As we concluded in the last post and confirmed from about 95% of the comments here and on Facebook, U9/U10 travel tryouts that segregate “travel” and “recreational” (“House”) players are something no one likes and everyone does anyway. Realistically, we’re not backing away completely from elite-ish soccer at that age.
So what are the alternatives? I’ll toss out a few:
1. Part-time travel. We’re already doing it at U8 in my region — at least, we’re supposed to be, but some clubs treat it as U8 travel in everything but name. Your club’s serious U8 players sign up for a program with extra training sessions under a pro coach’s watchful eye, and they play a couple of friendly games against similar teams from other clubs.
U9 and U10 are the perfect ages to continue a program like that. That’s where we move up from the 4v4 or 5v5 games into full-fledged soccer games of 7v7 or 8v8. Clubs can monitor all their players as they make that transition.
Players and their families would get to keep a foot in each world. Players can face diverse competition, challenging themselves against the elites while gaining confidence to try out what they’re learning in a more relaxed recreational setting.
2. All-Star tournaments. We already have these for House leagues — starting at U8 in our region. One postseason tournament each season. Maybe we could have a couple per season and rotate the “All-Stars.”
3. One season for House, one season for travel. Some players — please sit down so you can digest this — don’t want to spend the whole year playing one sport at age 9. And countless studies suggest it’s a pretty stupid idea to do that, anyway.
So why not offer House in the fall and spring, giving everyone a chance to play one sport per season and still sample different things, and offer travel only in the spring? You’ll have a good House league in the fall, a mix of players that includes your travel-quality players. Spring-only travel will be more affordable. Plenty of advantages.
4. Open travel to everyone. Why segregate into “House” and “travel” at all? If someone wants to get good coaching and a cool jersey at an age well before we know anything about their future athletic careers, why not let him or her do it?
Tomorrow, I’ll coach my U8s for the last time. They’re a wonderful team, most of whom I’ve coached off and on for the past two years (four seasons).
Next year, we move up from concurrent small-sided games of 4-on-4 to the bigger fields with 7-on-7. We’ll have goalkeepers and refs.
What we won’t have will be a couple of our best players. They’re going to travel soccer. A few others have considered it or tried out, and the experience has been simply horrible. I feel like I’ve spent the last two weeks talking parents off ledges. Two years ago, when I saw a ridiculous political situation working against a couple of players I knew well, I spent this time rebuilding confidence so these kids wouldn’t miss out.
I’ve seen plenty of gossip. “Oh, this club isn’t any good because it doesn’t have any teams in the Premier Champions Club League. I’ve heard that’s better than the Champions Elite Premier League or the Academy Premier Champions Academy. Someone on a message board told me Club X only practices twice a week, while Club Y practices eight times.”
You know what? The whole thing is crap.
A lot of parents don’t need me to tell them that. A lot of coaches will disagree. “Oh no,” they’ll say, “these are the peak development years, and we need to get the best players in quality teams with quality coaches.”
Maybe so. And you can still do that without all this mess.
If you still don’t believe me, Mr. Tryout Coach, let me sum it up with words I’ve heard often from parents that should frighten you to your very core:
“Baseball is so much easier to deal with.”
That’s right, Mr. Elite Coach. I’m a baseball parent, too, and they’re right. Our kids aren’t going to Little League practices and dealing with this crap. They just play and learn. Some areas are trying to ramp up with “travel” baseball, and they’re meeting resistance, captured in this wonderful Washington Post piece that has made the rounds among youth sports parents.
Does this sound familiar?
Travel ball, by contrast, is not cheap — participation fees average about $2,000 per player per year. And teams may invite players from anywhere in the region. Since tournaments and games are usually in other towns, players and their parents must spend many hours commuting.
Some travel ballplayers resemble professional athletes: Year by year, they go from one travel team to another, switching teammates and uniforms, with the name splashed across the front of the jersey usually signifying something other than their home town.
For the most part, Little Leaguers play in what we soccer people would call “House” league, maybe making All-Stars at the end, through age 12. Then it’s Babe Ruth or other organizations until high school. And many baseball folks want to keep it that way.
We keep hearing that the mark of a good coach is how many of his or her players return to keep playing. (That’s not true, but we’ll save that for another rant.) So we parent coaches try to do that. And then you undermine us with a system that angers 70% of your parents and kids.
I deal with parents who want to be assigned to whichever team practices at the closest field to their house. You want to take all these kids, pool them together and assign them based on your club’s supposed needs. And if there’s no room in the program with the professional coaches, that’s OK — they can drive over to the next town. You don’t mind driving through the inner suburbs at rush hour, do you?
And I deal with parents who are terrified of their kids facing some kind of stigma from playing “House” or “recreational” soccer. And I deal with kids who walk around their third-grade classes like they’re the bomb because they’re on “travel.” Congratulations, kid — you had an October birthday (or August, but your parents held you back in school), you’re faster and more aggressive than most kids, and so you got a big rep dominating the 3v3 and 4v4 magnetball games in the younger age groups. Truly, you are superior to the kid who just missed the cut.
You’re driving away future players, particularly the late bloomers who don’t shine at the all-important U9 tryout. And you’re driving away future fans, giving people a negative impression of soccer as some cutthroat status-oriented enterprise.
And the funny is this — you all know you shouldn’t be doing this.
Here’s the quote you’ll see in a million PowerPoint presentations from Alfonso Mondelo, MLS director of player development:
The problem in the U.S.A. is they start travel soccer at too early an age. That’s totally detrimental. It becomes more like winning and collecting hardware than about having kids play and learning from playing.
Here’s the U.S. Youth Soccer Player Development Model, February 2012, p. 66-67:
The U-10 age group is when children are often asked to compete before they have learned how to play. This too much too soon syndrome is another symptom of the flux phase. Therefore, US Youth Soccer recommends U-10 players should not:
• Be involved in results oriented tournaments, only play days, jamborees or festivals with a participation award.
• Be exposed to tryouts.
• Be labeled recreational or competitive.
“But soccer isn’t like baseball,” Mr. Elite Coach is blubbering by this point. “We need to make sure good players are challenged and getting good instruction!”
Yes, that’s fine. And here’s how:
A lot of clubs are coming up with transitional “pre-travel” programs at U8. They may play with their regular House/rec teams (some don’t, which is yet another rant), but they also get one session a week with the club’s Serious Professional Technical Staff — which, in all seriousness, is better about teaching skills than most of us parent coaches could be. At the very least, they can demonstrate them a lot better. Then they assemble teams for “crossover” games with other clubs.
This system works pretty well at U8.
And it would work at U9. And U10.
It’s the best of both worlds. The kids get to keep playing with their buddies and with parent coaches who care about them. Those who seek it also get professional training and a chance to represent their clubs.
By U11 or U12, fine — split the travel kids away. Middle school kids are more mature (well, in some ways). You’re almost old enough to specialize in one sport, though it wouldn’t hurt to spend the winter or summer doing something else.
And if you wait until then, that’s another two years for kids to have a positive experience that they’ll remember fondly. They’ll turn into soccer fans — or players. Or both. Their parents won’t scream in horror at the mention of the word “soccer.”
And the sport will be better off.
The bad news: You can’t expect clubs to police themselves. This has to come from on high.
So, U.S. Soccer — it’s up to you.
(If you’ve read this far — first of all, thanks. Secondly, you may have noticed that I’m working on a book called Single-Digit Soccer, and I’d appreciate feedback on this and any other topics. There are some voices of reason emerging from the wilderness — see the Changing the Game project — and I hope my work will encourage others to emerge.)
One of the neat features of the Maryland SoccerPlex stadium field is the hill behind the south goal, which the Spirit sells as general admission. I’ve seen games from “end zone” seating, but I had never been up close and personal with the goal.
Until tonight.
The kickoff was early enough (4 p.m.) to take one of my kids, and I couldn’t pass up that opportunity. And I figured we’d make it especially interesting.
I wouldn’t want to watch every game from that vantage point. For one thing, you lose any credibility in terms of arguing offside calls. The action at the other end is distorted.
But this game had a lot of action for those of us on the hill. Here’s the video, some highlights and a bit about how it looked from close range:
– 3:56: Dash defensive breakdown, Jodie Taylor presses, ball pops out to Diana Matheson, who chips Erin McLeod for the opening goal. I actually said to my son, “Oh, too bad, it went high.” Then it floated into the net. So, yeah — you’re not going to get a good view of everything from this view. 1-0
– 11:24: This didn’t look the least bit dangerous, and I still have no idea how this ball rolled past Ashlyn Harris. 1-1
– 25:23: Harris’ best moment of the first half, shutting down the near post on Ella Masar.
– 37:10: Even from the other end, we could see Taylor astutely letting the ball bounce in front of her before finishing past McLeod. 2-1
Another first-half highlight: While I didn’t hear a ton of the legendary Harris shouting, I did hear her say something like “OK, no stupid throw-in, right?” before former teammate Stephanie Ochs tossed a long one into the box.
In the second half, most of the action was coming right toward us. It was full of squandered opportunities for the Spirit, who outshot the Dash 11-3 in the half. But every time, the ball just wouldn’t quite sit right. A lot of Spirit attackers were a little off balance when they shot. Lori Lindsey (45:35) couldn’t generate much power on her shot. Matheson (56:25) had a tough angle, and McLeod made a strong save. Tori Huster (61:58) wasn’t really in position to do any more than poke at it.
One distinctive feature of the angle I had — on several occasions, I saw Crystal Dunn cutting into the box, pointed straight at me. It’s scary. She’s not the biggest player, of course, but you just have the sense that she could do anything. But she, too, couldn’t do anything with the shot (63:52) she created.
Then the Dash had its one good spell of the second half. And even from across the field, we could see Osinachi Ohale hanging over the Spirit defense and finishing clinically at the post (76:22). 2-2, and you will never convince me that it’s a good idea to leave a post unguarded on a corner kick. No way Harris could’ve made it over there in time.
We do have to talk about the PK call (80:44). In real time, about 10 yards away,I saw McLeod charging out and figured the call was coming. She wasn’t getting that ball without getting Taylor. And now that I see the replay … I’ll stand by it. Some people on Twitter have said they saw Taylor dragging her feet as if in preparation to dive. Frankly, it doesn’t matter. Contact is contact.
This play — forward going at a diagonal wide of goal, with little opportunity to do much, and a goalkeeper sliding out in a way that makes it too easy for a forward to trip over her — is always controversial. We’ve all seen it so many times. And about two-thirds of the time, the ref gives the PK.
McLeod argued, of course. And she was still mad when Matheson saved a ball on the end line (82:15). “Brutal!” she yelled at the AR. It wasn’t, but her frustration is understandable.
In between those plays, of course, McLeod saved a PK from Matheson. And what you can’t see on the replay is Matheson giggling as she steps up to the spot, as if a little embarrassed to be face-to-face with her Canadian teammate in that situation. It wasn’t Matheson’s best PK effort, but credit McLeod with the save.
And though I don’t think McLeod, in hindsight, could really complain about the call, we can all be glad it didn’t decide the game.
Because what DID decide the game was spectacular. If the Spirit could promise a finish like that in every game, it could charge $200 for hill seating. My thought process as Christine Nairn’s shot (stoppage time, see it on Instagram if you don’t want to work through the video) was airborne: “Holy (bleep), that ball has a — wow, it’s the upper corner.”
You have to feel for the Dash. They didn’t have the better of play, but the defense managed to limit things in the second half. They battled back for the equalizer. And it was all taken away so swiftly.
Houston has some good components. Kealia Ohai came on in the second half and just carved up the Spirit defense. Nina Burger is legit. I was impressed with Rafaelle Souza and surprised she was taken off at halftime. Ella Masar is always dangerous. Ohale and Holly Hein aren’t bad at the back. And McLeod never gets enough recognition.
I’ll be back in the pressbox for the next one, peeking around the obstructions and missing out on the sounds of the game. Memorial Day didn’t draw the Spirit’s biggest crowd of the season, but the Spirit Squadron’s chants and songs are fun.
And at the risk of sounding like a Yelp reviewer, the hill gets five stars.
Through May 23, 2014, lower-division teams have beaten MLS teams 66 times. (MLS teams have won 160.) And based on a whole lot of spreadsheets, we can declare one particular lower-division team the most accomplished team in the Open Cup.
The PDL is 38-87 against non-MLS pro leagues. But other amateur leagues are less successful against D2 and D3: 10-72.
For purposes of these upset lists, I haven’t separated D2 from D3. To my surprise, D2 (A-League/USL-1/USSF D-2/NASL) is 38-12 against D3 (D3 Pro/USL-2/USL Pro) since 1997. But the difference today is debatable. The Cup gives us scant evidence: Since 2010, when USSF D-2 split from the USL, D2 and D3 are 3-3 against each other. But against MLS teams, NASL teams (6-9, 40%) are more successful than USL Pro teams (9-21, 30%).
That’s assuming I didn’t miss anything in copying and pasting all the results from 1996 to 2014 from TheCup.us, cleaning up the data for easy sorting and searching, writing formulas to take each league name into account, etc.
Here is, to the best of my knowledge and spreadsheeting ability, a list of every U.S. Open Cup upset since MLS teams joined in 1996:
As with the FA Cup, once a top-tier team gets to the later rounds, it gets a bit more serious about the competition. That shows when we look at the quarterfinalists and semifinalists:
In typical soccer fashion, I’m going to take a whole bunch of data and then make a subjective judgment. I added up all the wins and all the runs, then ranked each team’s accomplishments based on how much they overachieved. In other words, a PDL team beating a couple of pro teams is roughly equivalent to an MLS team reaching the final.
Here goes, in reverse order:
14. Carolina RailHawks (USL-1/USSF D-2/NASL): 13 wins in seven years (through 2013). 1-time semifinalist. 4 wins over MLS teams.
2007 (USL-1): Semifinalist. Beat Chicago Fire.
2012 (NASL): Beat Los Angeles.
2013 (NASL): Quarterfinalist. Beat Los Angeles and Chivas USA.
2012: Beat Pittsburgh Riverhounds (USL Pro) 1-0 away; beat Chicago Fire (MLS) 3-2 after extra time.
8. Richmond Kickers (USL top leagues/USL-2/USL Pro): 22 wins. Champions in 1995, the first year of the pro era and the year before MLS launched. 1-time semifinalist.
2000 (A-League): Beat Colorado Rapids.
2001 (A-League): Quarterfinalist
2004 (A-League): Quarterfinalist. Beat D.C. United.
2007 (USL-2): Quarterfinalist. Beat Los Angeles.
2011 (USL-2): Semifinalist. Beat Columbus and Sporting Kansas City.
2004 (A-League): Semifinalist. Upset MetroStars (MLS) in round of 16, beat Rochester (A-League) in quarterfinals. Fell to Chicago (MLS) in extra time, just missing the final.
1996 (A-League): Runner-up. Upset Tampa Bay Mutiny in extra time (quarterfinals), upset Colorado Rapids 3-0, lost final to D.C. United.
1999 (A-League): Champion. Four straight wins over MLS teams. 1-0 over Chicago Fire, 2-1 (ET) over Dallas Burn, 3-2 over Columbus Crew and 2-0 over Colorado Rapids.
2004 (A-League): Quarterfinalist
2005 (A-League): Quarterfinalist
2009 (USL-1): Semifinalist
NOTEWORTHY RUNS/HONORABLE MENTION
1997: San Francisco Bay Seals (D3) beat two MLS teams (Kansas City Wizards, San Jose Clash) to reach semifinals.
2003: Fresno Fuego (PDL) beat Utah Blitzz (PSL) and El Paso Patriots (A-League) to reach round of 16, losing to LA Galaxy in quarterfinals. Came back in 2014 with win over Orange County Blues (USL Pro).
2005: Minnesota Thunder (A-League) beat PDL’s Chicago Fire Premier, won a wild 6-4 game in extra time over Real Salt Lake, then beat the Colorado Rapids and Kansas City Wizards (away) to reach semifinals. The year before, the Thunder beat the Los Angeles Galaxy. That’s four wins over MLS teams.
2006: Dallas Roma FC (USASA) beat PDL’s Laredo Heat on PKs, then USL-1’s Miami FC 1-0, then Chivas USA on PKs, falling in fourth round.
2006: Carolina Dynamo (PDL) beat two pro teams: Richmond Kickers (USL-2) in second round, Seattle Sounders (USL-1) in third, setting up Dynamo-Dynamo matchup vs. Houston. As a pro team, reached quarterfinals in 1996.
2007: New England Revolution (MLS) made a rare run in the Cup and won it all. Next best runs: final in 2001, semifinal in 2008.
2012: Cal FC (USASA) beat Wilmington Hammerheads (USL Pro) 4-0 away and Portland Timbers (MLS) 1-0 away.
TEAMS WITH 10 OR MORE WINS
34 Chicago Fire (2nd in the ranking above)
33 Rochester Rhinos (1st)
32 DC United (4th)
30 Seattle Sounders (3rd)
29 Charleston Battery (5th)
27 Dallas Burn / FC Dallas (7th)
23 Los Angeles Galaxy (6th)
22 Richmond Kickers (8th)
19 Columbus Crew (13th)
18 Kansas City Wizards / Sporting KC (12th)
16 MetroStars / New York Red Bulls
15 Harrisburg City Islanders (11th)
15 Wilmington Hammerheads (10th)
14 New England Revolution
13 Carolina RailHawks (14th)
12 Mid-Michigan Bucks / Michigan Bucks (9th)
12 Minnesota Thunder
12 San Jose Clash / Earthquakes
11 Carolina Dynamo
11 Des Moines Menace
10 Charlotte Eagles
10 Portland Timbers
Corrections? Comments? Commiseration for staring at spreadsheets for so long? Share below.
Writers use Game of Thrones to explain everything these days. I don’t have HBO, so maybe someone can explain Game of Thrones to me in terms of indoor soccer history. Is the Stark family the equivalent of the MISL? Is “Lord Littlefinger” Tatu?
When we last left the Indoor Soccer Wars, the MISL had a new plan for moving forward without any of the teams that played in it. The teams themselves were all going to play … somewhere.
If you’re one of the diehards who checks the BigSoccer indoor soccer forum, you’ve watched as the rumors of a new league building on the existing PASL have come true. If you’re not one of the diehards, you woke up Monday to this:
1. The PASL has won the latest Indoor Soccer War, though I’m not sure they really intended to fight. They were a low-budget alternative to the MISL, which just ended a three-year run under the auspices of the USL. Six of the seven teams from last year’s MISL departed to join this new league. The seventh, the Pennsylvania Roar, shall rest in peace.
2. It means the powers that be are trying to phase out the name “indoor” in favor of “arena.” In Mexico, it’s actually “futbol rapido,” because it often takes place outside, neither in a stadium nor an arena.
It’s more scenic than the place I play, but half my clearances would end up in the trees. (Photo from Mario Ortegon via Wikimedia Commons; click image for original)
3. It means the Baltimore Blast, Dallas Sidekicks, Milwaukee Wave, San Diego Sockers and the Not-Tacoma Stars (more explanation on Facebook) will be in the same league, just like the old days. In several cases, they’ll have more ties to their glory days than the current Seattle Sounders, New York Cosmos, Tampa Bay Rowdies, Portland Timbers, etc.
4. With 24 teams, this will be the largest top-level indoor (er, arena) league since … ever. The NASL had 24 outdoor teams in the 70s, and it had an indoor league, but not all the teams participated. Spoilsports.
(I’m not going to sum up indoor soccer history because I already did it. And that includes the infamous San Diego Sockers rap video.)
The PASL’s pro league (they also have amateur competitions) contributes 14 teams. Their average attendance early last season ranged from 6,144 to 242. The lack of parity showed in the standings, as the San Diego Sockers claimed a record win streak that the Washington Kastles (World Team Tennis) also claimed. (Sadly, the new league is not taking Dan Steinberg’s suggestion – United Alliance of Super Awesome Amazing Indoor Soccer Playing Awesome People.)
Beyond that, a lot of things are up in the air. They still haven’t settled the argument over Multiple Point Scoring (2 points for most goals, 3 points for a goal shot from beyond an arc), which is to arena soccer fans what promotion/relegation is to outdoor soccer fans.
The Baltimore Blast, by most measures the most stable NPSL/NISL/MISL team, is one of the big movers and shakers behind the new league along with the San Diego Sockers and Missouri Comets. Next step: Re-signing all the players.
(Yes, those are the same Missouri Comets whose sibling team is FC Kansas City of the NWSL. In Vlatko we trust.)
There is still a World Cup scheduled for March, pushed back from February. The organizing body used to be FIFRA — futbol rapido accounts for the “FR” of the name — but it’s now the Confederation Panamericana de Minifutbol (warning — my SiteAdvisor rated that site “yellow), an affiliate of the World Minifootball Federation, which is an umbrella of various 5-, 6- and 7-a-side games. Except futsal and beach soccer, which are under the control of FIFA. Got it?
But back to this continent: The indoor game has a consistent, coherent direction now. There’s a pro/amateur organization. All the indoor teams in the USA are on the same page.
And that really can’t be a bad thing.
If you don’t like indoor soccer, ignore it — which you already are. If you do like it, a lot of the clutter of the past 15 years is gone, and that has to be encouraging.
Soccer karma does not exist, most of us have agreed. But can a team make its own luck?
Saturday at the SoccerPlex looked like a typical Washington Spirit game against the Western New York Flash for 45 minutes. The Spirit had a few promising moments — one difference from previous engagements would be the world-class goal from Jodie Taylor that gave the Spirit the lead. But the Flash led 2-1, and it could’ve been more.
In the second half, the Flash either forgot or declined to play soccer. They looked less like the Flash playing the Spirit and more like the Virginia Beach Piranhas bringing their “physical” presence against D.C. United Women.
Stating for the record: The Flash are not a dirty team. But it’s still stunning to watch a team riddled with world-class players and a history of accomplishment come in against the Washington Spirit and foul out of frustration and retaliation. Their petulance — and what coach Aaran Lines described as an inability to string three passes together — was costly.
And the Spirit made their own luck as well. A couple of tactical adjustments gave the home team quite a bit more of the ball, and they dominated the second half to a greater degree than the Flash dominated the first. Final score: 3-2 Spirit.
That’s a confidence-booster for the hosts. Jodie Taylor finally got her goals — two, nearly four. Yael Averbuch played her best game for the Spirit. Lori Lindsey got an extended run and fared well. Robyn Gayle defended well and was close to a goal and an assist. Ali Krieger did just fine at center back.
Referee Katja Koroleva had a puzzler, often allowing outright muggings while punishing the odd single-handed shove. Lines wasn’t happy: “The referee was inconsistent, regardless of the result. But that seems to be a tendency within the NWSL.”
But the Flash simply forced Koroleva to blow her whistle. She went nearly 45 minutes without calling anything on the Flash, but some fouls were just too obvious.
Here’s the video, and here’s how it unfolded:
FIRST HALF
6:15 – Big flurry for the Flash as Ashlyn Harris can’t hold a hard shot.
7:15 – Hard sliding foul from Spirit defender Bianca Sierra on Sonia Bermudez. Sierra started at right back, with Ali Krieger going to the center to replace the injured Toni Pressley.
8:15 – Spirit midfielder Veronica Perez goes hard for a 50-50 ball, banging into the midsection of a Flash player.
8:20 – To paraphrase The Untouchables, she sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of hers to the morgue. The Flash’s Carli Lloyd clobbers Christine Nairn, who gets up and looks back as if to say “What the …?” Danielle Malagari, the Spirit’s color commentator, goes out on a limb and predicts a physical game.
But that’s the last foul called on the Flash in the first half.
10:35 – Lori Lindsey sends a well-weighted ball ahead to Jodie Taylor, who finishes with a world-class chip. 1-0 Spirit.
12:55 – Adriana hits the crossbar for the Flash.
16:35 – The camera doesn’t quite catch the dubious decision involving Tori Huster, a required part of every Spirit game. Abby Wambach flings the Spirit defender to the grass like a Nickelodeon game show contestant ridding herself of slime.
16:55 – The unlucky Huster finds herself isolated against Wambach in acres of space, and Wambach simply heads exactly where she wanted it to go. 1-1.
19:00 – The crowd doesn’t like an offside call that nullified yet another Taylor goal. Replay is inconclusive.
29:25 – Lloyd wins a duel with Huster, then beats Krieger and Harris while avoiding Gayle. 2-1 Flash.
34:20 – Lloyd takes a knock to the eye or nose when she tangles with Averbuch. Hard to see what happened, but no one complains.
HALFTIME
Flash coach Aaran Lines was pleased with how the first half proceeded. But oddly enough, so were the Spirit players and coaches.
“We were really happy at halftime,” Spirit coach Mark Parsons said. “Really positive at halftime despite being 2-1 down.”
Parsons made a couple of changes. Krieger was already at center back, replacing the injured Toni Pressley. At right back, Sierra started but gave way at halftime to the small Swiss Army knife that is Crystal Dunn, who shifted back from midfield with the intent of containing Bermudez, a Flash’s Spanish international.
And the Spirit merely brought on one of the best players in the sport, Diana Matheson, who sat out the first half and spent halftime jogging and smiling at the parade of ODSL youth players being honored for sportsmanship. You have to hope they didn’t get any ideas from what they saw in the second half.
“We came out the second half and we were really flat,” Wambach said. “Credit to the Spirit for making changes and making life difficult for us on the other side of the ball. To be honest, the second half, we were defending the whole game.”
So the Flash tried to make life as difficult for the Spirit as the officials would allow. Matheson stepped into a hornet’s nest, credited with two fouls suffered but roughed up much more often than that.
SECOND HALF
55:25 – Save, Abby Wambach
56:05 – Lloyd clatters into Matheson from behind, drawing a whistle and some words from the ref.
64:30 – Lloyd gives a little “Who, me?” look after getting a little bit (not much) of Dunn’s foot along with the ball.
68:15 – Kristen Edmonds drapes an arm over Matheson and brings her down. Foul and a lecture.
69:15 – Gayle nutmegs a defender. Cross is partially cleared to Yael Averbuch, who beats Lloyd and shoots. Deflected, then Taylor fires up off the crossbar. Bounces off Kat Williamson’s back and in. 2-2.
72:45 – It’s nothing, really, but it’s funny to see Wambach reaching out to grab Matheson like she’s swatting at a fly. Just a slight size difference there.
73:05 – Harris comes out for the second time in a minute to deny an onrushing Flash attacker — Salem this time, Spencer earlier.
73:30 – Nairn shoots high while Lloyd slides through her legs. No whistle.
74:10 – Salem gets the yellow, again for a foul on the unfortunate Nairn.
77:05 – Nairn suffers another foul. And that eventually leads to …
77:30 – Averbuch flicks a header, Taylor finishes. 3-2
85:05 – Gayle seems to be attempting to jump OVER former teammate Jasmyne Spencer. Not quite. Ref starts to play advantage but then calls it back.
85:35 – The Wambach-Huster incident (replay at 87:15). We’ll come back to this.
89:05 – Ref doesn’t think Angeli fouled Lloyd
90:15 – Spirit commentator Michael Minnich isn’t imagining things. The sign on the fourth official’s table says “3.” But by the time he actually raises it, it says “5.” (No, there wasn’t a sub wearing No. 3.)
91:55 – Maybe this is karma. The call for a corner kick is clearly wrong. Harris sets up for a goal kick. What you don’t see is a very confused ballgirl. Then Harris makes a save off the corner kick. The rebound … goes wide.
93:45 – Hey, Spirit? Need help killing those five minutes? Sure — I’ll just slide through the back of Renae Cuellar here, drawing my second yellow, and I’ll be slow to get up while the ref holds my red card.
Lines faulted his player, Angela Salem, not the ref. “At that point in the game, to see Ang go in was unfortunate.”
But that was the story of the second half for the Flash. They played nothing that really resembled soccer.
Malagari, sometime in the second half: “I think the Flash have kind of dug themselves a hole here. They’re kind of playing, I personally think, for blood a little bit. The fouls have been pretty dangerous in and around their own 18.”
We can’t let the game go without mentioning the Wambach-Huster incident at the end. While Harris calmly collected the ball, Wambach raced past Huster. From the replay, it appears Huster was actually turning her body out of Wambach’s way. And still, they bumped into each other — in the same way that my car recently bumped into a concrete wall in a parking garage.
Did Huster embellish her fall? Hard to say. But from one reliable reporter on the sideline, Wambach didn’t exactly deny making contact:
I thought at first Cynthia was kidding, like I was kidding last summer when I suggested what Alex Morgan could be saying and unleashed the wrath of Morgan’s Twitter followers on myself. Cynthia says no.
Tori, care to comment?
“Not really,” she said. “Just gotta leave that kind of stuff on the field. It gets heated. There’s not really not much to say.”
Rough game, though, right?
“They are definitely intense,” Huster said. “They can move the ball around, but they have that grit to them. So we were definitely trying to prepare for that in the week leading up. We knew we had to get stuck in the first five minutes and impose our rhythm.”
As she left, I reminded her to tend to the blood on her left wrist. Not sure how she got that.
Matheson was diplomatic. “They’re definitely a physical team. Lloyd and Wambach always come to battle. But in this league, every team is a physical team, so I don’t think it’s too different.”
But that physicality can be self-defeating. Look at the second half, and it seems the Flash literally took their eyes off the ball.
Over the winter, Seattle coach/GM Laura Harvey was elevated to mystical status. Soft-spoken and youthful, the veteran of England’s top-level game somehow pulled off deal after deal.
If you see this woman approaching, be careful to avoid trading away your house for the rights to a player still in Sweden.
Women’s soccer fans joked that Harvey was making another deal at every waking moment. On a panel with Spirit coach Mark Parsons? Surely offering her backup right back for Diana Matheson. Reading the paper? Surely perusing more trade options. Ordering at Panera? Maybe they would take a fourth-round draft pick for Erika Tymrak and some soup in a bread bowl.
Those were the jokes when we didn’t see how all these deals would pay off. What can we say now that the Reign have won their first five games?
The fifth was in many respects the most fortunate of those wins. After all, this was the first game Seattle has won by less than two goals. The Washington Spirit had Seattle on its heels for portions of the game, causing some confusion in central defense. One defender nearly kicked Hope Solo in the head on a muddled clearance. And for the first time this season, the Reign — please sit down and brace yourself — surrendered a goal in the run of play. (Washington has scored both goals Seattle has given up this year — the first was a penalty kick in their prior meeting in Seattle.)
But Seattle never backed away from its simple strategy.
“The old adage of ‘attack’s the best form of defense’ is something we definitely employ,” Harvey said.
And the lineup was attack-minded in every sense. Maybe you could call it a 4-2-3-1, with Jess Fishlock and Keelin Winters at holding mid and Beverly Goebel, Nahoma Kawasumi and Kim Little buzzing around behind target forward Sydney Leroux. But it really looked a bit more like a 4-1-2-3. And if that wasn’t enough for the attack, right back Elli Reed constantly streaked up the flank and put in dangerous crosses while defenders were occupied with everyone else.
“As an outside back, it’s pretty much expected of you today to get forward and get crosses off,” Reed said. “This is a nice big field, so it allowed me to get forward a bit more.”
Five, six, maybe seven attackers at once. Could Harvey explain that concept to Chelsea’s Jose Mourinho, Europe’s best-paid bus-parking attendant? The former Arsenal women’s coach laughed. “You can’t knock him — he still might win the Premier League!”
It’s fun to watch, especially against a team like the Spirit that’s willing to go toe-to-toe with the Reign. And that style attracts players.
NWSL Player of the Month Kim Little: “I know Laura very well. I worked with her for three years at Arsenal. I love the way that she wants to play football.”
Spirit coach Mark Parsons countered with a novel move, playing the irrepressible Crystal Dunn at attacking midfield to tie up Fishlock and Winters. Sounds crazy, but he was right. Fishlock was involved in some chippiness in midfield but wasn’t much of a factor, nor was Winters.
That just left room for Seattle to press on the wings.
“Yes, Seattle were tired on a long trip, but they’ve got sheer quality everywhere,” Parsons said. “They’re a Dream Team. They’re an absolute Dream Team all over the pitch.”
And apparently quite fit. Seattle has played four games in 11 days — two at home, one in atrocious conditions in New Jersey, then last night’s game. (At least the threatened rain never materialized — the evening was pleasant.) A lot of coaches would rotate players in those circumstances.
Not Harvey. Six Reign players have played all 450 minutes this season. Three more have played at least 440. Take away the one change Harvey has made in her starting lineup (Megan Rapinoe went 90 in the one game for which she has been healthy and available), and non-starters on the team have played a total of 79 minutes.
Harvey: “The reason why I haven’t rotated the side yet is that when you’re winning games, it’s hard to.”
Like Yoda, this coach is.
Leroux scored her first goal of the season last night, pouncing on a Spirit giveaway and getting just enough space past Tori Huster to fire far post past Ashlyn Harris. She doesn’t mind seeing seven teammates open their scoring tally before she did.
“It felt, in Boston, a little bit like me and Heather (O’Reilly) and a few others had to really be on point. With this team, I feel like we have so much depth. Every single player on the field is unbelievable. That’s no discredit to Boston at all, but I do feel Seattle is the team to beat right now, for sure.”
Harvey, looking ahead to the next game in a tough schedule in May, disagrees.
“Portland-Seattle is a great rivalry. Portland are champions. They are who they are for a reason. They were the best team in the league last season, and for me, they’re the favorites for the league this season no matter what results have been so far.”
Yes, that next game is in Portland. The Northwest rivalry. Defending champ vs. unbeaten team. No. 1 vs. No. 2.
(Opens Google Calendar — makes appointment for 10 p.m. ET Saturday.)
Here’s what FIFA rules say: “Each goalkeeper must wear colours that distinguish him from the other players, the referee and the assistant referees.”
That seems to allow some wiggle room — if you’re wearing black socks along with your teammates, are you really not distinguished from other players? If the ref is wearing red socks, do you have to change to blue?
Typically, goalkeepers these days wear some insane green or yellow shorts and socks that no one else would wear. But I did find at least one instance of a keeper wearing similar shorts to those of his teammates in the Bundesliga and another from the Premier League.
But let’s get back to the NWSL. What do the rules really say?
10.2.3 GOALKEEPER UNIFORM AND EQUIPMENT The goalkeeper’s uniform should feature different colors than her teammates, opponents and the Game Officials’ uniforms. The Goalkeeper uniform and equipment will conform to FIFA. The goalkeeper’s dominant jersey color(s) will be completely different than her Team’s jersey color(s) and that of the opponents Team. While the goalkeeper’s shorts and socks may be the same as the rest of her Team, the League Office strongly encourages the Goalkeeper to wear an entire outfit that completely contrasts that of her Team’s. Each Team should carry an extra, unnumbered Goalkeeper jersey for a Player not normally a goalkeeper who is substituted at goalkeeper for whatever reason.
So … someone was telling Hope Solo the wrong rules?
Huddersfield Town GK jersey from 20 years ago, courtesy oldfootballshirts.com
One note: Colors are all determined well in advance of each match, and the referee is supposed to enforce them. Another possibility: The same ref who failed to look at the assistant refs frantically signaling an obvious offside call or hand out cards for blatant infractions (Veronica Perez’s judo throw, Solo’s repeated refusal to put the ball back in play while the ref waved his hand) made another procedural mistake.
In any case, lines were crossed somewhere along the way.
Update: OK, we can’t blame the ref. Or NWSL rulemakers. Or WPS, retroactively.
I can just bring these to the Soccerplex, you know.
Seattle and Washington currently have only two colors of goalkeeping socks — black and white. That left only three colors — red, black and white — to be worn among Seattle’s field players, Seattle’s goalkeepers, Washington’s field players and Washington’s goalkeepers. Someone had to match socks. So the league consulted with PRO, which oversees officials, and they determined that if someone had to match, it should be Seattle’s goalkeepers and field players.
As far as I can tell, this action violates neither the letter nor the … um, spirit … of either the FIFA Laws of the Game or the NWSL rule book. And fortunately, no one attempted a jiu-jitsu leglock during the course of the game. (Veronica Perez completed a throw that was closer to judo, not jiu-jitsu.)
Seattle’s “berry” goalkeeping socks have not yet arrived.
The next time an NWSL keeper is in Washington and needs socks, please let me know. A few of my socks are pictured here — solid green, red-and-black stripes. I also have a few pairs of solid black and could possibly dig up some blinding yellow.
This post is going to start with an academic question and veer into the approaching collective bargaining abyss.
Major League Soccer is a “single entity” league. So what does that mean?
For lawyers, it’s an intriguing concept, and the lawsuit challenging it might come up in a local law school class. For the league’s detractors, it means MLS isn’t authentic competition.
But does it mean the same thing today that it meant in 1996, when the league started and Sunil Gulati was parceling out players, or 2002, when the league was down to three owners?
The original allocation of players was absolutely top-down. You get John Harkes. You get Tab Ramos. You get this guy who’ll be a bust, so we’ll figure out how to get you another guy.
The allocation structure has evolved into something much more complicated. It’s like having chips you can cash in or trade for talent that’s more experienced than a draftee but less sought-after than a Designated Player.
So MLS has a byzantine collection of roster rules, and it still seems like the big clubs have an advantage. Sounds like every other league, doesn’t it?
The NFL has a salary cap, but the Washington Redskins always manage to outspend people. (Fortunately for the competition, they spend poorly.) The NBA has a cap with plentiful exceptions and exemptions. Even the “open market” Major League Baseball has some quirks — MLS has the Re-Entry Draft, and MLB has the Rule V Draft.
Soccer leagues also have some top-down requirements. Transfer windows. Financial Fair Play, though that seems to have as many loopholes as the NFL salary cap. Revenue sharing on big TV deals. Parachute payments for relegated clubs.
So what makes MLS “single entity” any different from any other league from a competitive standpoint?
You can’t say “it limits investment.” MLS teams have done little but invest over the past decades. New stadiums. New training grounds. Youth academies.
(B)ecause competition between teams is so intense, and a club’s tenure in the top flight is so uncertain, the clubs themselves are often reluctant to invest their own money. This can lead to a problem of facility underinvestment, with often tragic consequences.
The authors go on to name the worst two tragedies in English soccer — the fire in the Bradford stands that claimed 56 lives and the Hillsborough disaster. Something needed to change, and in this case, the government stepped in.
Other laissez-faire leagues haven’t fared well recently. Women’s Professional Soccer had a light touch to begin with, then scaled back its central office to the bare minimum needed to run the league. Like weeds in a barren lawn, dysfunction quickly crept in and took over.
So if you’re looking for a professional sports league without some sort of top-down interference with the “authenticity” of competition, you’re going to be disappointed. MLS may have more rules than many, but the blanket “single entity” accusation doesn’t hold a lot of water.
Specific roster rules? Oh, we can argue about those all we want. And with the collective bargaining agreement in its final year, it’s time.
Let’s start with the Re-Entry Draft, a clever concoction that helped seal the last CBA and was then tested in real life by Jimmy Conrad, one of the union reps who pushed for it. Looking back, we’ll always be grateful that it fit everyone’s needs at the time so we could avoid a labor stoppage. But is it necessary now? If teams are bidding against each other for players at the top end of the pay scale, do we need any artificial limits to free agency for those players who are commanding the smaller bucks?
But the league’s biggest challenges must be met collectively.
In a lot of leagues, teams compete only against each other. MLS is trying to compete in a global marketplace. Improving the quality of play is Topic A. (Improving the quality of broadcasts is another issue, with NBC Sports Network raising the bar through its terrific work with the Premier League AND Major League Soccer.) Salaries have gone up from a $1.9 million cap a decade ago to an average of over $5 million per team now — progress, but there’s always room to make the game a bit better, either through more spending or other initiatives.
So as we head into collective bargaining — which actually is unique to the USA — perhaps the “single entity” can roar one more time.
(Or perhaps a couple of coaches quit prepping their teams to play with the negativity of a North Carolina Senate race. Just saying.)
Flipped through the English standings today and thought League Two was curiously low-scoring. One spreadsheet later, here are the stats:
Premier League
2.76 goals per game
48.8 goals per team (mean — fewer games than other leagues)
40.5 goals per team (median)
96 – highest goal total (Liverpool, 35 games)
28 – lowest goal total (Crystal Palace, 35 games)
Championship 2.56 goals per game
57.5 goals per team (mean)
57.0 goals per team (median)
82 – highest goal total (Leicester and Derby, 45 games each)
35 – lowest goal total (Charlton, 44 games)
League One
2.67 goals per game
59.8 goals per team (mean)
59.0 goals per team (median)
84 – highest goal total (Wolves, 45 games)
43 – lowest goal total (Carlisle, 44 games)
League Two
2.32 goals per game
52.0 goals per team (mean)
50.5 goals per team (median)
68 – highest goal total (Rochdale, 45 games)
39 – lowest goal total (Northampton, 45 games)
Duresport.com 