Sometimes off the pitch is more interesting than on

By: Melissa | May 23rd, 2009

On Saturday, Sky Blue FC released a statement informing us that Ian Sawyers has been indefinitely suspended. That’s General Manager and Head Coach Ian Sawyers getting the axe and putting assistant Kelly Lindsey in the top spot for Friday’s game against the Freedom. And how long she’ll stay head coach, is uh… not really clear:

“Differences have arisen between Ian and the ownership of the organization,” said Thomas Hofstetter, CEO and President of Sky Blue Soccer – the parent organization of Sky Blue FC. “We are working through this matter as professionally as possible and will have further information available sometime next week.”

Not exactly the best morale boost for the team stuck in last place. And they lost that game against the Freedom 2-1. Surprise surprise.

Adding to the mystery is a random tweet from Steven Goff on Friday: “Washington Freedom, which ousted team president before season started, dismissed 3 front office folks this week, soccer industry sources say.” Kind of a strange report when you consider the fact that the Freedom are slowly inching their way up the standings. So the firings can’t be because of team performance – right? And both Sky Blue and Washington made some player movements this week – the Freedom in defense and Sky Blue added another forward – presumably to help out Natasha Kai who I swear gets injured during every game. I really hope that’s the reason why she was left off the USWNT roster against Canada.

As for Chicago, their performance on the field aside (but honestly, Saturday’s game was our first real glimpse of how amazing Christiane is as a playmaker), this club is miles ahead of all the other WPS clubs. The webcasts they provide us are just perfect. And because I’m a complete geek, I noticed Saturday’s webcast used the Google App Engine. But the best part was right after the game began, the program scaled up and migrated over to Amazon Web Services. My geek self seriously wants to work for the company providing these webcasts! Absolute brilliance! Ok, there were still some glitches as I logged out during half-time and could not log back in for the second half, but that only proves that the company totally needs to hire me to sort these little snafus out. But dorkiness aside, Chicago are doing a great job marketing to multiple demographics – partnering with ZipCar, promoting Green Laces, having members of the Windy City Rollers Rollerderby team perform the national anthem, and a bunch of other awesome stuff too. I just don’t think the other clubs are anywhere close to these accomplishments.

And I’ve got to be in San Jose tomorrow – a few freeway exits from Buck Shaw – for work, so I’ll be making my way over to the stadium for the game against the Sol (crossing my fingers there will still be walk-up tickets available). Both teams are missing key players which, off the pitch drama aside, is the real theme for this week. The US plays Canada on Monday and suddenly all our teams are bringing out their Z squads. Bit of a problem for WPS and one they seriously need to address if they plan to continue broadcasting these games internationally. But since I’m just a lowly blogger with no credibility, here’s someone with perhaps a bit more influence adding a few comments of his own: