W-League winds down, onward to the Olympics!

By: Melissa | July 20th, 2008

A few months ago, I had a completely ridiculous conversation with a friend and she told me a story about how she set her alarm to play the song “Secret Lovers” every morning. The point of this was to see how long it took before her boyfriend noticed. Apparently he never noticed and every morning, she swore she’d take that song off and every morning, she’d forget. So the next day, it was “Secret Lovers” all over again. Anyways, I have this totally random picture of Joe Cannon on my phone. Well, okay, it’s a totally random picture of the back of Joe Cannon but it’s on my phone, it’s from his somewhat short time with the LA Galaxy, and I never ever motivate myself to replace it with a different picture – making this my “Secret Lovers.” And last night I lost my phone. Of course I didn’t back up anything so not only are all my numbers gone but so is this random picture of Joe Cannon. Now today is day one without my phone and all I can think is: I am finally free!

Moving on… the Olympics are around the corner and I think I may be covering the US women’s team over at World Cup Blog. At the moment, I’m not entirely sure if this means I’ll be camped out in front of my computer at four o’clock in the morning. But if I am camped out like that and you are too, please stop by and leave comments.

Here are your quick W-League weekend notes:

* Pali Blues are the Regular Season Champions with a perfect record. This is the third time in five years head coach Charlie Naimo finished the W-League season with this title (I think it was twice before with the New Jersey Wildcats). I haven’t heard any announcements whether the 1999 W-League coach of the year might get courted by a WPS team. Anyone know?

* All the remaining playoff teams are set. USL has the list here. Notably, both Chicago Red Star affiliates, FC Indiana and The Chicago Gaels, made it to the post season. Also, The Long Island Rough Riders slid past Jersey Sky Blue to fill the last open spot in the Northeast Division.

* The Global Game has a great article on FC Indiana. Writer Tim Grainey really focuses on the club’s ability to sign and keep top foreign talent. But what really jumped out to me was a short blurb about FC Indiana’s relationship with the Red Stars:

FC Indiana’s owners… also invested in the Chicago franchise of the new Women’s Professional Soccer league, set to launch in seven U.S. cities in Apr 09. Indiana maintains a technical alliance with Chicago and will continue to develop players for possible transfer.

It’s probably waay too early to speculate on how the relationship between FC Indiana and the Red Stars will evolve once all the WPS clubs have real rosters. I think the only thing I can assume with any confidence here is that the Red Stars are doing a fantastic job laying down foundations in the region.

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