An Important Difference (Play Like a Girl)

“Abby said that she wanted her final World Cup to be like a fairytale. And I’m not sure she could have written a better ending: a world champion at last, draped in the Stars and Stripes, showing us all how far we’ve come―on and off the field―by sharing a celebratory kiss with her wife.”

―President Barack Obama

This is an illustration of the difference.

President Barack Obama, on Tuesday:

This team taught all America’s children that “playing like a girl” means you’re a badass. Perhaps I shouldn’t have used that phrase. Playing like a girl means being the best. It means drawing the largest TV audience for a soccer match―men or women’s―in American history. It means wearing our nation’s crest on your jersey, taking yourself and your country to the top of the world. That’s what American women do. That’s what American girls do. That’s why we celebrate this team. They’ve done it with class. They’ve done it with the right way. They’ve done it with excitement. They’ve done with style. We are very, very proud of them.

Two days later, over at the Capitol:

On Thursday, Senate Republicans blocked a resolution that called on soccer’s global governing body to “immediately eliminate gender pay inequity and treat all athletes with the same respect and dignity.”

“It is a shame that in the Senate, we cannot even agree to pass a resolution that calls for the equal treatment of male and female athletes. If we cannot even pass a non-binding resolution, how can we ever achieve real pay equity for women?” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who introduced the resolution this summer.

Earlier this year at the FIFA Women’s World Cup, the pay disparity between male and female soccer players was put into sharp focus when it was reported that while the U.S. Women’s National Team received $2 million for winning the championship, men’s teams who lost in the first round of the 2014 World Cup, including the U.S. men’s team, received $8 million.

(Gibbs)

Remember this, when people tell you there is no difference, that they’re all the same.

A Fare-Thee-Well and Welcome (MLS Expansion Draft Mix)

Jalil Anibaba will play next season with Orlando City SC. Oh, wait, no he won’t. Make that Sporting KC.

Let us just turn to Jacob Sweeny-Samuelson of Sounder at Heart:

In the MLS Expansion Draft today, Orlando City SC used their third choice of available players to snag Anibaba from the Sounders.

In response, the Sounders added Zach Scott to the protected list. Though many doubted that Scott would be picked in this draft, the Sounders clearly didn’t want to risk losing two center back options from the roster.

The Sounders made it through the rest of the draft unscathed ....

.... It looks like Anibaba may remain in the Western Conference after all. Sporting KC reporter Sam McDowell reports that Anibaba has immediately been traded to Kansas City as part of a deal to ship Aurelien Collin to Orlando ....

First: Thank you, Jalil, and good luck in Kansas City. We’ll be seeing you again, soon.

Also: Good luck to OCSC, and also NYCFC. Welcome to the show; we look forward to greeting your colors with rave green.

USA vs China PR: International Tournament of Brasilia 2014

Game On.

Over the next ninety minutes or so, U.S. Women’s National Team will proceed to bury China PR in the first round of the International Tournament of Brasilia.

However, it is a women’s game, so it would appear that American fans not pirating an international television feed from somewhere or other will just have to follow the livetweets.

And as we write this, the present score is USA 1-0 CHN (Lloyd 23′, Rapinoe assist).

The available Twitter feeds are in English and Spanish.

A Look Ahead to Next Season

Disappointment simply is; the rest remains ours to decide.

Certes, the loss of local team’s chance to play for the league championship is disappointing, but then again it is hardly like losing a war, or even sending troops abroad to a war they don’t need to fight. Disappointment is relative; its magnitude and priority are determined in the mind of the beholder.

And when that disappointment also means the end of a sporting season, there are plenty of ways to distract ourselves. For instance, there are the farewells and thanks to offer:

In the summer of 2012, Marcus Hahnemann got an unexpected call from Adrian Hanauer, the Owner & General Manager of Sounders FC. He was asked if he wanted to play.

“My question was, ‘For who?'” Hahnemann recalls. “He said the Sounders, and I went, ‘Yeah, I’m in, but [goalkeeper coach Tom Dutra] should probably come take a look at me, because I haven’t been training for three months.'”

Hahnemann was a retired goalkeeper living in the Seattle area when he received that call. He always wanted to return to his hometown’s club, but the opportunity didn’t work out in Sounders FC’s first three years in MLS.

Hanauer gave him that opportunity, and now a couple of years later, Hahnemann is retiring as a member of the team he began his career with more than two decades ago.

(Lester)

Sounder at heart. Sounder for life. Thank you, Marcus Hahnemann.

And then there are the questions of who will return next year; Sounder FC Public Relations devised a handy Q&A session with SFC Sporting Director Chris Henderson about the eleven protected players announced this week:

What are your thoughts on the 11 players the club chose to protect in Wednesday’s Expansion Draft?

“It’s always a difficult decision to protect just 11 players on your roster. There are so many factors to consider on the team side and the player side, as well. We have a lot of great players to choose from because we’ve made it a priority to have a deep roster that can compete in all competitions. We wish we could protect more, but unfortunately it’s a reality of our sport, so we have to make some tough decisions.”

There are some veteran players on Sounders FC’s unprotected list. When you make these decisions on specific personnel, is there a calculated risk for the technical staff?

“Yeah, there is. You have to look at the whole team. It’s a difficult decision having to pick 11 guys. We’ve all discussed things and debated it, and there’s a lot that goes into it with regards to age and player form, contracts, the future of the team and where we’re going. We’ve had some really tough decisions and you can only protect 11, so there’s many times we wish we could protect 15, but we had to cut off the line. We keep our fingers crossed leading into this draft. Sometimes you take risk and you leave a player out there and you can get by without losing someone.”

The protected players list arrived yesterday, and it looks about like we might expect. Furthermore, the dynamic this year is altered by the arrival of two new clubs—note the word “expansion”. And perhaps this is one of the strengths of soccer; professional-league expansion requires large sums of money in order that the new teams can have something of a chance coming out of the gate. But the personnel contract rules for soccer are considerably different from what Americans are accustomed to with NFL, MLB, and NBA contracts. For the sake of the league, that works out okay.

One of the Greatest Sports Teams Ever

Let us start the day the fútbol way.

Or, you know, with bad rhymes. Whatever works.

Nominees: U.S. Soccer 2014 Female Athlete of the Year.

• Lauren Holiday, midfield

• Sydney Leroux, forward

• Carli Lloyd, midfield

• Christen Press, forward

• Abby Wambach, forward

In a way, it is almost sad because there is an argument that the answer is clear. Of course, Abby Wambach has also taken the prize six times out of nine nominations. With sixteen caps and a record goal-scoring season highlighted by four goals against Costa Rica in the CONCACAF Championship, it seems hard to argue otherwise. Still, though, there is a case to be made for others; Lauren Holiday also earned sixteen caps, amounting to 1,255 minutes, over a third again more than Wambach played. Sydney Leroux managed 1,130 minutes, grabbing eighteen caps with nine goals and five assists. Carli Lloyd logged a staggering 1,683 minutes in earning nineteen caps, scoring ten goals and eight assists. And suddenly the answer isn’t so clear. U.S. Soccer is also accounting for play in other leagues; Wambach only played in ten games for New York Flash, while Lauren Holiday claimed the NWSL championship game MVP after FCKC defeated Seattle Reign FC at the end of August. And Christen Press played 1,115 minutes while being the only player on the USWNT to earn a cap in each of the twenty matches played so far this year; additionally, she played full time in each of twelve games with Chicago Red Stars and notched nine goals with Tyresö in Champions League play.

And suddenly the answer is not at all clear.

The U.S. Women’s National Team is one of the finest assemblies of sporting talent on the planet. And this is a term in which we do not bother parsing out male and female.

Virtually Cool

Shane Evans notes the interesting statistics surrounding the many video game lives of Sounders FC:

If you’re a soccer fan, chances are you enjoy playing a little FIFA 15 as well. If you’re a soccer fan in the USA, chances are (according to EA Sports) you’re playing FIFA 15 with the Sounders FC.

In a post on EASports.com, the Sounders FC was named as the most used MLS club in the USA with over 1.9 million matches played since the game was released on September 23. That’s a lot of FIFA right there.

He’s got a point. Then again, for an article about something seemingly so trivial, there isn’t a sentence that isn’t impressive.

____________________

Evans, Shane. “FIFA 15 players in the United States really love using the Sounders FC”. SoundersFC.com. 25 November 2014.

Just Another Rant (#ENGvGERmix)

It is easy enough to denounce the lack of attention paid women’s sports in the United States, especially when the idea that the local women’s professional soccer team aims for a sixty percent attendance increase to a six thousand per game average for a team featuring that much international play talent. And it is easy enough for Americans to scratch their heads in puzzlement—since awe and soccer are a forbidden combination in this country—at the thought of the best-attended MLS team averaging twice what the next team draws, the word out of England regarding Sunday’s match at Wembly is a kick to the shin:

England women’s midfielder Karen Carney believes their historic game at Wembley on Sunday proves there is an appetite for the women’s game.

“TV are behind us and we’ve just got to do the business now. I think the rest will take care of itself,” Carney said.

Tickets have sold out, but sales have been capped at 55,000 due to London Underground engineering works ....

.... The game begins England’s preparations for the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup, which takes place in Canada, and will be the first women’s international fixture played at Wembley.

(BBC Sport)

Fifty-five thousand. Sold out. With allocation capped because of disruptions caused by public infrastructure work.

Just a reminder: Our U.S. Women’s National Team just won the CONCACAF Championship, with world-record goal scorer Abby Wambach notching a ridiculous four goals against Costa Rica, and we are supposed to be impressed by the 11,625 who showed up to watch the game in person.

If something about the previous statement seems amiss, I promise you it isn’t the statement.

Well, okay. Supposed to be impressed? Yeah, I kind of made that up. Women’s soccer in the U.S. is only supposed to be impressive if it’s a World Cup match. Or one of the players pulls off her shirt after scoring a goal. Preferably both at once, then all the guys can feel like they tuned in for a reason.

And, you know, at times like this I recall a t-shirt, of all things. One of my daughter’s classmates happened to be wearing it one day when I was at the school. It was a soccer shirt, with a silhouette female mid-plant and about to deliver a hard shot to the upper right corner of the net. The slogan read, “You only wish you could kick like a girl!”

Cool shirt. I applaud.

Then again, that’s also what it comes to.

I just don’t get it. Is a woman playing soccer not sexy enough unless she whips off her shirt? No, seriously, what is the problem here? To the one, soccer is the most popular team sport on the planet. To the other, the U.S. has some of the finest talent in the history of women’s sports. To the beeblebrox, we also have an untapped talent reserve of unimaginable size. What, exactly, is the problem here?

Fifty-five thousand will gather at Wembley to watch the English women’s team host Germany. I’m not going to knock this particular match, but come on, really? The USWNT can’t even sell out eighteen thousand tickets at PPL Park? For the freaking CONCACAF Championship?

What … is … the … problem … here?

Get your heads out. Open your eyes.

Watch … in … awe.

The U.S. Women’s National Team has a tournament next month; four matches in eleven days.

Seriously. Open your eyes and watch in awe.

Oh, right. After all that, I forgot: Congratulations, Karen Carney; we hear you’re up for your hundredth cap. Good show, madam. Indeed, great show.

____________________

British Broadcasting Corporation. “Karen Carney: England women forging place in football market”. BBC Sport. 20 November 2014.

Another Look at Voters and What They Just Voted For

And that’s where the confusion kicks in. The American mainstream strongly backs the same policy agenda Democrats want, but that same mainstream just elected a Congress that will make it impossible for Americans to get what they say they support.

―Steve Benen

It might seem to need some unpacking, but in truth the point holds.

There is, for instance, the temptation to point out the Senate shift, and remind that this was the “mainstream” in places like Iowa, where voters clearly prefer uneducated, tinfoil trash and threats of sedition from elected officials. Or Kansas, where voters are cheering on the destruction of the state government. Or Colorado, where 2010 saw Sen. Michael Bennet win a narrow victory, but only because it was a statewide election, and just enough voters were offended at the idea of sending a prosecutor who aids and abets rape to the U.S. Senate; it should be noted that in the state’s Fourth Congressional District, Colorado voters had no qualms about sending the abettor to the House of Representatives. Of course, voters in the states’ Fifteenth Legislative District also sent a paranoid, homophobic exorcist to the legislature, and in the overlapping Fifth Congressional District, returned Rep. Doug “Tar Baby” Lamborn to the House in celebration of ignorance and hatred. Looking at the Senate swing, it’s easy enough to fall back to the comfort that, for the most part, Democrats lost where they were expected to lose.

But a broader picture of voters can also be found in the midterm election; Republicans made enormous gains in state government across the nation. Certes, in a state like Washington, where ballot measures were the only statewide votes, things went about as expected; we don’t match the national trend, but that in part is because we had nothing to do with the question of Senate control.

But it seems this will be the defining legacy of the 2014 midterms. Voters said they want something, and then voted against it. At this point, we cannot begin to explain the result without accounting for irrationality in the psychopathology of everyday life. A dialectic of neurosis might explain the preference of party labels over real results, but is it a twisted identity politic or something deeper, like a craven need for perpetual Manichaean dualism? Close, low-scoring contests are the height of professional sports^α, but disastrous for political outcomes.

It’s easy enough to express what just happened in the sense that Republicans just won big in an election. The harder answer is to figure just what that actually means in terms of voters. As to governance, the answer is clear: The ability of governments in the United States to function appropriately will be further degraded as Republicans move forward feeling empowered to prove their thesis that government just doens’t work.

It is, furthermore, easy enough to say we want nice outcomes. It is harder to accomplish those nice outcomes, though, and nearly impossible for voters to admit that, no, they don’t really want that stuff. And that, too, might well emerge from a dialectic of neurosis, that people only say they want good outcomes because they fret about what the neighbors would think if they came right out and admitted what they’re really after.

____________________

^α The basic principle: Offense wins games; defense wins championships. Football, baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer … you name it, the principle holds. And let’s face it, outside the SEC, most American football fans are pretty much sick of sixty-point blowouts.

Benen, Steve. “NBC poll: Public attitudes clear as mud”. msnbc. 20 November 2014.

A Kick in the Holiday Season

The MLS might take a break in the middle of the playoffs for the sake of international fútbol, but the U.S. Women’s National Team has a tough run in December, packing four games into eleven days for the 2014 Brasilia International Tournament.

That said, up in the Pacific Northwest fans are preparing for Sunday night’s showdown in Carson when Sounders FC will meet L.A. Galaxy in the first leg of their Western Conference Final match. Their last meeting was less than a month ago, with the Seattle club taking a 2-0 win and also the Supporters’ Shield, much to the delight of over fifty-seven thousand fans at CenturyLink Field.

Meanwhile, Don Ruiz offers the latest preview of Sunday’s big game:

The Seattle Sounders would be notably short of their best without forward Clint Dempsey and defender DeAndre Yedlin, just as the Los Angeles Galaxy wouldn’t look the same without goals-leader Robbie Keane.

Those realities led Major League Soccer to schedule a break between its conference semifinal and final rounds, going dark during a two-week window for international play.

For the USA, that window closed Tuesday with a 4-1 loss to Ireland in Dublin. The USA played without MLS stars Dempsey, Yedlin and New England midfielders Jermaine Jones and Lee Nguyen. Dempsey wasn’t called for either of the United States friendlies during the MLS break, while the others were released after the first match last week — a 2-1 loss to Colombia — so that they could spend this week in playoff preparations with their club teams. Ireland did the same with Keane.

“It’s good,” Sounders coach Sigi Schmid said of Yedlin’s early return this week. “Obviously they have Robbie Keane back as well, so it’s the same for everybody. It’s good that (U.S. national team coach Jurgen Klinsmann) allowed those guys … to return after the game. That’s what we thought was going to happen, and that happened.”

While Clint Dempsey acknowledges feeling “pretty beat up, pretty tired” from all the running around, DeAndre Yedlin—who will play next season with Tottenham Hotspur—says he’s ready, citing the one asset he has over the veteran superstar: youth.

A Raving Smirk

Sometimes there is a good reason to dwell on the past, and that reason is generally to smirk at the future. Well, okay, it feels good. But sometimes smirking amounts to asking for trouble.

After what Seattle Sounders FC majority owner Joe Roth called a “horrible” end to the 2013 season, he faced a decision: fire coach Sigi Schmid, or fire some players.

“It was close,” Roth said. “I called Sigi down to Los Angeles with (general manager Adrian Hanauer). It was after we won one of the last 10 games, (survived) the play-in game and lost to Portland. I was upset. And we sat for a couple of hours. And I sat there and I thought, ‘You know, I could fire this guy, who I think is one of the two best coaches in the league. But he’s won the championship in LA and Columbus. So I’ve either got to fire him or fire the players.’ So I fired the players — because obviously they just weren’t jelling.”

This season, the new combination jelled. The Sounders won their fourth U.S. Open Cup, their first Supporters’ Shield and on Sunday will begin the Western Conference finals series at Los Angeles in hopes of advancing to their first MLS Cup.

As Don Ruiz notes for The News Tribune, Sounders FC failed to reach the MLS Cup final in their first five seasons. Sunday, however, brings the first leg of their two-game Western Conference Final aggregate against L.A. Galaxy, who Sounders FC just defeated a few weeks ago in order to capture their first Supporters’ Shield. The first task will be to hold LAG to zero goals; all else follows.

Well, okay, not all. SFC still have to score at least a goal, preferably in Los Angeles, and then everything else can follow. The whole thing about road goals is puzzling to Americans who don’t follow fútbol, but the maxim still generally holds: Offense wins games; defense wins championships.

Whatever. The bottom line is to get your smirk on. Sounders FC face L.A. Galaxy Sunday, 23 November, at StubHub Center in Carson, California. Along with the second leg, a week later in Seattle, these will be Landon Donovan’s last matches in MLS.

Rally up, Rave Green. There will be no swan song for the American legend.

____________________

Ruiz, Don. “Sounders owner glad he kept coach, fired players”. The News Tribune. 17 November 2014.