Sometimes, progress is measured in small steps for individuals. That was the case in the Spirit’s season finale, where Stephanie Ochs at last got on the scoresheet.
I had seen Ochs twice in practice during the week, working various finishing scenarios with both feet. While the rest of the team stretched, Ochs made run after run onto Lloyd Yaxley’s crosses. Mark Parsons told me Ochs had been begging for this sort of extra practice for a while, but the schedule just wasn’t conducive to it. With a rare eight-day gap between games, the coaching staff was happy to oblige.
But it’s been more than this week. Parsons has been working hard to improve Ochs’ tactical sense. It hasn’t always been fun. I’ve seen Ochs’ face awash with frustration and despair as Parsons once again yells out instructions.
Ochs is talented and athletic. No one who has seen a Spirit game will deny that. But like a lot of young players, she came out of college with a lot of bad habits. She would take several more steps than she needed to approach the ball. Her decision-making in the offensive third wasn’t quick enough for the pro level. It worked for her in college, and the Western New York commentary team had high praise for her season in the WPSL Elite.
She didn’t give up. Nor did the coaching staff give up on her.
And so if nothing else happened on Sunday, the mere fact that Ochs efficiently and effectively blasted a shot into the back of the net would give the Spirit staff and fans much to cheer.
And there wasn’t much else to report. The offense keeps getting better — with another five weeks to the season, they would have been formidable — but the timing is slightly TWEET … yep, Conny Pohlers was offside again. Sometimes, it was the pass that was a hair late. Sometimes, it was Pohlers surely seeing blood in the water. Or merely excited that she found some space among Sky Blue’s defenders, who have the size to blot out the sun, let alone stop a short-ish forward from taking more than one touch on the ball.
The Spirit defense bent a few times. No one is going to complain about the effort of the back five — Julia Roberts spent so much time deep on the field that she was almost a fifth defender — but scrappiness isn’t always enough to get the ball clear. After a long bout of pressure, they finally conceded an equalizer.
Parsons said the Spirit was more dangerous, and I agree. But the result was just.
I stayed out of the pressbox for this game, though I did have a chance to catch up with USA TODAY colleague Christine Brennan. And I was on the field briefly, with just enough time to chat with Sky Blue coach Jim Gabarra. I’ve never seen him so devoid of optimism. Soccer karma owes Sky Blue a win over Western New York in the semifinals, but soccer karma doesn’t exist.
But at least hard work can occasionally pay off. And so Ochs’ finish can provide a great bit of inspirational history for future Spirit teams.
Other random thoughts:
– I thoroughly enjoyed sitting in the stands for one game. The view of the game is better than it is in the pressbox. I can hear Ashlyn Harris. I can hear the fans, though I wish they’d learn to wait for a stoppage in play before meandering around. One large group arrived 15 minutes into the game and was surprised to find most of the general admission seating full. Fan education is a process. The Spirit Squadron and company are helping.
– Danielle Grote posted four postgame interviews. The one you really want to see is the Ashlyn Harris interview. I still sense some detachment among national teamers when things go astray, as if it’s not really happening or is something from which they can just walk away. Not Harris. She’s determined to learn from the losses. She embraces the bad with the good. That’s a soccer player. Excuse me — footballer.
– I had time to make one quip on Twitter during the game, and of course, it was about the ref. She seemed to be enjoying herself, but I think she occasionally forgot that it was her job to call fouls, keep the official time, etc.
Still hoping to have the book done by the end of September. Watch for updates, and thanks for reading this summer.
How did a three-part Empire of Soccer interview with NASL Commissioner Bill Peterson start an epic Twitter beatdown?
Well, it helped that in the first part, he talked about promotion/relegation, the concept that governs most soccer leagues (and other leagues) worldwide, including a lot of U.S. amateur leagues. (I still don’t know whether my indoor team was relegated last season.)
Dan Loney responded with the blog post “Not a Sane League.” That brought out the usual mix of people with an interest in promotion/relegation — some well-intended dreamers who are curious to see if it could work here, plus the people who think promotion/relegation has been kept down by an evil mix of MLS executives, journalists paid off with access or possibly money, and possibly the NSA. I don’t know — I’ve lost track.
That led to the epic Twitter match between Loney and the leader of the accusatory gang. It was mostly off-track, centering on the assertion that the U.S. soccer community has covered up a colorful history in which the old ASL was bigger than American football. Loney showed evidence to show otherwise and demanded that his combatant defend his point, which he completely failed to do.
All of this demonstrates two seemingly contradictory things:
1. There are a handful of somewhat reasonable and capitalized people who think promotion/relegation may be possible in our lifetimes.
2. The people who make the most noise about promotion/relegation online make it really difficult to have a reasonable discussion about it.
For those who are new to the discussion, welcome. Please allow me to bring you up to speed. Read this post for some prior talks, and then please consider the following:
1. Bids for Division I sanctioning were taken in 1993. I have done a fair amount of research on this period for my book and out of curiosity. I know of no effort to have promotion/relegation at that time.
I do, however, know of a bid that had multiple-point scoring like indoor soccer on steroids, and it would have limited players to specific zones and then shuffle them around between periods. This is where soccer stood in the USA in 1993.
2. MLS owners have sunk billions of dollars into this league as it stands now. Municipalities have helped MLS teams build stadiums. The team values and revenue projections that convinced them all to invest in this are predicated on the notion of being in the first division. Many of these investments have been made in the past 10 years — in 2002, the league was down to three owners and had few facilities. People tend to get angry, maybe even litigious, when you get them to pony up tons of capital and then change the rules.
So if you plan to take over USSF and force leagues to have promotion/relegation, bring the lawyers.
3. I have spoken with many team owners and officials in lower divisions. Many of them have relegated themselves. Many owners prefer to play in the fourth-tier PDL than the third-tier USL PRO or second-tier NASL. Why? It costs a whole lot less.
A couple of organizations — Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, Montreal, perhaps Orlando down the road — have made the leap from lower divisions to MLS. They did so over the course of a few years. They brought in owners with deep pockets. They worked out stadium deals. They built up a front office staff. These are not things you do in three months.
4. Promotion/relegation developed in other countries when they had too many teams for one division. In England, the Football League went through its early years occasionally kicking out and adding a new team or two, but a second division wasn’t added until it merged with the Football Alliance. In England and many other countries, leagues developed after clubs had already built their names through Cup competitions.
5. Soccer history in this country has not been ignored as part of a conspiracy to … um … I don’t know exactly how this conspiracy is supposed to work. Seems to have something to do with trying to make people think nothing existed before MLS. Strange argument to make when a bunch of MLS teams are named after their NASL predecessors, or when U.S. Soccer is devoting a lot of resources toward celebrating its centennial this year. (Bill Clinton wrote the preface to the book, so if you like broadening your conspiracy theories, you can now include Whitewater.) Personally, the only reason I don’t often wear my Fall River Marksmen shirt (from Bumpy Pitch) more often is that I’m fat and I don’t fit into it that well.
Several people have made extraordinary efforts to keep U.S. soccer history alive through many dark decades. It’s not as if the NASL of the 70s paid tribute to the ASL of the 20s and 30s. We needed the efforts of Colin Jose, Roger Allaway, Sam Foulds, Jack Huckel, David Litterer and David Wangerin to bring it all to life, even as the National Soccer Hall of Fame ran out of money. (This was all summed up in a terrific story this week.)
The main lesson that can be drawn from those histories: Soccer has had a couple of opportunities to gain a firm foothold in the USA, and it fell apart through in-fighting over petty crap. Kind of like we could end up doing now if we try to upend 20 years of progress in pro soccer.
6. This might be the most important point: There is no evidence whatsoever that a lack of promotion/relegation is what’s holding back pro soccer in the United States.
The point gets muddied here because promotion/relegation is sometimes considered part of an “open system” in which clubs are free to spend what they want. That’s what we see in Europe, though “Financial Fair Play” rules may introduce some limits, and Germany’s Bundesliga is having tremendous success while refusing to break the bank.
But most soccer owners in the USA in recent years have set out to minimize risk. The NWSL, USL, NPSL, WPSL and APS are designed to keep costs down, and they’re not running the risk of losing revenue by being kicked down the pyramid against their will. That’s why MLS had such rigid cost-containment rules for its first decade and change. Only now, in the post-Beckham era, is that starting to change.
If you’re looking for the NASL to change all that, you may be disappointed. For all the bluster of the New York Cosmos and the lack of an official salary cap at the moment, they aren’t spending crazy money. I’ve been told by an insider (anonymous source alert, though maybe he’ll step forward) that the NASL is operating with “less risk, lower operating costs.”
Meanwhile, MLS is spending with confidence — on stadiums, on youth academies, on players like Clint Dempsey. And the league has managed to do so even as the explosion of cable and new media has made it possible for U.S. fans to see every English/Welsh Premier League game (I plan to make “Ew-pull” stick) and every trick Lionel Messi has at his feet.
Would an “open system” help U.S. (and Canadian) teams develop into superclubs that can hold their own with the Man Uniteds and the Barcelonas of the world? Maybe when MLS and NASL owners have seen enough returns on their investments that they’re willing to risk spending more and seeing their teams relegated. The best-case scenario for the NASL, which is probably not the most probable scenario, is that the league thrives to the point at which it, too, meets the criteria for a Division 1 league. And then — maybe — we could talk about merging MLS and the NASL as the Football League and Football Alliance did in England.
Is that likely? Probably not.
But it’s more likely than creating a thriving U.S. league system by taking over U.S. Soccer and starting an “open system” from scratch or trying to force existing leagues to abide by drastically different rules.
And by pointing this out, I’m part of the conspiracy. And I’ll surely attract obnoxious comments. I’d encourage people to ignore those comments and relish the fact that, this weekend, you can see European games on several networks and then check out your local MLS, NWSL, NASL or USL team. If you’re over age 25, you remember when soccer was something that barely existed above the college level, and you have to marvel at the progress.
Simply put: There’s never been a better time to be a soccer fan in North America. And it’s all been done without telling people who step up to risk their money that they need to take risks that are even less likely to pay off than the ones they’re already taking.
Wednesday’s game against Chicago was, by all practical measures, the Spirit’s first win since May 16. The league rules are clear. Washington was the better side in the 77 minutes played before the first lightning delay. As cruel as it was for the Red Stars to have their playoff hopes officially extinguished without even being on the field, the Spirit won fair and square.
But it was incomplete. Wednesday night/Thursday morning, Mark Parsons talked about not being able to hear the final whistle in front of the dozens of fans who had stuck it out through nearly three hours of stopping and starting.
Perhaps that made the Spirit hungrier. Parsons and Diana Matheson both talked afterwards about wanting to hear that final whistle. And this time, they did — in front of more than 4,000 fans. (Only a handful of the 4,549 got out to beat traffic.)
Several of us have said over the course of the season that the Spirit, beset by bad karma all season, just needed a little luck to get a good result or two. You could say they got it Wednesday, though it’s worth reiterating that the Spirit played well enough to win.
Saturday night, no luck was needed. It wasn’t a dominant performance, of course, but the Spirit created the better chances. Seattle coach Laura Harvey cited the long road trip for her team’s disappointing performance, but she wasn’t making excuses or disputing that Washington deserved the result.
The Spirit did with a lot of heart, certainly, but also with some tactical and technical shrewdness. Parsons’ formation was described several ways — 4-2-1-2-1, 4-2-3-1, 4-3-3. The bottom line was that the Spirit used two holding mids, Lori Lindsey and Julia Roberts, instead of one. Between their efforts and a solid back line, with Marisa Abegg more than justifying her late-season addition, the Spirit held Seattle to very little. Some of the Reign’s shots were from distances that would challenge field-goal kickers. In a bright start to the second half, Jessica Fishlock had a low bending shot graze the post, but Ashlyn Harris otherwise had little trouble.
The formation tweak, Parsons said, helped to free Diana Matheson and Lupita Worbis in the attack. Worbis spent much of the game being roughed up by Fishlock (fans noticed), who came into the game one yellow card shy of a suspension and will play the season finale only through the bottomless benevolence of referee Kari Seitz. But Matheson had a superb game. The Canadian midfielder was a revelation in the early going this season, slowed a bit after the international break, then reasserted her all-league claim in the last couple of games.
Stephanie Ochs and Conny Pohlers weren’t always on the same page, and Pohlers waved her arms so hard to plead for the ball that I thought her arms might pop out. But they combined well in the 32nd minute. A sweet ball from Lori Lindsey hit Pohlers, who played it wide to Ochs. The tall youngster cut toward the center and played the ball back to Pohlers, who had one of the neatest finishes past Hope Solo you’ll ever see. The only problem: She was offside.
“Before I knew it, Lloyd (Yaxley) was jumping all over me,” Parsons said. “I looked for the linesman’s flag. I always do that — everything’s gone against us. Before we scored, I saw the flag going up. Lloyd’s going mental, and I said, ‘Lloyd, no chance. We’ll get it in the second half.’”
Pohlers also was denied by a world-class save from Solo at the left post. Matheson set up that one and another chance late in the half, where Lindsey passed up a shooting opportunity and played ahead in the box to Pohlers, who was wide open but couldn’t control the pass.
Matheson kept making good plays in the second half as the rest of the attacking cast changed. Pohlers departed to a warm ovation, drawing an overhead clap from the German forward in response. Tiffany McCarty played a couple of nice crosses from the right wing. A Robyn Gayle shot was blocked by a probable handball; Seitz kept the whistle quiet there and on a similar scene in the Spirit box.
Maybe Matheson was a little lucky to get the ball for the goal. A loose ball bounced around — as Matheson put it, it took “a few bounces” and went “off a few shins.” But the finish was simply top-quality. From an acute angle, she had only a tiny bit of net at the far post she could hit if she wanted to get the ball past Solo. And that’s what she did.
Solo seemed quite bitter afterwards, but she did talk about a touching moment before the game, when she and Ali Krieger met a young cancer patient whose name, coincidentally, is Hope. Solo said she does a lot of meetings like this, “but this one’s special. Maybe she touched me in a certain way, maybe (because) her name was Hope, maybe it was just a sweet family with three sweet kids. It was very touching.”
It’s not physically possible for Solo and Rapinoe to sign autographs for every single person who asked. But on the whole, I think all the fans went away happy. The low score didn’t do justice to the amount of action in the game. The weather was perfect, which everyone especially appreciated after Wednesday’s annoyances.
And it’s the first crowd this season to see the Spirit celebrate at the final whistle.
For 77 minutes, the Washington Spirit and Chicago Red Stars played an entertaining soccer game. Both teams were seriously short-handed, as they had been too often through this season. But they stuck it out and put together some decent chances.
Then the evening took a supernatural turn, like the end of L.A. Story, when the weather suddenly changes so Victoria Tennant can’t fly away from Steve Martin. (You’d never guess from that clip, but it’s actually a funny film.)
It had been a typical first half from the Spirit on the team’s good days. Maybe a little better. Washington outshot Chicago in the first half and had the best couple of chances, including one that was cleared off the line after Diana Matheson, Erin McLeod and a defender awkwardly converged in the box. (I’m told by people who had a better view than the pressbox/broadcast camera that Matheson was not fouled.)
Spirit coach Mark Parsons: “The first half, I feel they got a couple of clear-cut opportunities but we created a lot more. That might be the first half that we got more shots than the opposition for a long time.”
At halftime, the fans were treated to an impromptu juggling and passing exhibition by four tired Spirit national team players who didn’t start — Conny Pohlers, Ashlyn Harris, Lori Lindsey and Ali Krieger.
But Krieger would play a vital role in the second half. The Spirit started on the back foot, with backup keeper Chantel Jones racing out to collect at the feet of Adriana Leon. Krieger came in at midfield and picked up the team’s confidence.
Parsons: “The scariest moment was coming out for the second half for the first 5-10 minutes. I looked at Lloyd (Yaxley, the goalkeeping coach) and thought, ‘There’s only one thing that will help swing momentum, and it’s not a tactical or technical thing. It’s just a psychological thing.’ And that’s when we brought Krieger on. Everyone (on the Spirit) was kind of panicking and shaking a little bit, they see her come on, and everyone settled.”
Then came the first supernatural event. The Spirit scored. From the run of play.
And it was Lupita Worbis, the allocated Mexican player who arrived a few weeks into the season and has bounced in and out of the lineup, who created and finished the play. She won the ball in midfield, spun 360 degrees, knocked the ball left to Diana Matheson and ran on to Matheson’s textbook one-touch return pass. Then she put it through McLeod’s legs and in. All in front of her parents, who are visiting from Mexico.
As if commenting on the improbability of what had just happened, the skies opened up 10 minutes later, with heavy rain sending shrieks through the crowd. That’s Supernatural Event #2. For five minutes and change, the game was played in a downpour. Somewhere in the rain, Chicago substitute Maribel Dominguez somehow found the speed in her 34-year-old legs to race past Kika Toulouse and Tori Huster, but Jones easily collected her cross.
The rain stopped abruptly. But a couple minutes later, the Maryland SoccerPlex’s WeatherBug Lightning Detection System sprang into action. Clear the field. As if to verify the automated sensors, some dazzling lightning lit up the sky while we sat in the pressbox. Supernatural Event #3.
The next 105 minutes have been temporarily erased from my memory. I’ll somehow piece it back together when the time comes to write the book. I know at some point fans were heading back into the SoccerPlex, only for the alarm to go off again.
Then we heard this:
When there has been no lightning strike within ten (10) miles for a continuous 15 minute period, the horns will blast three (3) times, each blast is five (5) seconds
But apparently not this:
You may return to the field after the three (3) shorter blasts have sounded
Apparently, it had something to do with the likelihood of more lightning in the next couple of minutes. It’s safe to say people were a little confused. A few minutes later, with little fanfare, teams just returned to the field and started warming up.
Sometime during the break, the Spirit apparently had a dance-off, with Toni Pressley taking a narrow victory over Lori Lindsey. The Red Stars, surely aware by then that other results across the NWSL meant they needed a win to maintain their slim playoff hopes, may have been a bit more nervous. Also, the Spirit encouraged me, Kevin Parker and Jennifer Gordon — most of the local media press corps in the absence of a local newspaper recently sold to Jeff Bezos — to get up to the roof and do a media roundtable with Spirit announcer Michael Minnich.
After a warmup period and the return of maybe 250 of the 2,000-plus fans in attendance (sadly, all the food vendors packed up and fled early in the storm), play resumed a little at 10:48 p.m. And Chicago resumed a bit better than Washington. Jen Hoy eluded Toulouse and crossed to Dominguez, who was wide open in the box but put her one-touch attempt well over.
(Have allocated Mexican players ever accounted for all the goals in a multi-goal NWSL game? Maybe before Cuellar was traded from KC?)
Then came Supernatural Event #4. The MSPWBLDS (we’ll call it “mospwuhbleds”) sounded again. 10:52 p.m.
Players, coaches and refs froze. No lightning was visible. The Red Stars seemed displeased, and honestly, the Spirit didn’t seem any happier. Everyone wanted to play.
But you do not argue with the MSPWBLDS. The field was cleared again. And, in fairness, lightning did indeed resume a couple of minutes later.
(At this point, feel free to check out the game highlights, which are excellent:
By this time, the stadium’s midnight curfew was looming. Various deals were struck with the referees and the league to let the teams warm up in the SoccerPlex’s big gym, which was fortunately NOT hosting a basketball or volleyball tournament at the time. They did have a couple of hoops down around 7-8 feet for young summer campers, and I’m told Ella Masar dunked.
I’ll go ahead and give the details (at least as I know them) now rather than waiting for the book.
A few fans were in the SoccerPlex building, and it occurred to the media quadrumvirate that we could go in there as well. Mark Parsons actually asked me the Chelsea-Real Madrid score. He was disappointed in that.
I ventured over to the SoccerPlex’s front desk. A couple of Spirit staffers had gathered there along with SoccerPlex staffers who were monitoring the weather system. That’s when I was able to confirm the info in this tweet, and I ran back to the pressbox to hack it out:
CONFIRMED: The 15-minute timer just reset at 11:28. Game must START by 11:45, or it's over. Spirit WOULD win if game is called off.
By those terms, one lightning strike after 11:30 would end it. But in reality, it dragged on a bit longer.
At 11:40ish, there was a gathering in the SoccerPlex behind the bleachers, next to the locker rooms. The crowd included a ref (on the phone), at least one policeman, various staff from each team, and stadium staff.
At 11:42, a couple of people in CSC event staff shirts nodded and walked away from the meeting. They called out to other people — “(the game) will not resume.”
And still the refs were talking.
So I can’t give you a final moment at which the game officials declared the game — and the Red Stars’ playoff hopes — done. I can only tell you the teams held out hope as long as humanly possible.
Most Spirit players were in the hallway, not in the locker room. But there was no moment of celebration. One by one, they filed out (as did several Red Stars in one of many classy gestures as all this unfolded) to meet fans and sign autographs. I wished I could have rushed out to see that scene, but I stayed in to get various comments, many of which the Spirit posted to the team’s site.
Parsons was the first to dissect the game. He thought the Spirit had the better of play before the delay, and McLeod said pretty much the same thing. He thought Chicago wouldn’t have come back if the game had continued with no delay. We can’t say that with certainty — the Red Stars certainly have a flair for drama — but it’s safe to say the delay helped the Red Stars regroup and reorient.
The end didn’t completely suit anyone. Parsons said his first emotion upon hearing the game was over was “gutted” — he wanted to finish it out and hear the final whistle, no matter how small the crowd had gotten at that point. But then he went back and got his team to celebrate in the locker room.
“After all the things that have gone against us, maybe it was meant to be.”
Chicago may be the only team in the league unluckier than the Spirit. Their U.S. allocations were injured (or, in a move that looks a bit more curious in hindsight, traded for next year). Then injuries rattled the rest of the team, including one of the league’s best midfield engineers in Lori Chalupny. And then they had to sit and watch their playoff hopes, faint as they were, tick away without even being able to fight on the field.
At that point, though, nothing would have been a satisfactory ending. A 10-minute resumption at 11:50 p.m. would practically been a new game, bordering on farce. Imagine if you were a Sky Blue fan and you saw the Red Stars get two goals against a Spirit team that didn’t come back strong after nearly three hours idling in the SoccerPlex.
When I left, the stadium clock was frozen at 80:04, as if the game had been played at Pompeii. Appropriate for a game that entered into the supernatural.
In the end, I don’t think we saw an unjust ending. The better team on the night won. But if the mythical force of soccer karma has repaid part of its debt to Washington, it now owes Chicago — a class organization — that much more.
The soccer community, much to its credit, is taking concussions seriously. Even those of us who are at the low rungs of the coaching ladder have been required to watch videos so frightening that the natural response might be to sit a player for life after he or she first heads the ball. We have high-profile ex-players like Taylor Twellman and Alecko Eskandarian whose careers were cruelly cut short but have stepped forward to talk about concussion safety for the betterment of the next generation of players.
So when Abby Wambach tumbled to the ground at the Maryland SoccerPlex early this season and no one took immediate action, astute observers like Stefan Fatsis (who was there and had a better view than I did) took note. Fatsis questioned the lack of response, followed up after a week of conflicting information, then covered U.S. Soccer’s comments concluding Wambach’s injury was mishandled on the field but then correctly handled afterwards.
Now another national team player, Ali Krieger, has taken a hit on the field. The immediate reaction July 14 in Seattle was drastically different — Krieger sat down right away. The next time I saw the Spirit practice, Krieger wasn’t there. Nor did she play in the Spirit’s games July 20 or July 27. She played 21 minutes as a substitute July 31 against Western New York.
So far, so good. But when Krieger was a late scratch from the August 3 game at Sky Blue, the questions started.
There’s no harm in asking questions. Fatsis was right to question the way the Wambach concussion was handled. The harm comes in assuming answers when the information is incomplete. If you’re not a doctor, don’t play one on Twitter.
What we DO know is that Krieger was taken out immediately and sat out the next two games. That’s plenty of time to keep running tests and then move her back into gradual activity when her symptoms cleared.
Some people view her substitute appearance with suspicion. They shouldn’t. When an elite soccer player takes several days off from training, you can’t expect her to ramp up to 90 minutes in a few days. Whether it’s a concussion, an ankle injury or a trip to Aruba, time off from training is going to limit someone’s ability to play a full game right away. (Note that a couple of the late signees to the NWSL — Sky Blue’s Ashley Nick and Washington’s Marisa Abegg — have been playing this summer, so they were fit and ready to go. Portland’s Tina Ellertson is a fantastic player, but she hasn’t been playing recently, so the Thorns didn’t sign her and toss her out in the starting lineup right away.)
What happened next is indeed curious. Krieger missed the next game. I can’t really explain why. But neither can you. It takes a strange sort of conspiracy theorist to come up with a reason why the Spirit, already mathematically eliminated, felt it vitally important to play Krieger for 21 minutes in one game if she hadn’t been medically cleared to play.
Let’s ask this question: Can concussion symptoms go away and then come back? Yes. Ask Marc Savard.
Now bear in mind — we don’t know the details of what’s going on with Krieger right now. Maybe she felt slightly off. Maybe she has full-blown post-concussion syndrome. (Don’t panic — from what I’m hearing, this is unlikely. Just stating it as within the realm of possibility.) We don’t know.
Perhaps teams and the NWSL in general should be more forthcoming with injury information. But until that happens, be very careful about filling the gaps with stuff we don’t know.
The evidence doesn’t suggest Krieger was recklessly rushed back onto the field. If anyone has any evidence to the contrary, by all means, share it.
One badly battered team was slightly better than the other badly battered team. A couple of calls — the lone goal looked offside, one likely handball in the box went uncalled — might have skewed the game the other way, but they didn’t.
There. That’s your recap.
More detail? OK, just a little …
– It’s fair to say the Spirit aren’t playing with a lot of confidence right now. This game was better than the last two, but they still only forced Jill Loyden to make one save.
– The 4-4-2 experiment wasn’t bad, but I think the Spirit have already proved they can cancel out Sky Blue in midfield for much of the game.
– I don’t have the official word on why Ashlyn Harris and Ali Krieger were late scratches.
The Spirit will end the season with three home games. The motivation and confidence should be greater for those games than they were on this road trip. We’ll see if that’s enough to get something out of those games and end on a positive note.
Writing a full-blown recap of last night’s game seems about as pointless as an autopsy on Big Jim from Jim Croce’s You Don’t Mess Around With Jim. He was cut in about 100 places, and he was shot in a couple more. OK, so which of the stab or shooting wounds did it? Um … all of them?
Stats and scores can be deceiving sometimes. I think back to the Spirit’s first two games with Boston, both 1-1 draws. In the first game, they were outplayed, but it took one play in the dying minutes for the Breakers to snag a goal. (I still think Sydney Leroux may have fouled Ali Krieger on the way to getting that goal, but that kind of foul is rarely seen, and the call is rarely made. So anyway.) In the second game, the Spirit outplayed Boston, and the Breakers walked away wiping their brows in relief.
Last night, there was nothing deceiving about the numbers. The Spirit was outshot 20something to 1. Ashlyn Harris wasn’t at her best last week, but she was back in form on this occasion, keeping the score from getting totally out of hand.
Looking back, it would be pretty difficult to imagine the Spirit getting a result in Rochester. The Flash had no injuries; the Spirit started the game without a single player from its preferred back four, though Ali Krieger came back on later. That left a bunch of worn-out midfielders in front of a second-string defense, all against a “physical” Flash team. Lesser mortals wouldn’t have even left the bus and walked onto the field. The Spirit went out there and played, albeit poorly.
I do need to pay respect to one group in Western New York. While everyone on Twitter except Devo complains about the canned music during games, one group is trying to create a legit atmosphere.
I have a soft spot in my heart for fans who try to make a difference. The Spirit fans have been tremendous — not only do they come to the SoccerPlex for the great atmosphere and social benefits, but they sit at home and watch their team through impossible situations on the road. And this group of Flash fans deserves a lot of credit. Maybe, like Kansas City Wizards fans who endured years of artificial atmosphere, they’ll be rewarded down the road.
Back to the Spirit — the debate now is whether they can get a result at all in their last four games. It’s possible, for the following reasons:
– They’re getting healthier. Krieger played a bit in the second half. Robyn Gayle warmed up over the weekend. With Marisa Abegg signed, they can at least field another player who lists “defense” as her job description.
– Sky Blue is also battered and reeling, and the Spirit have two games remaining against them. They played well enough to get a result at Yurcak Field four weeks, and it just didn’t happen.
(Let me offer a quick aside here: Look at the NWSL injury report. Now look at which teams are in form. This is a league with small rosters and a smaller salary cap. On any team, the replacement for an injured national team player is going to be an inexperienced player making a pittance. Good teams don’t make excuses, but good pundits and fans look at the situation for what it is.)
– The Spinal Tap drummer theory. No, the “law of averages” didn’t save poor old Mick Shrimpton. But basic probability suggests that over the course of a season, something good should happen every once in a while. Even atrocious Premier League teams that pay players 20% of the league leaders’ salary budgets manage a few wins somewhere along the way.
– The fans. The last three Spirit games are at home. That’ll provide more motivation that being fed to the lions at Sahlen’s Stadium last night.
I can’t blame the Spirit for not getting up for last night’s game. At home against Chicago, Seattle and Sky Blue? That will be a better test of this team’s pride and professionalism.
Hard to imagine a game more emblematic of the Spirit’s season:
– A defender was injured.
– The officials were atrocious, though they probably didn’t affect the outcome too terribly.
– The result was worse than the Spirit deserved.
– The fans stuck with the team. Take away the storms that magically cleared just before game time but killed their walk-up crowd, and the team would’ve drawn a respectable 3,000 or 3,500. The Spirit has one more midweek game, then two weekend games with a lot of drawing power — Seattle (Solo, Rapinoe) and Sky Blue (season finale). With decent weather, I’d expect 4,000 for each of those.
We had some debate last night about how much of a role luck has played in the Spirit’s season. I’d look at it this way: Let’s say the Spirit’s luck was even in the first six games (debatable, but let’s say it for sake of argument). They were 1-2-3 for six points. Extrapolate that over 18 games, and they would have 18 points — tied with Seattle for seventh place.
Instead, they’re 0-5-1 since Mark Parsons took over. He warned that getting the team on track would take a couple of games. Then his entire starting defense was injured.
This team could be starting Harris, Gayle, Chapman, Pressley, Krieger, Huster, Lindsey, Matheson, Pohlers, Ochs and Miller. Maybe even Jordan Angeli. An injury or two? Bring in Toulouse or Roberts.
The youngsters and the misplaced players weren’t bad. The Spirit’s first goal — the first in the run of play since D.C. was covered in spring pollen — came through a superb, composed pass from Jasmyne Spencer, who had her best game.
Then within five minutes, Chapman was out. Boston scored the equalizer before the Spirit could replace her with Holly King.
Lindsay Taylor, a top scorer in college, had never played defense in a game before last night. King is at least a defensive midfielder. Each of them had a few strong plays at the back. But Heather O’Reilly is a handful for any defender. In the first Spirit-Breakers game, she ran at the relatively inexperienced Kika Toulouse on the Spirit’s left. In this game, she left Toulouse alone and ran on the other side of the field. That’s almost unfair.
At halftime, the Spirit had every reason to feel they were in the game. And they did indeed get that second goal, again from the run of play and finally getting that well-deserved opener from Conny Pohlers. But the third goal early in the second half was the dagger, with Ashlyn Harris bobbling a save and failing to collect it before Rhian Wilkinson ran in to pop it into the net.
Make no mistake — the Breakers deserved this win. They’re inconsistent but not bad. They outhustled the Spirit for the second and third goals. O’Reilly is still a fantastic winger. While the Spirit set up as many chances as the Breakers in the first half, Parsons lamented that the Breakers were making his team chase the ball. He doesn’t like that. Lisa Cole had to be thrilled. But as the Spirit’s record doesn’t reflect the talent and effort on display, 5-2 doesn’t reflect this game.
I asked Cat Whitehill what happened on her goal, the Breakers’ fifth. “It was luck,” she said.
Maybe the Spirit will know what that feels like one day.
The MVP of the Washington Spirit’s open practice was clearly the weather. That’s not a knock on any player or coach. The weather was that nice. After weeks of oppressive heat and humidity, we were suddenly enjoying the outdoors. Mother Nature was no longer assaulting us as soon as we walked out the door.
I think people were so stunned by the breathable air and lack of dripping sweat that they forgot what they were watching. On the hillside overlooking Field 12, it was more of a social hour than a viewing audience for an open practice.
And yet, the Spirit players seemed a bit nervous at first. Their touches and passes were not sharp. When they broke out of warmups into a small-sided modified scrimmage, sloppiness abounded. Between that and the fact that Ashlyn Harris was in the trainers’ hands rather than the nets, I’m surprised Twitter didn’t explode in panic in between news updates on the D.C. United stadium and the Gold Cup.
But I can pass along two bits of encouraging news for Spirit fans:
1. The level of play bounced upwards. Toward the end, we were treated to some outstanding moments. The best: Conny Pohlers slipping the ball backwards with the sole of her foot to Julia Roberts, who blasted the ball past Lloyd Yaxley in goal.
2. I don’t have details, but Harris should be fine. Of course, Chantel Jones looked sharp as well.
One new face was in practice: Jordan Angeli, the versatile Santa Clara and Boston Breakers alum picked in the third round of the supplemental draft. Dan Lauletta caught up with Angeli in February to see how she was progressing after knee surgery. Now we’re seeing if she is ready to be added to the roster before the freeze deadline July 31. One practice isn’t enough to tell — she had a few wayward touches, but so did a lot of people, and she was fully involved in each phase of training.
Ali Krieger was not. All she can do is wait and see.
For coaches, this practice was a dream. In a question-and-answer session with about 25 inquisitive folks, Mark Parsons and Lloyd Yaxley patiently went through their practice planning in detail that the casual fan would find excruciating. Those who have clearly gone through some USSF licensing courses, though, were enthralled.
Meanwhile, scores of kids lined the barrier after practice to autographs and pictures. Angeli and Ochs’ similar ponytails may have confused some kids who asked for Angeli’s autograph not realizing they had already received it. Krieger, though she didn’t participate in practice, was one of the last players off the field.
So the practice offered something for everyone. Friendly interaction with the players. A chance to cheer for actual Spirit goals. (Kika Toulouse had a nice one as well.) Some chalk talk and philosophical discussion with the coaches. More bonding for the Spirit’s tight-knit loyalists.
Now can we get the same weather for Saturday’s game?
Matt Driver is a Glaswegian, but he has seen all there is to see in American soccer. He played in the old APSL and has coached or operated teams in virtually every U.S. league — USL, NPSL, WPSL, WPS (original GM/coach for the Philadelphia Independence) and MLS (assistant coach for the New England Revolution).
And he believes there’s room — in fact, a need — for another professional league in the USA. The league is American Professional Soccer, due to launch next spring.
What is APS? Let’s start with what it’s not.
It’s not some hare-brained scheme to compete with MLS or the NASL. Driver and his fellow owners have more modest goals. “We not looking to be the biggest and highest-paying league,” Driver said.
It’s not designed to be costly. U.S. Soccer has set a very high bar for Division II soccer — $750,000 letter of credit, owner with a net worth of $20 million, etc. Even the Division III USL Pro league is expensive, and teams are opting to operate in the amateur PDL instead of the pro ranks. Just look at USISL/USL history — in 1997, the Division II A-League and D-3 Pro League combined for more than 60 pro teams. Today, the USL Pro (DIII) is planning for 15 teams in 2014; the NASL (DII) will be up to 11 or 12 in 2014 if they don’t lose anyone.
And no, promotion/relegation fans, it’s not bringing pro/rel to the pro ranks. Ask Driver about it, and you’ll get a lengthy response that starts with, “Never gonna happen, and here’s why …”
(There is another group, United States Association Football Leagues, which says it’s building from the grass roots up to a professional national level. If you’re impatient for pro/rel, feel free to go watch your local amateur league. My indoor team is struggling once again to maintain its foothold in Division II.)
The APS goals are:
– Sustainability. Driver doesn’t want owners who are swept up in shallow passion who want to spend a lot of money and then inevitably turn away when they’re losing a lot of money.
– Development. Driver sees a lot of talented players coming out of college who don’t latch on with an MLS team right away but could develop into pros. Like Jimmy Conrad:
The plan is slow, controlled growth. The 2014 teams will be concentrated on the upper East Coast. Don’t expect the league to add one California team and one Florida team in 2015. “Keeping travel costs down” is a more pressing priority than “building a national footprint.”
U.S. soccer has often found itself drowning in alphabet soup, with leagues splintering into more leagues shifting around this giant land mass of ours. But at the moment, youth players are overwhelmed with choices, and college players have no shortage of places to play in the summers. Young adults, including those who aren’t taking the college route, don’t have as much. If you believe the current U.S. system isn’t casting a wide enough net, you have to root for more lower-level pro teams to provide more opportunity.
As always, the big question is this: Can it be supported? By whom? We’ll see. But a league with reasonable goals may have a reasonable shot of making it.
(Update: Everyone knows this is a men’s league we’re talking about, right? Hence the discussion about NASL and USL Pro.)
Duresport.com 