Category: soccer

soccer

MLSSoccer.com “Ramos Project” looks promising

Posted on by Beau Dure

Quick impressions on an impressive beta version of MLSSoccer.com:

– Outstanding: Bottom navigation featuring the latest two offerings of regular features such as Talking Tactics, Armchair Analyst, The Throw-In, etc. Finding regular features on the site has been difficult until now.

– Opta stats! Opta stats! And more Opta stats! Very nice. Now if those could be integrated with player profiles, we’d really be onto something.

– Player profiles have game logs that include tell you whether a player started, subbed or was left on the bench. Nice detail, though it’d be nice to know whether a player was omitted from the 18 altogether. And it’d be really nice to know if he was suspended, injured or just out of favor. Some of those details exist in the game notes that MLS has usually made available in massive PDF files, and it’d be great if that data could be available on the site in a more useful format.

– The video highlights didn’t crash Google Chrome! We’ll have to see if Matchday Live also works on Chrome.

As with any beta, we’ll have to see how well it stands up, and you may spot the occasional bug. But it’s hard to label this anything but encouraging progress.

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soccer

Shots on goal in U.S. games, April 13-17

Posted on by Beau Dure

Home teams first, ranked in order within each league. Make of it what you will.

MLS (median=6; mean for season thru Saturday’s games was 8.39)
New York 9-3 San Jose
Portland 5-5 Dallas
Houston 7-1 New England
Toronto 1-6 D.C. United
Chicago 3-3 Los Angeles
Vancouver 2-4 Chivas USA
Portland 4-2 Chicago (not including one own goal each way)
Columbus 4-2 Kansas City
Salt Lake 2-3 Colorado
Toronto 3-1 Los Angeles
Philadelphia 3-1 Seattle

(Incidentally, in 1998, the average shots per game was 12.98)

WPS (median=13.5)
Atlanta 4-11 Sky Blue FC
Boston 4-8 Western NY

NASL
No idea. So far, they’ve had eight games, 16 goals and 52 saves. So that’s 68 shots on goal (8.5 per game).

USL PRO (median=7.5; adding saves plus goals)
Dayton 3-5 Charleston
Wilmington 4-4 Rochester
Richmond 4-3 Rochester
Charlotte 1-5 Orlando

RANDOM GLOBAL GAMES (median=8.5)
Bolton 5-10 Stoke
Catania 5-9 Lazio
Arsenal 5-5 Liverpool
Pumas 6-4 Queretaro
Deportivo La Coruna 4-5 Racing Santander
Montpellier 3-5 Marseille
Bayern Munich 4-3 Bayer Leverkusen (in 4-1 Bayern win?)
Borussia Dortmund 5-2 Freiburg
PSG 5-2 Lyon
Fiorentina 4-2 Juventus

So … guys? The thing with the net at the end of the field? Yeah. Soccer balls go in there.

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general sports, soccer, sports culture

The effect of arguments

Posted on by Beau Dure

A message came in over Twitter from a private feed (I’ll identify him if he likes), asking a good question: “Why on earth do you engage with complete morons?”

This was in response to last night’s Twitter fight, in which I was arguing with two guys with a combined Twitter followership of less than 50 people about the incident at yesterday’s Masters in which Bergen Record columnist Tara Sullivan was denied entry into the locker room.

No one credible is jumping to say Sullivan shouldn’t have been in the locker room. Her male colleagues rallied to share quotes with her. Augusta National very quickly apologized and pinned the blame on a misinformed security guard.

Don’t confuse the Sullivan case with the question of whether the locker room should be open in the first place. That’s a legitimate question, raised recently by Toronto FC’s Aron Winter. The norm in other countries and many smaller-scale U.S. leagues (including Women’s Professional Soccer) is to keep the locker room closed but make athletes available for interviews in a timely fashion. Some sports handle it better than others, of course. But if the powers that be have decided that the most expedient way to handle interviews is to open the locker room, then barring women at the door is an impediment to their jobs.

As my buddy hoover_dam said: “Either you let everyone in or you do a mixed zone where you let nobody in. Get with it, ya jerks.”

Continue reading →

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soccer

2011 WPS predictions

Posted on by Beau Dure

Jenna Pel was kind enough to invite me to participate in her roundup of WPS predictions, then even kinder to share the shocking results on her blog. Be sure to visit her blog — compiling something like this can be pain, even when the participants are the easygoing members of the unofficial WPS media, and she deserves the rewards.

A couple of things stood out on the results:

– magicJack is picked anywhere from first to sixth. That’s a reflection of this talented but combustible roster wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a mystery, to butcher the great Churchill quote.

– Western New York also is picked first through sixth, but that’s misleading — all but two of the writers pick the Flash in the top three, with Shek Borkowski providing the dissenting opinion and picking them last.

– Atlanta took 10 of 12 last-place votes. Cross-Conference is much more bullish on the Beat, picking the youngsters (with a quartet of U.S. women’s veterans now on various parts of the talent pool fringe) to finish second.

– Perhaps I’ve underrated Philadelphia, which gets six of 12 first-place votes.

– I’m more confident in my championship pick of Western New York, and I’m befuddled that so many picked Boston to win the playoffs but not the regular season. Western New York and magicJack may struggle during the regular season because they’ll have so many players busy with the World Cup. But assuming they make the playoffs, they’ll be terrors. They can put aside World Cup burnout for 2-3 games.

My more detailed picks are:

1. WNY 10-4-4, 34 pts. – Most talented team, just needs to overcome absences
2. MaJa 9-6-3, 30 pts. – Plenty of talent but potential for implosion with big personalities, no staff
3. SkyB 8-8-2, 26 pts. – Gabarra’s rebuilding looks shrewd. Hunch is they’ll be aggressive.
4. Phi 7-9-4, 25 pts. – Attacking options, solid goalkeeping.
5. Bos 6-7-5, 23 pts. – Solid D, Kelly Smith; questions in goal and midfield
6. Atl 4-10-4, 16 pts. – The good news — their toughest stretch is late in the year, when the youngsters might be ready.

Update: Edited headline when readers informed me that it’s not 2012, and this is not one of my London 2012 medal projections. I’m obviously in a hurry to get to the end of the Mayan calendar to see what happens.

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soccer

Reflections on “The Man Watching” and Anson Dorrance

Posted on by Beau Dure

If the mark of a good biography is something that makes you think about several aspects of life, then The Man Watching is a very good biography.

The subject, North Carolina and former U.S. women’s soccer coach Anson Dorrance, is described as someone you either love or hate. Surely a third camp exists — one that finds Dorrance’s contradictions and complexities fascinating. (If you need personal disclaimers here: I’ve interacted with him once, 21 years ago, and I found him to be a gracious winner.)

Dorrance is a military son who wanted to be a soldier. Today, he’s a women’s soccer coach who corresponds with his players with often-emotional letters, and his daily schedule and desk have no sense of military order whatsover.

Everyone wants to mimic his success, and yet the coaching style that carried him through much of his career is out of vogue now, both in terms of soccer tactics and player management.

He’s a book-devouring intellectual who turns around and competes with an arrogant fervor that would frighten most of the other folks in bookstores and libraries.

His intellectual approach to life made author Tim Crothers’ job a little bit easier. Though Dorrance may come across as arrogant, he’s open to self-examination and reflection. He’s candid about his successes, failures and controversies, something I’ve heard from Carolina colleagues who have covered his team.

Continue reading →

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soccer

The Freedom of the Majestic WPS FCs

Posted on by Beau Dure

Here’s a quick attempt to summarize what is known about women’s soccer teams in the Washington area as of 5:30 p.m. ET, March 24, 2011:

– The Northern Virginia Majestics, affiliated with the PDL’s Northern Virginia Royals and Super-Y teams, will remain in the W-League, playing to the southwest of DC between Manassas and Dumfries. (See Tweet from @NovaRoyals)

– A new team, tentatively called Washington FC, will also play in the W-League. This team takes over the territory ceded by the former Washington Freedom and will play in the Freedom’s former home, the Maryland Soccerplex, northwest of DC in Boyds, Md.

– The Majestics ownership will be involved with this new team at the Soccerplex, with competitive controls built in to prevent any issues with player movement between the two teams. (Confirmed today with USL management.)

– D.C. United may also be involved with this new team, tentatively called Washington FC, but that cannot be officially announced as yet.

– Meanwhile … magicJack, the WPS team formerly known as the Washington Freedom, may yet hold the door open to play in the Washington area, though their home base will be in Florida. Borislow says he wants the team to play some in the D.C. area but is meeting resistance from Puma. (This from conversation with Dan Borislow today and Potomac Soccer Wire interview.)

– Coincidentally, Borislow’s MagicJacks won the U14 title at the Jefferson Cup, not too far from the Freedom’s former home. (But significantly closer to Manassas.)

Got it? You will be quizzed later.

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soccer

A realistic 2011 MLS season preview

Posted on by Beau Dure

The predicted order of finish in MLS this season is …

I have no idea. And neither do you, no matter how many thousands of words you’ve written or podcasted to the contrary.

We really should get over the concept of being able to predict this league. This isn’t the NBA, where well-established veterans are joined by players we’ve seen for at least a year in college. Or the NFL, where Mel Kiper and his clones thoroughly vet every draftee and no one comes in from Europe. Or the NHL and MLB, where only the top junior phenoms skip the minor leagues. (Sure, it’s much more common in hockey, but even then, we know the players who are ready to make the jump.)

I’m not going to pretend I know how any of these scores of newcomers are going to fare in MLS. The only thing more ridiculous than pretending I can project a draftee’s MLS potential from a dark FSC college soccer broadcast is pretending I can tell you whether the Whitecaps have bought wisely from the Swiss Super League.

I didn’t scout the Uruguayan league to find out if Diego Chaves and Gaston Puerari are the answers up front for Chicago. I know far more about Ole Einar Bjorndalen than I do about Jan Gunnar Solli.

Some of these guys will be the next Christian Gomez or Joel Lindpere. Some of them will be the next Franco Niell or Isaac Romo.

Of the expansion teams, Portland has more proven MLS players than Vancouver has. That means Vancouver’s first year could be a Chivas USA redux, or maybe the Swiss league is to the Northwest what Eastern Europe was to the 1998 Chicago Fire.

This much we know: A couple of teams (Salt Lake, Seattle) have solid cores and didn’t make too many changes. New York has a solid core but made a few more changes than the others. Los Angeles and Dallas made a few high-profile tweaks.

Predicting the newcomers’ success is really a question of judging the recent track record of the people who brought them in. With Steve Nicol in charge, New England can maintain some cautious optimism. Houston also has management with a solid track record.

Other than that, let the crapshoot begin. And when Team X wins it all, I’ll be the first to say I didn’t tell you so.

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soccer

Are sports better when they’re great or mediocre, but not good?

Posted on by Beau Dure

For the first time in my life, I attended a boxing card last night. Two things stood out:

1. The Virginia commission has issues. See my comments at the excellent Boxing Along the Beltway blog if you’re really curious about all that.

2. The early bouts were more entertaining than the two main events, featuring former WBA champion William Joppy and local hero Jimmy Lange, who has held a couple of minor belts and appeared on The Contender. An unbeaten Maryland heavyweight walked out to A Country Boy Can Survive, listing all the wonderful things country boys can do, but beating a journeyman with a 6-8 record was not among them. Another up-and-coming prospect had all he could handle from a guy on an 18-bout winless streak, and the decision was initially announced in favor of the journeyman until they realized that was a little far-fetched.

Joppy, Lange and their opponents were clearly the four best boxers in the arena. Lange’s bout might have been better without the nagging feeling I had that his opponent was being ripped off by a home-state ref. Joppy’s fight was full of nice-looking flurries that didn’t seem to do much.

This wasn’t quite boxing at the highest level, though. Manny Pacquiao commands a lot of money for a reason.

I can’t extrapolate too much from one fight card, of course. But it mirrors something I’ve noticed elsewhere. The top echelon is usually worth watching (exception: World Cup finals, where players are usually trying to keep their underwear clean), and the very bottom is dreadful. But of that 80 percent in between, the unpolished athletes often bring the entertainment. That’s why we have fond memories of the first season of MLS, where the defenses would see a cutback move from Preki and react like confused dogs. “Huh? Huh? Where’d you go? Where’d you go?”

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basketball, medal projections, olympic sports, soccer

2012 ball sports: Yay, team! Except you folks with bats

Posted on by Beau Dure

Let’s see … I’ve done projections for archery, athletics, badminton … let’s call up the spreadsheet and see what’s next:

Baseball!

Oh … right.

Baseball and softball are gone from the Olympic program because, as we all know, it’s easier to turn an 18-hole golf course into an Olympic venue than it is to put a fence around a small part of an Olympic green and have baseball and softball games. Or something like that.

That still leaves us with a few team sports: Basketball, field hockey, soccer, handball, volleyball (beach and indoor) and water polo. (We’ll save synchronized swimming for later.)

Continue reading →

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soccer

Could D.C. fans find Freedom in W-League?

Posted on by Beau Dure

Here’s what we know about women’s soccer in the D.C. area and what we don’t know, all leading up to a couple of hypotheticals:

KNOW: The WPS team formerly known as the Washington Freedom is now magicJack’s Washington Freedom. Yes, magicJack … not magicTalk. Dan Borislow, the team owner, says the product name “magicTalk” will be changing.

DON’T KNOW: How many, if any, games this team will play anywhere near Washington. The schedule released today says the following: “The home venue for magicJack’s Washington Freedom will be Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida. The team might play one or two of its home games in the Washington, D.C. area.”

KNOW: Barring an unexpected construction surge, the team will break the record for smallest WPS crowd. Our Game contacted the university’s assistant director for facilities, Mitch Silverman, who said the team would play all of its games at an on-campus stadium that would hold 1,200-1,500 fans. By my hasty calculations scanning through the 2010 and 2009 results, the current record is 1,878.

DON’T KNOW: Whether anyone in South Florida has noticed that they’re getting a soccer team loaded with some of the best women’s soccer players anywhere (Abby Wambach, Hope Solo, Christie Rampone, Shannon Boxx). General news searches for “freedom wambach” and “freedom ‘florida atlantic'” turned up nothing. A search for team owner “Borislow” turned up nothing at the Miami Herald and Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel sites. And these are papers with excellent soccer reporters. That’s how quietly Borislow is doing things.

KNOW: The Maryland SoccerPlex, the Freedom’s home for the last seven years, will be the home field for the W-League’s Washington FC.

DON’T KNOW: Who owns Washington FC. (Yes, I’m looking into it.)

KNOW: Borislow, who bought the Freedom from the Hendricks family (WUSA founders), owns the Freedom trademark and could be stuck with it thanks to the complexities of uniform contracts with Puma. If he were to stop using that trademark, it could revert to WPS. But it’s a little murky from that point.

DON’T KNOW: Whether Borislow could sell or bestow that trademark to Washington FC. When asked if he would be willing to let a new club inherit the Freedom name and the Freedom’s relationships with youth clubs, Borislow said, “I would do anything to help youth soccer.” He wasn’t sure whether he could grant Washington FC the rights to the name.

KNOW: WPS has no leverage with Borislow. He most likely saved the league from extinction. If he hadn’t stepped up, WPS might not exist. And no one in the Washington area did it.

DON’T KNOW: Whether women’s soccer as a whole will be better off this way. I asked aloud on Twitter today whether fans would’ve preferred that the remaining WPS teams simply fold into the W-League, where they can play as professional teams. The reaction ranged from indifference to enthusiasm.

So is the best solution for Washington fans to hope that the W-League Washington FC is run by ambitious folks who can reclaim the Freedom name and build a team that could possibly jump into WPS if the league is healthy down the road? Possibly.

Can they do it?

We don’t know.

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