I don’t see Grant Wahl’s story on Alex Morgan online yet, so you may need to rush out to grab last week’s Sports Illustrated before it disappears from newsstands. (The cover is “A Coach’s Courage,” referring to another worthwhile read inside.) Grant’s story is a good read for all levels of women’s soccer fan, from those vaguely aware of someone named Alex Morgan to those who regularly rant about the injustice of Portland getting her AND Christine Sinclair in the allocation process.
That leads us to the first of several things we all learned from this piece:
1. Did the entire existence of the NWSL hinge on getting Morgan to Portland so that Merritt Paulson would follow through on starting the Thorns? Here’s the passage (any typing errors are mine):
Portland investor Merritt Paulson was in talks to buy into the operation. He wanted Morgan, and he had leverage: He knew that the league wouldn’t exist unless he brought in the eighth and final team. Asked if he exacted any promises — say, being awarded Morgan — Paulson laughs and offers and exaggerated wink-wink. “Oh, no, no, no … Look, when the owners put in their requests for national-team players, there’s no doubt that Alex was Number 1 on everybody’s list.”
That won’t make fans from Washington state to Washington, D.C., feel any better about the allocation process.
2. The younger players on the women’s national team have stepped up their studies of the game, watching a lot of Champions League and EPL games.
3. Morgan also sought out Mia Hamm to come out and work with her at the Complex Formerly Known As The Home Depot Center.
4. On a related note, Morgan is sick of the split between the current group of players and the old guard.
It’s been cool closing the gap with the two generations. With [the current] national team it’s almost us versus the ’99ers, which I hate. I want us all to be one team.
Taking her game and the team’s to a new level. Trying to unify all parties. Future captain?
Last year, I managed to dig up some info on the U.S. Women’s Open Cup, which has existed in obscurity for a couple of decades at least. The results affected my final power rankings, pushing WPSL Elite finalist Chicago over WPSL Elite champion Western New York.
But it’s hard to tell whether we can truly call this “national.” According to a Kansas City Shock press release that cites a Wikipedia page that originally drew its info from a USASA page that has since changed:
The 2013 USASA National Women’s Open will be the 18th staging of the tournament, and the first under a new format that eliminates regional qualification. The finals will include four Midwest teams and take place from June 25th to 27th, with the Amateur and U-23 competitions taking place the next three days.
Not great sourcing, of course, but the teams are indeed all Midwestern. In fact, two of those teams are from Kansas City — the Shock and the Dynamos. Three are from the WPSL — the Shock and the Des Moines Menace are in the Midwest Division, while the Houston Aces play in the Big Sky – South. The Dynamos are hard to find, though they’ve entered a lot of cup competitions in the past.
So that’s no W-League teams, no NWSL teams. No Open Cup teams outside the Midwest. The Amateur Cup actually has a bit more geographic diversity, at least.
That’s frustrating, sure. But that’s nothing that can be held against the teams participating in these tournaments. Ten ambitious adult teams are converging in search of trophies and elite competition. Nothing wrong with that.
On the surface, the Washington Spirit’s 2-0 loss at Kansas City doesn’t look horrible. Playing without five injured players, with one center back still adjusting to new teammates and a star forward barely getting time to meet the team, a loss on the road against one of the top NWSL teams doesn’t look too bad. Perhaps even one of the team’s many moral victories on the season.
But a closer look at the game turns up a grimmer picture.
Collectively, the team may had valid excuses. World-class midfielder Diana Matheson and utility midfielder-defender Tori Huster joined an injury list that already included emerging striker Caroline Miller and Mexican attacker Lupita Worbis. Center back Candace Chapman showed in the previous game that she’s still not ready to go 90 minutes. By game’s end, the Spirit had fielded all 13 healthy field players, all on a hot day on unfamiliar turf. That included the new player, Conny Pohlers.
Individually, the breakdowns in this game may not be as easily brushed off.
The stats say a lot. After a promising start — through 17 minutes, the Spirit had two shots to Kansas City’s zero — the Spirit had little possession and therefore no offense.
The problems started with Kansas City’s 18th-minute goal. Somehow, in the Spirit’s midfield shuffle, pesky forward Jasmyne Spencer was left to rotate from one player to the next. The “next” in this case was U.S. international Lauren Cheney, whose hard, high shot smashed off Ashlyn Harris’ fingers and the crossbar before nestling in the net.
Ashlyn Harris is Superwoman.
From then on, Harris was busy. She finished with eight saves. Robyn Gayle saved another shot, getting behind Harris for a vital clearance. Between their heroics and some dreadful Kansas City finishing, a game that could have finished 4-0 or 5-0 was held to a respectable 2-0.
The other end of the field was hardly used for the 47 minutes between Kansas City goals. Conny Pohlers, the great German forward making her Spirit debut, claimed a loose ball in the midst of five defenders and at least forced Nicole Barnhart to make a save in the 34th minute. Spencer recorded a shot in the 57th minute, but that stat says more about the stat-keeper’s generosity than the run of play.
The Spirit’s first corner kick finally came in the 63rd minute, and Pohlers may have set herself up for a decent chance if the ball hadn’t slipped away from her on the fast turf. Instead, Kansas City countered. Then this happened:
– At the 63:37 mark, KC’s Renae Cuellar took a long pass at midfield. The Mexican star, who surprisingly came off the bench in this game, ran first at Domenica Hodak but then went to the middle against Robyn Gayle, the only other Spirit defender staying back on the set piece.
– As Cuellar drifted right, Gayle stuck to her. And Hodak drifted into the middle. That left an acre of space for Lauren Cheney to race forward on the left.
– At the 63:46 mark, Cuellar found space past Gayle and shot. Harris parried it to KC’s right.
– 63:49: Gayle has gone out to face Merritt Mathias, who has collected the loose ball. Holly King has returned to the area to mark Cuellar, who’s still in a dangerous spot. Stephanie Ochs also has made it back, but she and Hodak are gathering at the right post.
– 63:52: Remember Lauren Cheney? Yeah, she’s still wide open inside the 6-yard box, a few feet inside the left post. Hodak’s at the right post, and Ochs has just realized the danger a second too late. Ali Krieger is returning but is still 10 yards behind Cheney when Mathias’ cross lands on Cheney’s foot. Harris would need Star Trek teleportation technology to get across the goal in time. 2-0
“Where was the marking?” asked my friend in soccer and MMA, Sean Wheelock, who was soloing in the KC commentary box. I’m sure the Spirit coaching staff would like to know.
The Spirit pressed forward in the last 20 minutes, getting two chances that each flowed through substitute Colleen Williams. In the 72nd minute, they had their best sequence of the game. Spencer swiped the ball from Kristie Mewis (whom some Twitterati think the Spirit should have drafted ahead of Tiffany McCarty) and played it back to Holly King. Immediately, King played ahead to Williams in the middle of the field. Williams took a couple of touches in space and played a beautiful through ball to McCarty, whose shot beat Barnhart … and glanced off the post.
In the 81st minute, the Spirit got its sixth and final shot (third on goal). It was Williams to McCarty to Spencer, who rolled a meek shot straight to Barnhart.
A few weeks ago, the Spirit had a legitimate claim to be the sixth- or maybe fifth-best team in the league, and they had a chance of getting better with the younger players catching on and Pohlers and Pressley coming aboard. To get back in the mix, they’ll need to get healthy. And they’ll need better luck. But they’ll also need to show a bit better than they did in Kansas City.
Like the photos? See more on Latda Siharath’s Flickr feed — and thanks for permission to use them here!
Abby Wambach has an indomitable will. She has the ability to raise her game when the stakes are higher. She works hard and inspires others to do the same.
But let’s remember one thing: She’s also a danged good soccer player.
Seems obvious, doesn’t it? But it’s too easy to forget. Too easy to think of her accomplishments as a simple function of a single-minded willingness to stick her head wherever it must be to meet the ball. Just as Brian McBride was called “McHead” — sometimes affectionately, sometimes not — in deference to his ability to score goals with his noggin and take a few facial reconstructions to do so, Wambach’s general soccer skill is overlooked as people marvel over the intangibles that sportswriters and ad agencies build into mythology.
Wambach, first of all, is perfectly capable of scoring magnificent goals without her head. Heading (sorry) into 2013, she had only used her head for 66 of her 152 goals.
Look at this:
Now consider this: This year, Wambach passed (geez, another horrible accidental pun) Tiffeny Milbrett for third place on the all-time assist list. (She’s roughly 40 behind Kristine Lilly and 80 behind Mia Hamm, so let’s not restart the #ChasingMia hashtag just yet.)
Some of those were surely with her head. To repeat myself: I’m not sure TV does justice to her ability to flick the ball into the path of an onrushing teammate with her head.
So let’s finish up by talking about her aerial ability. First of all, it’s not always that high in the air. Sure, she can outjump people to score. But she’s just as likely to score on a diving header, which requires an uncanny sense of timing.
Even if that was Wambach’s FIRST goal, not her 158th, you’d have to say she’s a skilled player.
So as U.S. Soccer (women’s and men’s) tries to change its approach to develop more skillful players, not just athletes, Abby Wambach is and will continue to be someone to emulate.
The WPSL is a hit-or-miss league. Some clubs have noble goals of growing the game. Some clubs sign notable players who aren’t in the NWSL for whatever reason — family ties, good jobs, etc. And some clubs put together an organization that can follow through on those ambitions. Some clubs, not so much. The standings include something called “St. Louis (Forfeits)” and a club with a -34 goal difference through six games.
It’s tough to rank teams until they play each other in the playoffs, but two of the teams that fall comfortably in the “noble goals” and “notable players” categories are conveniently located about 22 miles from each other in the strip of Maryland between Washington and the Chesapeake.
They weren’t in the same league last year. The ASA (Arundel Soccer Association) Chesapeake Charge played in the WPSL Elite league. ACF Torino USA started last season as the Maryland Capitols.
Now they’re the top two teams in the WPSL’s South Atlantic division, each boasting some talented players from the nearby University of Maryland and more far-flung origins — ACFTUSA has some players from Liverpool Ladies, two of whom combined on the team’s first goal last night.
So the couple hundred fans who braved the rain and the traffic — the game was delayed by 15 minutes because players were having trouble getting there — saw an entertaining local derby. Some also enjoyed cheeseburgers from the grill ASA set up next to the Arundel High School stadium restrooms, where they also had a good selection of chips and drinks at quite reasonable prices.
It’s elite adult soccer at high school prices — not a bad deal.
The high school field isn’t great — it’s battered turf with wild bounces and a fast surface to which some players never fully adjusted, especially after an afternoon of soaking in the rain. Maryland/Charge attackers Riley Barger and Alexis Prior-Brown had several deft passing combinations that fell apart when a ball that would have held up nicely on College Park’s Ludwig Field but went skipping out of play.
Three of the goals were from dead-ball situations. The Liverpool connection of Sophie Jones to Amie Fleming put Torino in front early on a well-placed corner kick to a wide-open Fleming, who headed it powerfully to the top corner of the goal. The Charge tied it on a Laura Kane penalty kick. After Torino took the lead in the second half, Kane again delivered with a free kick that soared over the mass in the box and found Jen Gillette at the back post.
The one goal from the run of play came from the most dangerous player on the field, wily veteran Ali Andrzejewski. The 28-year-old veteran of the Washington Freedom’s W-League days doesn’t need much space to create a shot on goal, and a bad Charge giveaway gave her a 1-on-1 opportunity against the keeper.
“I still feel really good,” Andrzejewski said. “I don’t think I’ve lost a step. My approach to the game is a lot different than it was five or 10 years ago. I have an even temper through the game. Something about being an older player is relaxing.”
And it’s good for the younger players to have experienced teammates and opponents. Playing against different permutations of the same age group through youth soccer and college must get boring after a while.
The rematch is Saturday, and the winner is the likely division champion. I can’t make it, but if you can get to Hyattsville, I’d recommend it.
(Yes, I did chat with the Charge’s Heather Cooke, but I’m saving that for the Spirit book. And you can indeed see her on an upcoming MTV show in which she competes in something with a Real World castmate who really didn’t like her. More importantly, she’s still working hard to push the Phillippines national team to the next level. Castmate Naomi’s Twitter profile description is “Thug Life One Wife A Mistress And A Gf Oh Yea Ive Been On MTV.” I think Heather has been a bit more productive since her Real World days.)
“My socks and shoes always match. Is it luck?” – Primus
Let’s start by giving credit where it’s due. Saturday night at the Plex, the Western New York Flash dominated the first half and defended well in the second half. Outstanding young goalkeeper Adrianna Franch was alert when she needed to be, particularly in poking the ball away from Stephanie Ochs outside the box on a breakaway.
And if we’re going to talk about luck and injuries, the Flash could certainly say, “Did you see Sarah Huffman out there? Oh, that’s right — she was home watching her team and the U.S. national team on two streams.”
If the Spirit had gotten a couple of breaks, the game might have been 1-1. And if it had been 1-1 in the 60th minute, the game may well have played out a bit differently from that point.
So with that out of the way, let’s talk about the reasons soccer karma owes the Spirit more than a few favors:
1. The central defense conundrum. In the allocation process, the Spirit got Alina Garciamendez, the Stanford All-American who surely would have been a top draft pick had she not been allocated. But she went to Frankfurt instead.
The Spirit’s biggest free agent signing was Candace Chapman, longtime Canadian international and two-time WPS champion. She played 45 minutes a few weeks ago, but the team saw that she was not yet fit to play more than that. They tried her again on Saturday, and she spent most of the first half grimacing.
One thing that went right for the Spirit: Toni Pressley was cleared to play, an important piece of good timing given Robyn Gayle’s engagement with the Canadian national team. So after one practice, she was tossed into the mix alongside Chapman. Individually, Pressley was fine, showing a few flashes that justified the Spirit’s hype. And in the second half, when she was paired with former Florida State teammate Tori Huster, the defense wasn’t bad at all.
But in the first half, having a hobbled backline leader with a newcomer is far from ideal.
Which leads to …
2. What the heck was that first goal? Looks like it hit Ashlyn Harris’ glove, then the FRONT of the post, then spun in. I know we’re near Washington, but that’s a lot of spin.
We might trust the ref a bit more if he hadn’t somehow failed to notice a couple of Flash players with socks around their ankles and no evident shin guards. (Ironically, the Spirit Reserves’ Alex Doll was sent to the sidelines in the first game of the doubleheader so that she could produce the mandatory protective equipment.)
The Spirit can take a couple of positives in the sense that they were creative in the second half, and Pressley settled in nicely. Conny Pohlers is on the way. But it’s getting a little late in the season for moral victories and a general notion that the team is improving. I think the Spirit would be a dangerous team in the playoffs, but the math dictates that it’ll be a difficult climb to get there.
I might have a heightened sense of empathy for unlucky soccer teams after coaching an All-Star team over the weekend in which we had one ref who let our opponents knock us all over the field, then another ref who would arrest people for driving 66 mph in a 65 zone. (Nothing like two PKs and a direct free kick just outside the box to rattle a 9-year-old goalkeeper.) The team made great progress in a short time, and while they weren’t going to earn a trophy, the final score of their last game really wasn’t fair.
And so when you look at the Spirit — and sure, my sense of empathy may be heightened by being around the team all the time — you see an organization doing a lot of things right. They have the best playing surface in the league. They’re committed to an attractive style of play. They’re selling tickets. And they’ve yet to win a home game.
Yesterday’s Sydney Leroux saga had a few predictable outcomes. Late in the day, we heard Leroux wasn’t specifically talking about the game in Toronto on Sunday — in fact, she says the atmosphere there was great! “A positive step forward for women’s soccer,” even.
Of course, by then, it was too late for the Toronto crowd. Many of the mainstream media stories on the web have been updated with Leroux’s clarification — she was talking about an older game in Vancouver, plus Twitter — but a lot of headlines still reflect what her tweet implied: The crowd in Toronto was using racist chants against her.
To respond to one of yesterday’s comments — I don’t see such accusations as “minutiae.” I’d rather be called a bleepity-bleep whatever than a racist. I’ve been called a racist before. It hurts. It cuts to your soul. It is not an accusation to be tossed around lightly and then say, “Oh, I meant those OTHER guys.”
So that’s one lesson learned, and it’s one of many excellent points in Richard Whittall’s column, “Some lessons from the Leroux saga.”
Another lesson is aimed squarely at Canadian fans, in response to attitudes like this:
I’m not going to walk around asking Canadian players what they think of their fans tossing out the c-word and b-word. They shouldn’t have to confront this themselves. Those of us with Y chromosomes should simply know better.
As Whittall put it:
That the rest of the world has set a low bar in acceptable bounds of player abuse isn’t a great reason for Canadian or American fans of womens soccer to do the same.
I’m also still befuddled by people trotting out the notion that this sort of thing happens in men’s soccer all the time, so there’s some sort of double-standard in place. “Balotelli does it” is one of those arguments. Yes, and Balotelli is one the most controversial, if not the most reviled, soccer players in the world.
Europe offers plenty of soccer traditions to emulate. Balotelli’s behavior and fans hurling sexist epithets aren’t among them. Or maybe one day we’ll end borrowing another European tradition — forcing teams to play in empty stadiums.
So, moving forward, we can hope Leroux will quit throwing gasoline on the fire with poorly chosen celebrations and poorly focused accusations. She has made plenty of enemies of non-racist, non-abusive Canadian fans who may have defended her in the past.
But as fans, we all need to take a step back and think about the limits of our fan passions. The Voyageurs immediately spoke out against racism, and that’s terrific. It’s not, however, the end of the conversation about what’s acceptable in the stands.
Crash Davis, Bull Durham: What are you doing? Huh? What are you doing standing here? I gave you a gift, you stand here showing up my pitcher? Run, dummy!
Sports have written rules and unwritten rules. The written rules tell you the size of the field, what to do when a ball becomes defective in the course of play, what sort of socks aren’t acceptable, etc. The unwritten rules tell us so much more:
1. Hockey fights stay on the ice. The book The Code: The Unwritten Rules of Fighting and Retaliation in the NHLhad all sorts of amusing anecdotes, my favorite being the one in which the guy losing a fight yells, “Loser buys the pizza.” The guy who’s winning says, “Well, I think you’re buying.” Then the losing fighter yells, “Yeah, but the winner buys the beer!”
Then there’s this, in which a veteran hockey enforcer gives an opponent a chance to impress his coaches:
I’m not saying the code makes a whole lot of sense. But it exists.
2. When a soccer player is down on the field, someone will kick the ball out of play so the trainers can run on the field. Then the ball is returned to the other side. That’s not in the written rules. Players do that on their own.
If you missed yesterday’s arguments after the USA-Canada women’s soccer match in Toronto, here’s the deal: Former Canadian U20 U19* striker Sydney Leroux, who has endured all sorts of abuse on Twitter and heard it from the crowd all day yesterday, scored a garbage-time goal for the USA and celebrated by waving the USA badge at the crowd and shushing them.
Canadian commentators weren’t happy. “Classless,” said Craig Forrest on TV. At TSN’s site, Gareth Wheeler summed up the unwritten rule in this case:
An act as such is an absolute no-no in soccer. You don’t pay homage to the badge against your former team, let alone the country of your birth.
This rule was at the heart of yesterday’s Twitter arguments. A lot of WoSo fans insisted that they’ve seen men celebrating the same way, taunting fans, etc. Two issues with that:
1. It’s rare to see players doing such things, as Wheeler says, “against your former team, let alone the country of your birth.”
2. If, say, an English-born player did while playing for Scotland against England, that just might make the news. The ensuing riot certainly would. And you’d have plenty of English commentators calling the act “classless” or worse. I couldn’t find specific examples, but I think that’s because it just isn’t done. More common is the example of Polish-born German player Lukas Podolski, who scored twice against Poland in Euro 2008 and refused to celebrate at all.
So as with a lot of Hope Solo’s controversies, the “sexist double standard” argument doesn’t hold water. (And as someone who greatly appreciates men’s AND women’s soccer, I get rather irritated with false stereotypes in either direction, and then I tweet too much and get unfollowed by a bunch of disgruntled people. Sorry about that, though I’d also suggest getting Hootsuite and making a few lists so you can tune it out when some people in your feed start a lively discussion that you’re not enjoying. In any case, I’ll wrap it up more quickly in the future so you don’t have to adjust your timelines. All that said, I found a lot of the discussion helpful as I tried to clarify the situation, so thanks to those who stuck around.)
I haven’t seen much reaction from Canadian players (if you see more, please leave it in the comments). But here’s Christine Sinclair:
“Maybe not the classiest of moves,” Sinclair said of Leroux’s gesture. “She scored on us and an individual can do what they like. I probably wouldn’t have done the same, but we move on.”
Did the celebration arguments overshadow the game? Well, yes. But aside from Alex Morgan’s superb goals and the solid defense of 17-year-old Canadian Kadeisha Buchanan, it wasn’t much of a game. Canada brought a lot of emotion but little else.
Now in front of a boisterous sell-out crowd at BMO Field on Sunday afternoon, they tried to muscle the Americans out of their rhythm. This was a planned assault, and as plodding as that sounds.
Tactically, it was smart. Aesthetically, it was turgid. Functionally, it was useless.
The atmosphere was promising. The passion many WoSo fans have yearned to see at their stadiums was finally there. I thought it was clever to hear fans counting to six, a reference to the puzzling free kick that helped the USA in that Olympic semifinal, every time U.S. goalkeeper Nicole Barnhart had the ball.
So if you want me to respond to a comment, do it here. Out of deference to those who are done talking about this, I’m not going to bring it up again on Twitter.
I think the last word on Twitter should go to Heather Mitts:
Life isn't fair, get use to it. Control what you can control & don't sweat the small stuff. Oh and mean people suck. #deepthoughts
Postscript: As I was writing this post, Sydney Leroux started a tweet with “When you chant racial slurs.” Plenty of Canadians, including some I know to have been at the game, vehemently deny they heard anything of that nature. If she heard it from one person one time, of course, that’s too much. But in light of Boston Breakers fans (ironically, Leroux’s NWSL team) being unfairly smeared as racist in a fairly prominent book, I’m not about to do the same thing to Canadian fans. I think we can agree that the overwhelming majority, somewhere between 95 and 99.99 percent of people in BMO, would abhor such things.
Sure, I’ve seen the video in which one guy is recorded yelling a couple of nasty (sexist, not racist, not that one is “better” than the other) words. That’s bad. But that’s not a “chant.” A chant involves many people saying and repeating the same thing.
I can’t say Leroux heard absolutely nothing, and I’m sure she’s received all sorts of abuse from random racist morons on Twitter. I don’t mean to diminish that or excuse it. But I’m not going to give any credence to the thought that racism was widespread at BMO yesterday until someone produces evidence to the contrary.
Now back to the NWSL, where we’re still taking up a collection to pay the fines of Seattle staffers complaining about a call that was, indeed, quite wrong.
*Correction: Leroux played youth soccer for Canada before FIFA adjusted its age ranges. She was on Canada’s U19 World Championship team in 2004. Some trivia: Her teammates included Robyn Gayle, Sophie Schmidt, Emily Zurrer, Jodi-Ann Robinson and Golden Boot winner Brittany Timko. Among the U.S. players: Ashlyn Harris, Rachel Buehler, Stephanie (Lopez) Cox, Becky Sauerbrunn, Amy Rodriguez, Yael Averbuch, Nikki Krzyzik, Angie Woznuk and Megan Rapinoe. Other teams: Veronica Boquete (Spain), Simone Laudehr (Germany), Celia Okoyino da Mbabi (Germany) and Marta (Brazil).
Germany needed a late equalizer and penalties to get past Nigeria in the quarterfinals, but the high-scoring team beat the USA 3-1 in the semifinals and took the title against China 2-0. Third-place game: USA 3, Brazil 0. The highlight for Canada: Coming back from 3-0 down to draw Germany 3-3 in group play.
I can’t say I wasn’t warned. When I mentioned that I needed to watch the Spirit’s 3-0 loss to Boston at some point, several people urged me to reconsider.
And I can’t say I’m glad I ignored that advice. This was a dreary game on a dreary night in Boston. No, the Spirit didn’t play particularly well. But neither did Boston, aside from player of the week Lianne Sanderson, the energetic Kyah Simon and the reliable Kia McNeill.
The field was one culprit in the general disarray. You’d think the Breakers would be used to Dilboy Stadium’s nasty carpet and narrow confines by now, but apparently not. On a rare Spirit corner kick, Heather O’Reilly protested when the ref tried to move her 10 yards away. O’Reilly was standing just outside the box. The hashmark showing the 10-yard distance away from the corner is clearly inside the box. Zoom in and see for yourself:
(I think they may have re-lined the field since this was taken — I recall the hashmark even further inside the box, but that may be a matter of perspective.)
The other culprit was the lenient referee. The Spirit may have had a shout for a penalty kick when debut starter Jasmyne Spencer was hauled down in the box, but the Breakers could have asked how Julia Roberts was winning so many midfield battles by armbar.
Boston wasn’t as dominant in the first half as I would’ve expected after seeing the stats. “Shots on goal: 0” is the kind of stat you expect from a USA-Iceland game, not an NWSL game between teams that had drawn their first two matches. Yet the Spirit wasn’t overrun, and I don’t think the young forwards deserve much criticism. Tiffany McCarty was active throughout, and she set up Spencer for a good chance or two. But Diana Matheson isn’t going to sneak up on anyone any more, and the rest of the Spirit midfield didn’t create much.
Let’s just focus on the two highlights, one for each side:
– Sanderson’s first assist was sublime. I don’t even know how she saw O’Reilly behind her, but she flipped the ball over her shoulder perfectly into the speedy winger’s path. O’Reilly was lucky that Tori Huster had just taken a step back, keeping her onside, but it would’ve been a shame to waste a pass like that.
– Chantel Jones slammed the door on Katie Schoepfer’s penalty kick.
So now the Spirit will have three weeks to regroup. Literally. Teresa “Lupita” Worbis has joined the team, and she may not be the only one. The Spirit has long talked about its mysterious fifth free agent, a defender based in Europe. Then Steven Goff tweeted today that an attacker with German national team experience may join the team before its next game. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. (But they’re also not public yet for a reason. If the Spirit could announce a big player signing right now, I’m sure they’d shout it from the mountaintops. Or at least the top of one of the hills at the SoccerPlex.)
In the meantime, if you haven’t already watched this game … don’t. The NWSL archive at YouTube has far better selections.
Dan Calichman and Ted Chronopoulos, whom many of us remember from 1990s MLS, are in the news as the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Chivas USA. C&C Coaching Factory had done pretty well with the club’s academy program, only to be dismissed midseason.
At the time, Top Drawer Soccer’s J.R. Eskilson and The Goat Parade’s Alicia Ratterree were concerned:
We may look back at this story and see that it is just a blip and won’t impact the long term development of the Academy and Chivas USA’s first team. But there is going to be turmoil in the short term, whether that means scaring potential recruits away, or actually sending current talented Academy players to other destinations.
In the medium term, as it turns out, it’s a bit more than a blip. It’s a case of employment law. Calichman and Chronopoulos say they were fired because they’re “non-Latino Americans.”
Chivas USA isn’t the first soccer team in the USA or Canada to bill itself with a specific ethnic identity. The U.S. Open Cup is full of names like Maccabi Los Angeles, Philadelphia Ukrainians, Brooklyn Italians, etc. The NASL of the 1970s tried to keep ethnic marketing to a minimum but nevertheless tolerated “Toronto Metros-Croatia” for a while. Some teams such as the St. Louis Stars and Philadelphia Atoms boasted of their Americanization, and U.S. players gathered as “Team America” near the end of the league’s lifespan.
Such historical idiosyncrasies surely won’t help Chivas USA and owner Jorge Vergara, who bought out his former partners last year, in this case. They could, perhaps, argue that they’re simply instilling a new style of play, and that Calichman and Chronopoulos didn’t fit in. That’s not unusual. Players and coaches alike can be sent packing when a team tries to play a different way.
That argument would be interesting if it went to court. But that’s probably not how it’ll play out. Not given some of the more incendiary parts of the complaint:
After publicly identifying those employees who did not speak Spanish, (Vergara) announced that those employees who did not speak Spanish would no longer be able to work at CHIVAS USA. As he further stated, “If you don’t speak Spanish, you can go work for the Galaxy, unless you speak Chinese, which is not even a language.”
The next quote in the complaint is from Chivas USA HR director Cynthia Craig: “Oh boy. I can’t believe he just said that.”
Chronopoulos was then asked to survey everyone in the Academy, players and parents, to get their ethnic and national backgrounds. Shortly thereafter, Chronopoulos and Calichman filed complaints with Craig. They met not just with Craig, but with team president Jose David, who presided over one of the most awkward non-firings this side of The Office.
MR. CHRONOPOULOS asked if he was being fired. Ms. Craig responded, “No; you are not being fired,” but cryptically added, “We will be sending you some options in a few days.” Mr. David, however, interrupted and announced that they would send him some options by the very next day. Despite being told he was not being fired, he was also told not to return to his coaching duties.
A standoff continued for nearly two months.
Not mentioned in that complaint: Chivas USA hired a new U18 Academy coach to replace Calichman. A man of notable Mexican heritage? Well, not exactly.
Will that hiring help Chivas USA stave off discrimination accusations? Or will Chivas USA try to settle this quickly and quietly?
And once the case is resolved, what’s the future of Chivas USA? If you’re in the MLS front office or another MLS owner’s office, are you pushing for the team to be sold as quickly as possible?
Duresport.com 