Not exactly sleepy. WPS is hiring which is pretty impressive considering THIS ECONOMY.

FIFA recently did a women’s football roundup which is worth a read. In short…

* Brazil’s Santos FC – featuring Marta and Cristiane – won the inaugural Copa Libertadores 9-0 over Paraguay’s Universidad Autonoma.

* FFC Frankfurt aren’t doing so well in the Bundesliga this year so they fired their coach! Except the new temp coach isn’t doing much better, apparently.

* Arsenal head coach, Vic Akers, stepped down as head coach this summer to become their General Manager. And Arsenal are on a Champions League tear – the quarterfinals draw was today (anyone notice?) with the tourney resuming in March.

* The Australian W-League regular season is over and one of the worst names in football, the Brisbane Roar, sit on top for the second year in a row (the name always reminds me of that awful Heath Ledger tv show – no, not that one). The semi-final and finals are set for December and I can’t really find info on who is playing who but then again I’m not looking very hard right now.

* World Cup Qualifying is underway in Europe. Little Miss Soccer has the updates. So many countries playing over there just go click the link. I’m not even gonna try to recap that mess.

* And, in the US of Haaay what’s up, the NCAA College Cup third round starts up tonight and the games are on tv! Or rather, on ESPNU. Is that a real tv channel or do you only get that in community college cafeterias? So if you are not an extra on Community (the jury’s still out – good show or bad?), try the online link here. Oh, and Pia called up players for a camp then replaced one and I think I read on twitter somewhere she added a few more. But that info is really a World Cup Blog type post that I’ll get to at some point before the end of time I think.

Did you catch the post-game quote sheet? Normally those things are totally booooring but this little gem came from from Hope Solo:

I can’t wait for the World Cup. This crowd was amazing. I actually got excited when I got booed and whistled because that never happens. This was great. It’s what it should be like.

Hello open invitation! If during the 2010 season you just so happen to be standing next to her goal and you just so happen to toss a bunch of streamers into her goal and then you just so happen to inform her she is not in her parent’s basement and she needs to clean that mess up RIGHT NOW – yeah, it’s totally cool. You should do that.

* FC Gold Member did something and by doing something, they beefed up their defense by signing Niki Cross. And then they beefed down the depth in their defense by trading Allison Whitworth to the Atlanta Beat. In return, they got the 3rd and the 10th picks from the first round of the draft and are apparently now the owners of most of the picks. Honestly, I am not paying enough attention to this stuff to make any predictions on who will be entering January’s draft. But I will say this – if that Alex Morgan shows up, the Yay team should totally nab her not just because she’s a really good offensive player, but also because the entire male heterosexual population of Chile is in love with her.

* The Boston Breakers filed discovery claims on Kozue Ando and Shinobu Ohno who they are hoping will be the big-guns forwards coach Tony is looking for.

* The Chicago Red Stars signed midfielder Julianne Sitch. The big story here is that she’s from the Chicago area. This is Chicago’s first move since free agency began and honestly, I couldn’t even begin to speculate on it. Patience grasshoppers.

* La Sol signed Czech forward Pavlina Scasna which is apparently one little piece of some sort of crazy multi-part trade that may only make sense to a select few people at the moment. And LA have no more international slots now.

* Lots of stuff happened in the UK which, lucky for us, the excellent site Girls in Football covers with waaay more depth than any news source I’ve encountered so far. If you care about that region, you should just go there.

* FC Indiana coach Shek Borkowski is now the new head coach (with some other guy) of WFC Zvezda-2005 of the Russian Premiere League. I’m guessing that might mean he is not longer coaching the Lionesses, but with women’s soccer, it seems everybody has like five jobs so I’m not so sure about that one.

* The W-League is adding another team which seems a bit crazy to me considering the fact that all the Canadian teams just dropped out of the USL. I think the W-League may want to start thinking “backup plan” in case the USL completely falls apart. Sooner rather than later, ladies.

* According to a post over at the Fan Corner, there wil be a “six continental confederations linked to the FIFA (Concacaf – North America Soccer Confederation, Central and Caribbean; Conmebol- South american Confederation of Soccer; Soccer confederation of Oceania-OFC; Soccer-CAF Africa confederation; Asian confederation of Soccer- AFC; And European Confederation of Soccer- UEFA)”. Oh hey, great idea! I hope it happens and that the fans get to watch it… somehow.

* AND FINALLY! Team on 3 is dead set on proving the USWNT are funny by posting a bunch of videos of them… being funny. Nice selection but missing one of my faves: Natasha Kai singing karaoke. The post also reminds me of those hilarious US Soccer podcasts Sacha Kljestan and Benny Feilhaber used to do – before they turned all douchey. I miss those podcasts. It was a simpler time back then.

StupidFilter results: Text is not likely to be stupid.

StupidFilter results: Text is not likely to be stupid.

(Spotted over at ONTD football)

Angela Hucles retired from professional soccer effective immediately. Coach Tony loses yet another player from his 2009 roster, Pia loses a midfielder for the upcoming friendly against Germany, and Hucles thinks maybe now she’ll try real estate. Of course. Makes perfect sense.

Speaking of, Megan Rapinoe had knee surgery on Thursday sidelining her for a few weeks and forcing her to miss the upcoming USWNT game. Pia replaces the two open spots with newbies Ella Masar and Kacey White.

And since we’re still talking about Germany, Laura “the one that got away” Del Rio is tearing it up in the Bundesliga right now. She scored her 4th goal in 4 games during Frankfurt’s 4-0 win against SC 07 yesterday. Game highlights are here and include Steffi Jones saying a bunch of stuff in German.

I’m pretty sure Jones was not talking about a CONCACAF World Cup qualifying schedule in the above link, since Little Miss Soccer is keeping tabs on the upcoming games and… well… nothing but Europe and two friendlies. To be fair, there are a lot of countries in Europe to get through.

BBC Sport has a league update and check it, Watford is kicking ass and taking names and now sitting at the top of the table. Love it when the womens team does better than the mens. Oh and Kim Little scored her fourth hat trick of the season. If WPS teams aren’t already wooing this girl with promises of unlimited cell phone plans, meet and greets with Zach Effron, and pirated copies of Blue Moon (the girl is 19 years old – just sayin’), they need to start NOW.

StupidFilter results: Text is not likely to be stupid.

Here are some links to pass the time while you ponder what exactly was that photographer thinking in the above photo shoot?

I was wondering about this whole free agency thing and the USWNT contracts. Luckily, it’s all been cleared up in a lone twitter. Those players who haven’t yet resigned with their 2009 teams become free agents on September 30th. So now it’s not quite so bad that Hotlanta and Philly don’t have any national team players… yet.

The FA Superleague is now scheduled to start in 2011. Suuuuuuure it is.

Heather O Reilly tells US Soccer how awesome it was to win the first WPS season. I remember the moment it as if it was only a month ago.

Megan Rapinoe tells US Soccer how not-awesome it was to not win the first WPS season and a bunch of other stuff too.

In other news:

Lotta lotta lotta loans. Marta is in Brazil with Santos FC. Kelley Smith, Alex Scott, & Karen Carney are back with Arsenal. For the Freedom, Sonia Bompastor is in France with PSG, Homare Sawa is in Japan with NTV Beleza, Lisa De Vanna is in Australia with Perth Glory… and there are probably heaps others all over the place either playing or just training. I’m sure there’s a full list somewhere. All this does is really make me wish I found a different line of work. Sure, playing in WPS can’t pay well but you do get to see the world a bit. Damn.

The USWNT training camp begins this week. Pia gets 12 days with her call-ups to decide who goes to Germany to play a friendly in October. There are a few new faces on the roster and the NYT Goal blog has a little interview with midfielder Yael Averbuch. Also, Abby Wambach got a dog. Hey, this is off-season news, y’all. We take what we can get!

And in much much more serious and somber news, one of the men accused of the “corrective rape” and murder of South African footballer, Eudy Simelane, received a life sentence. He was the second man involved who received a conviction so far.

But the expansion draft does remind us all that WPS season two is on the horizon. I’ve been away for a while dealing with LIFE so I missed likely all the postseason reflections and reviews out there on the internets. Although I did catch Peter Wilt’s post at Pitch Invasion which is good enough for me! Just read that one. So I say it’s time to move on to season two! Haters to the left. Looks like the league has another year in it. Here’s what I’d like to see happen for 2010.

Christie Rampone is officially named head coach of Sky Blue FC By April she should be showing and I think it will be crazy cool to see her preggers self perched on the sidelines bossing everyone around like a soccer version of the movie Fargo – but without all the blood and snow and William H Macy. Even better would be Rampone solving murder cases while at the same time coaching her team to their second league victory.

Kim Zolciak becomes a sponsor of the Atlanta Beat and her headshot is screenprinted on the front of their jerseys This will, of course, coincide with the release of her soon to be hit album follow up to the smash single Tardy to the Party. Kim, THE BRAND. You know she only needs to ask Big Papa for the money. And then Real Housewives season three will feature scenes from team practices & games. And WPS, the brand, gets plastered all over Bravo tv for a few months. Win win.

Justin.tv or Ustream.tv or Veetle or whoever gets a WPS channel I was pleasantly surprised to discover a few months back there was a 24 hour online rollerderby channel. Interviews, live games, random filler. Very impressive. Just sayin’.

Rachel Brown joins WPS Perhaps the Euros final was not her shining moment but I spent most of that game thinking the England keeper really is the spitting image of Christina Cox, one of the actresses on that mediocre soap opera in space, Defying Gravity. And after reading that the British “Superleague” is on hold yet again, perhaps she really is Christina Cox? Girl has gotta pay the rent somehow.

FC Gold Pride actually sign a player under the age of 40 And the rest of us spend one more year inventing new and hilarious ways to make fun of the name “FC Gold Pride.”

A US player will finally outshine the foreign players A year ago at this time, I fully expected the brand spanking new league to unveil a whole new crop of amazing American players. Uhhhhh, no. Instead, we got to meet (some of us for the first time) Sonya Bompastor, Eniola Aluko, Lisa De Vanna, Karina LeBlanc, Aya Miyama, etc etc etc. A few fresh faces creeped into the roster for the upcoming USWNT training camp and WPS marketed the Olympic winners hard in their advertising campaigns. But on the field… I dunno… I felt like our domestic draft picks just kinda disappeared. No star quality? No flair or creativity? Are we still just settling in? Fuck it. Let’s bring on season two!

“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:

The picture above is brought to you by the excellent site LOL Jocks. And I also recommend Ladies… because it’s pretty awesome to find a blog of only women writing about sports (sorry Euro readers – for now Ladies… just writes about games in the US). And I’m also pretty bummed out because I missed what is now kind of sort of maybe being called the game of the year when Montreal played Santos last night in the CONCACAF Chamions League. Personal complaints aside, I shall now attempt to do a WPS pre-season write-up so far which will likely look more half-assed than polished.

Perhaps the biggest news from last month was Arsenal winning their 10th Premiere League Cup courtesy of a Kelly Smith hat trick. And now, both England and Canada are playing in the Cyprus Cup so our English and Canadian internationals haven’t started their WPS pre-season yet. Same for the USWNT who are currently kicking massive ass at the Algarve Cup (they’ve won an automatic spot in the final). As for all the WPS internationals, Michael Minnich does a nice, concise review on his blog. His big question marks are Sky Blue FC (too many internationals, not enough slots) and The Washington Freedom (injured McLeod, questions whether Necib and Mykjaland will sign). And as for St Louis he writes: “Aluko’s first name isn’t even spelled correctly on the roster page. Not the best way to sell tickets and endear yourself to fans.” It’s true, I don’t really hear much from St Louis. Is that just because I live in California?

Domestically, the big story is the agreement reached between WPS and the USWNT players. The results place the average league salary at $32,000 with (I think) the USWNT players making around $40,000. Yeah, it’s low but considering that last time I checked the MLS salary structure (a starting MLS salary for a senior spot was around $30,000), I’m not particularly surprised at the numbers. Also the WPS salary cap is about half of what MLS teams get to work with. Although, it’s pretty obvious whatever Marta, Smith, Christiane, (likely) DeVanna, etc etc make will be much higher than the average leading me to wonder if each team is quietly being allowed one marquee (i.e. not part of the salary cap) player. Speaking of money, the other big story is whether the league will make it at all since WPS failed to land another major sponsorship after Puma and ticket sales are still a little low. But the hope is the league planned well for conservative spending. Goff writes:

Players will earn an average of $32,000 on six-month contracts instead of the full-year pacts used in the WUSA. To supplement earnings during the offseason, players will be loaned to clubs overseas, coach youth teams aligned with WPS or work non-soccer jobs identified for them by team officials.

And this conservative model means less dependence on ticket sales to stay viable. The goal being an average of 5,000 tickets sold per game which, you know, is a bit easier that 10,000 or 15,000.

So each team opened up their pre-season training camps and a few even released videos. And hold up – is that Abby Wambach to the left in that picture below taken at a recent Freedom training?

I really wish the The Offside had bloggers for each team RIGHT NOW to keep up with all the reports coming out of the different camps. This is too much for one girl to handle.

Ok, and one last bit on Skortgate 2009. By now, we all know those things are accessories only (although I really held back on announcing they’re convenient places to stash your weed) but it’s still worth it to read Jennifer Doyle’s take on the controversy at her blog. And after that, read Amanda Vandervort’s arguments for the sko– err wraps. And I just gotta say, both blogs have some pretty good points. But no matter what, I’m still calling them skorts.

(In other news, USWNT players are now free to sign contracts with their WPS clubs. WHEW! FINALLY!)