Tag: w-league

soccer

D.C. United Women and Boston Breakers: A W-League/WPSL friendly

Posted on by Beau Dure

The leagues may have a fractious history, but second-year W-League club D.C. United Women welcomed the WPSL Elite League’s Boston Breakers (formerly of the WUSA and WPS) to the Maryland SoccerPlex on Saturday.

Play was a little ragged, as you might expect from one team (D.C.) that barely had time for introductions and another (Boston) that is still very much in early-season form. And as you’d expect, the professional team with a bit more preseason practice and a game under its belt (Boston) had the better of play and won 1–0.

But D.C. United Women had a few good moments as well as some sensational play on defense and in goal.

I caught a few highlights on video and spoke with many of the players.

Crowd wasn’t bad — definitely 1,000, maybe more — on a beautiful night.

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soccer

WPS vs. the semipros

Posted on by Beau Dure

We’ve all lived ten days since I last posted about WPS and nine days since WPS owners accepted U.S. Soccer’s terms for Division I sanctioning, and yet the debate doesn’t seem to have changed.

One reason it’s still going: We’ve seen a return from hibernation from the blogger known as Fake Sigi. (He’s a bit different from the typical “Fake” or “Not” identities that parody Sepp Blatter, Dan Borislow, “soccerreform” and Grant Wahl in that we know his real name and he spends little time mimicking his namesake.)

I’ve seen Fake at the same table as Canadian journalist Duane Rollins, but they still get pretty annoyed with each other. Duane felt compelled to respond to Fake’s post as well as former Whitecaps player Ciara McCormack, who has written one more post arguing directly with Duane and another that mentions the dispute in passing.

So far, though, we haven’t heard anything from the Whitecaps. They’re the ones called “vicious pimps” in Fake’s piece, so you’d think they’d be the most offended party.

But underneath the occasionally amusing insults, we have a fairly legitimate debate. Duane isn’t the only person suggesting that the top North American women’s league should follow more of a semipro model. Peter Wilt, who qualifies as a co-founder of WPS for his work with the Chicago Red Stars, put forth a detailed proposal and sparked an enlightening discussion. Bonnie D. Ford made similar points at espnW and drew a few hostile comments as well as the typical Internet gaggle of juvenile responses.

Here’s the strange part to me: Why are we having this discussion now?

Last year, when the Washington Freedom went up for sale, the Chicago Red Stars self-relegated and FC Gold Pride joined the ranks of the disappeared, the discussion would’ve been timely. This year, all six teams were willing to return — one was told “no thanks” for reasons other than finances. And for the first time in U.S. women’s history, a league was around to absorb a big bump after a big event — one that has much more impact than the World Cup has on MLS.

We’ll have to see how much of that impact carries over into 2012. But here’s the question I haven’t seen addressed: If five ownership groups are willing to gamble on that, why tell them you’d rather go ahead and start the transition to a semipro, scaled-back league now?

On Twitter, I compared the WPS-vs.-semipro debate to 1993, when U.S. Soccer chose between MLS, the existing APSL (A-League) and the rule-bending League One America proposal to leap into the Division I men’s soccer void. They opted for MLS, which was in many senses a leap of faith. It’s easy to say now that men’s soccer is popular in the USA and Canada today. It wasn’t so easy to predict such popularity back in 1993.

I got this response from @DCUWomen:

In 93, men were playing catch up to the world with huge $$ reward a draw… Women is dif biz, needs lower budgets, more teams.

I can see the lower budgets — no one, not even the free-spending Dan Borislow, is suggesting that WPS teams should start shelling out $3 million to $13 million per team like MLS teams did in 2011. But why more teams?

So that’s two questions: Why does WPS need more teams (more than the eight U.S. Soccer is demanding by 2014), and why should the powers that be insist on going semipro if at least eight owners are willing to play legitimate D1 ball by 2014? Anyone have answers?

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soccer

A brainstorm on mixing pro and elite amateurs

Posted on by Beau Dure

A unique problem for U.S. soccer, on both the women’s and men’s sides, is that the vast majority of good players between the ages of 18 and 22 are busy with college soccer from August to December. Then they’re in school (and playing unmarketed tournaments) until May.

That leaves a narrow window for those players to participate in any league on the American soccer pyramid — the PDL, the NPSL, the WPSL and the W-League. They have to wrap up early to get their players back to school. (On a related note, congratulations to the league champions determined this weekend — Orange County Waves in the WPSL, the winner of this evening’s Atlanta Silverbacks-Ottawa Fury game in the W-League, and Jacksonville United in the NPSL. The PDL has one more weekend.)

And college players can’t play on pro teams. So if you want to pay your players a few bucks, you can’t have college players alongside them. College players can play against pros, but not with them.

In men’s soccer, the pro/am split isn’t that big a deal. Clubs that want to go pro can do so, either by spending megamillions to join MLS, or a good bit less to play in the NASL or USL Pro.

But in women’s soccer, we’re seeing some rumblings of lower-tier leagues that have already had a couple of pro teams exploring full-fledged pro divisions. The challenge will be getting enough teams willing to make the leap.

If they don’t, here’s a wild idea:

– Spend the summer playing in mixed pro and amateur leagues as we have now.

– In the fall, once the kids have gone back to school, play a Pro Cup. Take all the pro teams in the country, including WPS teams reunited with international stars who spent much of the summer at the Olympics, and play a short season leading to a couple of playoff games.

The advantages:

– The pro teams get enough games to make the season worthwhile.

– College players get to face pros in competition.

– The pro teams will have all their national team players together in a short season that should be perfect for capitalizing on any momentum from the Olympics, World Cup or any other tournament. (While I’m revamping things, I’d also like to lobby for a Copa Americas for Western Hemisphere teams, perhaps in odd non-World Cup years like the Euro championship.)

– Teams that want to just dip their toes into the pro waters can do so, playing amateur teams through much of the summer.

– Between the pro teams and amateur teams, we should have enough teams to split up into regions through most of the regular season, keeping travel costs down.

The necessary disclaimer: I have absolutely no reason to think this is under discussion anywhere. Just throwing it out for people to kick around. So go ahead …

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soccer

Women’s soccer boom, version 2.0

Posted on by Beau Dure

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve seen people ask aloud whether the Women’s World Cup will boost WPS. My rote response on Twitter: WPS has its own issues that no goal in Moenchengladbach can solve.

Perhaps I should explain in more than 140 characters.

1. Big events usually don’t build leagues. The buzz always dies down quickly. The overly ambitious WUSA couldn’t build a sustainable league in the wake of the 1999 Women’s World Cup, and MLS needed to survive many lean years through patient business planning. (Yes, a book on that subject exists.)

2. WPS has had the deck stacked against it. The league launched during a recession, which is obviously bad for sponsorship and attendance. The downsizing mainstream media wouldn’t touch it. AP ignored it. A small band of beat writers (Craig Stouffer, Jeff Di Veronica, William Bretherton and others I apologize for missing) got out and paid attention.

The good news was that a hardy band of indie media — Jenna Pel, Jeff Kassouf and Jennifer Doyle, along with ESPN’s Jacqueline Purdy and the enterprising staff of Our Game magazine — jumped into the vacuum and frankly everyone’s concepts of women’s soccer. (Suffice to say I’ll be reading a lot more of Jenna’s Frauen-Bundesliga notes this year after touring Germany and seeing the league’s players in action on several national teams.) They’ll be around whether WPS sticks around or not.

3. We don’t know yet whether magicJack owner Dan Borislow is saving or killing the league. Borislow bought the Washington Freedom, moved it to South Florida an renamed it after his company. For that, he can’t be faulted — plenty of people in the D.C. area have the money and the supposed interest in women’s soccer to have stepped up to the plate and kept the Freedom in place, and they did not do it.

Borislow and the Sahlen family, which moved its W-League team up into WPS as the Western New York Flash, kept the league at a viable six teams. They also showed the will to splash plenty of cash on players. The Sahlens signed Marta and a sizable chunk of the Canadian national team. Borislow literally has the spine of the U.S. team — Hope Solo, Christie Rampone, Shannon Boxx and Abby Wambach.

The Flash settled neatly into WPS. Borislow, on the other hand, has been feuding with the league all season over everything from maintaining a Web site to putting up signage for sponsors. (He says he’s willing to do both but that the league makes it too expensive or too difficult.) He has been defiant through multiple fines and suspensions.

And magicJack has not been a typical pro team in many other senses. Coach Mike Lyons was reassigned after a couple of games, and the head coaching role has been assumed by a revolving cast of assistant coaches, players and Borislow himself. (Borislow already is the team’s PR contact, and it’s unclear whether Briana Scurry, the GM at the start of the season, is still playing much of a role.) Players have been only intermittently available to the media, and when you talk with them, they all give pat answers about how their owner is a sweet guy who just has his own way of doing things.

The cynics would say they don’t want to rock the boat when they have perks such as nice condos near the beach. Borislow has been quite willing to send players packing when they fall out of favor for whatever reason, but so far, no one has left the magicJack organization and vented about anything.

WPS has expansion prospects. But the questions are these:

– Will anyone be put off by an owner who has demonstrated such contempt for the league office?

– Will anyone be willing to spend the money to compete with someone who spends like the New York Yankees of WPS? Even in the middle of the season, magicJack simply bought Megan Rapinoe — yes, the Megan Rapinoe whose crosses in this World Cup have become the stuff of legend — from Philadelphia, which has been a viable contender this season.

– Will some owners prefer the business models in the W-League and the WPSL? The main drawback in those leagues is the schedule, which is far too short because of draconian restrictions on the college players who must fill out the talent pool. But a couple of teams have tested professional models in those leagues, and perhaps there would be enough to break away and play a season of a reasonable length. Even back in the mid-2000s, players like England’s Kelly Smith and France’s Marinette Pichon hung around in the States to give the W-League a whirl.

MLS succeeded by imposing a top-down single-entity structure with a salary cap, containing costs and putting all owners in the same economic boat. That might not work for women’s soccer — it only worked in MLS because Philip Anschutz, Lamar Hunt and Robert Kraft stuck with it after everyone else bailed out.

No matter which leagues and teams survive the Darwinian battle of business models now underway, someone has to have the patience (and deep pockets) of Anschutz and the practicality of Hunt to make this work. They paved the way for sensible owners who have made soccer work in Seattle, Portland and even the long-derided Kansas City market. A few owners opening their wallets with starry eyes after another Wambach goal or Solo save in Germany won’t translate into a sustainable league.

All that said, as Pia Sundhage says in nearly every press conference, the glass is half-full. The USA has shown it can fall in love with women’s soccer more than once. The ratings for Sunday’s final may well beat the ratings for baseball’s All-Star Game.

And if that attracts a wave of patient, rational investors with reasonable expectations, pro women’s soccer will be here to stay.

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soccer

Thunderstruck: D.C. United Women’s home debut

Posted on by Beau Dure

A decent crowd was walking up to the stadium despite the 100-degree heat, the bagpipes were in effect, the staff was ready, the players were warming up …

Bzzzt … beep … blaaaaaare … bzzt.

That’s the static-electricity detector at the Maryland Soccerplex, telling everyone to get inside.

So for two hours, fans and players crowded into the gym at the Plex, waiting for the all-clear. The rain didn’t last long, but we were just close enough to a couple of passing storm cells to see some flashes and hear some rumbles, each one restarting the countdown until we could get the game underway.

The upside was that the game, once it started, was uninterrupted. The storm cooled off the Plex, and it turned into a very pleasant night with 100 or so fans remaining from the original crowd. Surely that crowd would’ve been more on a weekend — getting up I-270 to the Plex is difficult at rush hour — and the heat/storm forecast didn’t help.

The crowd included a group from New Jersey that stuck it out. Good for them for making the trip. The bad news was that they echoed the Wildcats’ coaching staff in hounding the refs throughout the game, at times inventing their own reality.  I wound up in an argument with one gentleman who claimed the ref saw the retaliation (the Wildcat red card) but not the original foul on a late altercation. But Christie Welsh got a yellow — a debatable one — for the original foul. So surely the ref saw something.

The coaching staff didn’t put up much of an argument on the red card. That may have been a smart move, or they may have simply been hoarse from complaining about everything from physical play to throw-ins at midfield. Frankly, it was comical at times.

But the Wildcats have a solid team, strong at the back with a dangerous player in Kylee Rossi. The goal, an opportunistic long-range effort from Andrea Lopez, was well-taken. Both goalkeepers had solid games, with Emmy Simpkins making a couple of big late saves after starter Caroline Williams was hurt in a collision.

D.C. United has some communication issues, not surprising for a team that’s still being cobbled together. Welsh just got her clearance to play, as did former 2.Bundesliga player Hayley Siegel. The talent level is pretty strong, though, and Nairn stood out throughout with good runs in midfield and accurate, powerful long-range shots.

The weather may have thrown players off a bit. Long passes skipped on the wet turf, though the excellent Soccerplex field drains quickly.

These teams may see each other down the road. New Jersey has only two blemishes on its record — the tie with D.C. and a one-point deduction (if anyone knows why, please let me know). D.C. lost its opener 0-1 at New Jersey. As both teams come together, a late July playoff matchup could be something special.

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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

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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