangerous, potentially in short order. We’re all looking forward to having a BIG night at Audi for our fans and to carry that excitement into 2019 with a winning team again.
We still don’t know if the former U.S. outdoor/indoor national teamer (he was the second-leading scorer, behind Peter Vermes, on the 1989 futsal team that claimed third place in the World Cup) was offered a more graceful exit — maybe a move elsewhere in the organization in advance of three-game swan song that would include the Audi Field game.
We also don’t know how many of the Spirit’s myriad problems can be laid at Gabarra’s feet. We just know the list goes on for a while:
– The defense is nowhere near NWSL standard. Goalkeeper Aubrey Bledsoe is the league’s runaway leader in saves with 99, many of them spectacular. (It’s a credit to Bledsoe that the Spirit have only conceded 32 goals, one better than the perplexing Orlando Pride and six better than Sky Blue.)
– The attackers have managed only 11 goals, none since July 7. In an 0-1 loss to Utah, they managed seven shots, none on goal.
– A trade sending Dunn’s rights to North Carolina for then-national teamers Ashley Hatch and Taylor Smith has backfired, with neither player now figuring prominently in U.S. coach Jill Ellis’ plans.
– Top-three draft picks Andi Sullivan and Rebecca Quinn, the former a D.C.-area local who played for the Spirit’s reserves in her summers while in high school and at Stanford, have had little impact, a reminder of the 2013 season in which several players with glittering college resumes weren’t ready to lead the team in the bruising NWSL.
– The reserve team boasted fewer big names than usual, winning four of six games in the anemic WPSL Colonial Conference but losing a 3-0 decision in its playoff opener. (Still, it’s a program that many NWSL clubs lack.)
– The teams entered in the first year of the girls’ Development Academy lagged behind their peers in the D.C. area, let alone other professional clubs’ academies. Starting a program of this sort in a hypercompetitive area is difficult, but that just makes me wonder why Gabarra wasn’t reassigned to an academy role, where he could use his long-standing D.C. youth contacts to win over the scores of skeptical clubs who didn’t want to get involved with the Spirit’s academies in Virginia and Maryland.
The latter two issues won’t draw much attention, but building from within is part of this club’s identity. It worked with the 2013 midseason promotion of reserve coach Parsons, who ditched the club’s overreliance on youth and brought in more experienced players to lead the way to playoff appearances the next two years. It will probably work in the long run with Sullivan, who isn’t yet back to her “old” self since suffering an ACL tear in late 2016 but has already reached the national team and has tremendous potential.
One example of how oddly things have gone this year is the curious case of Maddie Huster, longtime reserve player and younger sister of the Spirit’s last remaining original player, Tori Huster. The Spirit drafted her, brought her in as a national team replacement player in early June, signed her as a full roster player June 29, then waived her July 25.
With so many oddities and mistakes over the past couple of years, the overarching question is how much blame to spread out between Gabarra, Hummer and owner Bill Lynch. The postmortem won’t be fun, but it may be a necessary step in rebuilding the club moving forward. The Spirit should have learned in 2013 that it can’t rely on youth, even if Lavelle and Pugh are world-class players bound for the World Cup next year. They’ll need to convince free agents to come to the SoccerPlex, which has excellent training facilities and a dedicated supporters group but isn’t as glamorous as MLS-affiliated clubs in Portland, Utah and Orlando.
Maybe Gabarra deserved better. The supporters certainly do.
In case you didn’t know, I wrote a book about the Spirit’s debut season, attending most games and roughly 30 practices. I’ve changed the Kindle price to $2.99, but it doesn’t appear to have kicked in yet. Should be changed within 72 hours (by Friday).
Duresport.com 