La Sol 2 – Washington Freedom 0

By: Melissa | March 30th, 2009

I’m gonna make this one quick because there’s a pile of work waiting for me and if I don’t get any headway into it, I won’t be able to make it to Shawesome Stadium for Sunday’s FC Cougars game. So to begin, over 14,000 people showed up for the inaugural WPS match which is quite impressive and I only hope that we don’t see a severe drop in attendance come mid-season. Especially because it’s painfully obvious these teams are still very very green. By the time mid-season rolls around, I’m confident they’ll be amazing to watch. So if I could sum up this first game, I think “deer in headlights” is appropriate. Those players walked onto the field, saw the brevity of the situation, and had a slight freakout. Yes, you’re all PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALLERS now. Time to get it out of your systems. Don’t believe me? By the 80th minute, the entire game sped up, got waay more physical, and before the final whistle, we saw a fantastic offensive play from the Sol that resulted in the final goal. Or as a Facebook friend of mine commented to me this morning: “Can’t call myself a women’s soccer fan, but that second goal was pretty amazing. i jumped up off my chair and had to wipe my eyes.” Cool.

Agreed. This game was a bit of a mess but any highlights? How about our frenchie, Sonia Bompastor starting to connect with Abby Wambach. It was her pass in the first half that finally gave Abby her chance to score in the 24th minute. And Aya Miyama for the Sol. Get a few more games out of the way, and she and Marta will be amazing to watch together.

Right, but there were some awful moments Like pretty much the entire Freedom attacking mid. Or Shannon Boxx in the way of a pass & getting smacked by the ball. Or Brianna Scurry. Yeah, the first half of the game was dead slow and that first goal for the Sol was more luck than skill. But it’s certainly not an excuse to drudge up the ol’ “this sh*t’s boring, give ‘em a smaller ball” crap. I’ve been reading the comments over at the more popular other soccer blogs. Luckily JoeW posted this perfect response on Ives:

All of the reasons people give for now watching WPS apply to MLS (by Eurosnobs). You can argue: “why watch Juan Pablo Angel when instead I could be watching Cristiano Ronaldo?” or “why watch Columbus play when even as clearly the best team in MLS last year they aren’t as entertaining and as skilled and as athletic as Barcelona?” If those arguments are valid, than no-one should ever go to see a USL match (what were those 40k+ idiots in Montreal thinking?), or a college game, or a HS match or any of the U17 and U20 World Cups. The combination of skill, athleticism, teamwork is just inferior to what the very top teams in Europe offer. And heck, for that matter, why ever watch or root for the UNMNT when instead you can adopt Argentina?

Awesome. I remember making the same rant in a Peets coffee shop a few weeks back. And this comment from Chris cracked me up:

Being a Dynamo fan, I’m not used to seeing a player take a hard foul and just get up and walk away. Credit to the ladies for their ability to control their temper.

Ha! So true! I’m so used to watching it in MLS, I was a bit shocked NOT to see our WPS players pull out the drama on Sunday. Anyhoo — let’s get to the nitty gritty then I’m out to go deal with the stuff that actually pays me.

(Wo)MOTM Karina Leblanc. Absolutely fantastic saves. World class from the Canadian national.

My eyes! It burns! Pass, stop, look around, other team takes ball. Both teams need to speed it up. Also, overuse of the backpass. Soo painful.

Bad defensive move of the game It took every single Freedom defender to shut down Marta except there was no-one left to cover Camille Abily.

Bad offensive move of the game Why sub in a still injured (I saw that wince from her) DeVanna if your attacking mids can barely make a serviceable pass?

Highlight of the game During the first half, LA Sol GM Charlie Naimo twittered: Certainly not a clinic for the final pass but nice to have a lead And about two minutes later Aly Wagner responded: That’s cause I’m on the bench mr. Gm sir!! Brilliant.

Lowlight of the game Jenn Hildreth’s uber-smile. Stuff of nightmares.

Recommended changes in the line-ups? Kati Jo Spisak fails at twitter. The Freedom might want to assign a new player to that task. But it’s nice to know her teammate thinks she should be on America’s Next Top Model (my old college roommate’s sisters were the red headed twins, fyi).

Final thoughts? While I didn’t have a hangover, I did have a pile of laundry to get through. It was definitely a good time watching the game on one laptop and watching twitterfall spit out all the tweets containing the word “wps” on the other. No, we didn’t push that word to the top of twitter trends but I am hopeful it will happen before the end of the season. Also, I’m debating spending a bit of time constructing a widget for this blog that aggregates all the twits from however many WPS staff members and players I can find. What do you all think? Would that be useful in any way? And here are the highlights…

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