Pali Blues Win the League
By: Melissa | August 3rd, 2008The W-League Championship game was a 2-1 victory over FC Indiana. Pali Blues are the winners and that pretty much wraps up your 2008 W-League season. After reading the match report, it does seem the game lacked more of the intensity of the quarterfinal and semifinal games. But since I’m off to the Quakes/Galaxy game this afternoon, I did note two things from the report the San Jose Earthquakes might want to take to heart.
During the first half, FC Indiana had some excellent scoring opportunities they just couldn’t seem to finish. A few minutes into the second half, they were up 1-0. Blues coach Naimo reacted to this by switching his formation from a 4-4-2 to a 3-4-3 “to try and get some energy up top.” This change actually worked for the Blues and they equalized in the 83rd minute and scored the winning goal five minutes later.
Along with the formation change, Naimo credited his substitutions for the Blues’ second half surge: “Our depth was a huge reason why we won this game. Our bench gave us the energy we needed and helped put us on top.”
And with that, I’m off to Bart. League games are over but the combines and drafts are just around the corner. So I’ll leave you with this tidbit from the match report:
This year’s W-League Championship tournament may have a larger impact off the field over the months to come as players are selected for the debut season of Women’s Professional Soccer. In 2000, the W-League final four would see 23 players go on to be drafted by the Women’s United Soccer Association as it embarked on its first year, including star players like Charmaine Hooper, Marci Miller, Lisa Krzykowski, Thori Bryan and Nel Fettig. Five players with WUSA experience were in the Virginia Beach this weekend with Seattle’s Michelle French and Washington foursome of Kele Golebiowski, Emily Janss, Lori Lindsey and Christie Welsh.
Be sure to swing by and check out our Olympic coverage over at World Cup Blog. And if you are excited about an upcoming WPS team and want to write about them for The Offside, let me know!
Category: W-League
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