(I apologize to any international readers of this here blog as I believe Hulu is only available inside the US) Hulu started streaming Satuday Night Live episodes so I’m all caught up on this season and now I really really want to rename our tier 2 W-League the “What up with that” league. Basically, I just never had the opportunity to get that ball rolling UNTIL TODAY. The Freedom’s W-Leage side hired former dev player Joanna Lohman as the new GM. The first order of business was to rename the team and the new name they came up with was Freedom Futures. WHAT IS UP WITH THAT?!?!?! That is a horrible name! What’s wrong with the name they got now? Do they really think we can’t tell the difference between the two squads? This one goes right up there with the Hudson Valley Quickstrike Lady Blues, FC Gold (Good Lord), and *cough* the CyberRays. I am with Kenan Thompson here: what is up with women’s soccer teams coming up with the worst names possible? Is this some sort of horrible tradition? And Freedom Futures? Are we watching a semi-pro soccer team or are we investing in the stock market? I am serving this decision two giant cups of FAIL.

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.

Expansion Draft! Were you wondering why ATL & Philly passed on their last picks? Turns out, per the rules, they could only pick from FC Gold Pride in that round and they instead said no. Ouch.

Combine! The W-League Combine is September 24 – 27 and will be crawling with WPS coaches. This time, WPS and W-League coaches will meet each night to rank the players and choose the best to play against each other on Sunday. It’s like a fight to the death but everyone lives.

Speaking of the W-League, apparently it’s not going anywhere despite the sale of USL and a few USL-1 teams threatening to form their own league. W-League President, Melanie Fitzgerald, says hell to the no.

We are very excited about the acquisition of USL by NuRock Soccer Holdings from Nike. It is clear from our early meetings with the new ownership group that NuRock is committed to providing the necessary resources to enhance our ability to manage the W-League and allow for us to provide more active support and service for our franchisees

The above does indeed loosely translate to “hell to the no.”

Jo Lohman and Becca Moros are blogging from Japan where they are playing for a team over there (anyone know which one?). A friend of mine went to Japan on vacation this summer and told us all about a cat cafe which is exactly what you think – a place to go to sit down, order sweet drinks, and pet a bunch of cats. Now when my friend is having a bad day, she twitters that she wishes she could go back to the cat cafe in Japan. Yes, this link was just an excuse for me to write about the cat cafe.

So apparently the international draft is happening next week but you won’t see one name on that list. Laura Del Rio, FC Indiana’s top scorer in 2009 and brief (like for a week) international draft pick for the Red Stars, just signed with FFC Frankfurt where she will be paired up top with star striker Birgit Prinz. This is a HUGE move and I think a pretty hilarious fuck you message to WPS. Ha Ha.

Speaking of WPS (oh, wait, that’s this blog), Click this link here to Kanye-ize the official WPS website. No-one shall escape!

picture courtesy of the FC Gold Pride twitter feed cheers David!

Ok. So now we’re looking at Washington, Boston, and Sky Blue to fight for a post-season. Boston are one point behind Washington and Sky Blue are two points behind Boston. Sky Blue have two more games to play while Washington and Boston have just one. I’m getting nervous just typing this.

And the W-League final is set. La Sol affiliates, Pali Blues will play Washington Freedom affiliates, uh, the Washington Freedom.

who is this guy?

It’s been a busy week in the world of pro, semi-pro, and not-at-all pro women’s soccer so let’s review…

WPSL The final four are set. The semifinals will take place in Long Island (will they throw in some of that famous iced tea?). On August 1st, the Dallas Premier play the Long Island Fury then defending champs Ajax America face Miami Kickers FC. The winners of these games face-off in the final on August 2nd.

W-League What an upset! The Ottowa Fury beat FC Indiana last Sunday 2-1 and ended the season quite a bit earlier than last year’s runner ups expected. So now the Fury will face the Washington Freedom (yes – same franchise as the WPS team just the W-League version) on August 1st at the Maryland SoccerPlex. On July 31st, the regular season champs (ahem) Hudson Valley Quickstrike Lady Blues play last year’s champs Pali Blues in exciting Newburgh, New York. I just Googled tourist info for Newburgh and after y’all finish visiting the many George Washington historical landmarks, you are totally done with that place. So if you are still in the area and reading this, you simply do not have a good excuse not to go. Oh, and there’s been a bit of a shift in how things get done in the W-League. Instead of the automatic bye to the final for the regular season winner, the winners of the two above games face each other in the final – which will be live on Fox Soccer Channel at 7:30pm ET August 7th.

WPS The playoff run continues and most importantly, STL and Boston try to clinch their positions. STL win a spot (and apparently get a home field playoff game) if they beat Boston on Saturday OR tie Boston and Washington lose or tie a game this week. Boston win a spot if they beat Washington on Wednesday and I think if that doesnt’ work out they might also get a spot if they beat STL on Saturday… but don’t quote me on that (or anything really). So basically if Boston win tomorrow, STL does too and our friends in mound city don’t even need to lift a finger. And check that last link from answerbag.com. Commenter zaqes1 says St Louis is also called choke city because their sports teams often lose during the playoffs. So is it really in the bag for STL? Ok, it probably is. But I’m just trying to create some intrigue here.

And don’t forget that completely meaningless La Sol at Chicago game that happens to be the only one this week available online as well as on tv.

Right. We’ve got some playoffs, we’ve got some seasons ending. We’ve got that All Stars game to think about. We’ve also got the Euros. Last year around about this time, I spent a few confused and hungover mornings in various bars surrounded by annoying passionate and worldly Spaniards. Now it’s time for the ladies to play (they like to say that in Europe a lot ladies don’t they?). It starts August 23 and ends September 10th. And with France, England, and Sweden competing, I think it’s about 100% likely that quite a few of our All Stars picks won’t be available to play. (And quite a few Umea players won’t make the trip either.) But it seems that according to the fans’ votes, it doesn’t matter anyways since WPS published the tally so far and according to us, we really just want to see the US Women’s National Team play Umea IK. Screw everybody else in this league. Ok, fair enough.

And if you click on this link, you can watch highlights of Germany’s 6-0 pounding of the Netherlands this past weekend in a friendly. Watch the Dutch keeper completely lose it well before the end of the first half. I love the commenter: “the Dutch keeper might have saved it if she just stretched a bit more.” Indeed.

“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:

And on the MLS end of the spectrum, it seems as soon as the Seattle Sounders men’s side got themselves some expansion players, they sold their women’s side to the Tacoma Tide F.C.of the PDL.

Existing W-League teams are expanding too. This upcoming season sees three new sides forming: the Buffalo Flash, Quebec City Arsenal, and one more unnamed team. Also, the Rochester Rhinos have new ownership and a new name: Western New York FC Pride. They also have a new partnership with FC Indiana and the first order of business was to ship the 2008 W-League coach of the year Shek Borkowski over to NY to be head coach. And apparently the new Rochester owners eventually plan to start a WPS team if the new league makes it.

The Chicago Gaels also have new ownership and a new name: the Chicago Red Eleven. The team will continue to be the Chicago Red Star’s W-League “affiliate” which may or may not be the reason for the name change (I believe we call that branding).

And as for last year’s two top W-League teams, despite losing players to WPS, both Pali Blues and FC Indiana are busy putting new squads together. Los Angeles Sol GM Charlie Naimo will continue to coach the Blues and I can only assume that means the Blues will be LA’s W-League “affiliate” (I do the quotes thing because it’s unclear exactly what these relationships entail). And Pali Blues just announced the acquisition of New Zealand National Team midfielder Ali Riley. Let the championship rebuild begin. FC Indiana’s website reports the resigning of Spanish striker Laura Del Rio, Mexican Nats Fatima Leyva & Monica Ocampo, and Australian midfielder Aivi Luik. New additions include Cameroon midfielder Ngo and Canadian Sharolta Nonen. Yeah… FC Indiana has been busy for sure.

After skimming the schedule, it may just be the Washington Freedom are the only WPS team keeping their W-League side in the game. This is certainly the franchise who takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’ – since they’ve already survived WUSA. Hats off to them.

For more info on the upcoming season, I’ll just quote USL:

Teams will play a 12 or 14 game seasons depending on their division with the season opening May 8 and concluding July 19.

The W-League postseason will be extended to three weeks with the league semifinals and championship being split into two separate weekends. Eleven W-League teams will qualify for the postseason tournament in 2009 with the league’s Regular Season Champion (based on point percentage) receiving a bye to the league semifinals. The remaining teams will compete in three conference tournaments in playoff week one July 24-26 to determine the other three league semifinalists for the weekend of July 31-August 1 at two locations. The regular season champion will face the lowest remaining overall seed unless they have played during the season, which would result in a pairing with the next lowest seed. The championship game will be August 7-8, and will air on Fox Soccer Channel.

* My friend’s winery will be hosting the Yelp holiday party. I told him if I am able to attend, I will write a Yelp review of the event.

* During a Swedish interview, Pia Sundhage said whatever salary LA Sol is offering Marta, it actually will not count against the salary cap. So I guess WPS just introduced their own designated/marquee player rule. No idea if the other teams get to participate.

* In the same interview, Sundhage said the USWNT schedule will not interfere with the WPS season. There will be National Team games before the season starts in April (and she specifically said they will participate in the Algarve Cup), but I’ve no clue if she meant no more call-ups until September or if her call-ups will work around the WPS games.

* A few years ago, Bitch magazine asked for submissions to their shout-outs/stuff we like section. And since I am pretty much a complete nerd, I sent one in about VLC which wound up in an issue. So then I got all fired up and excited about my addition to their magazine and I submitted another shout-out, this time to Radia Perlman who is sometimes called the “Mother of the internet” because she invented Spanning Tree Protocol (and after she invented it, she wrote a poem about it). Basically, STP is a big part of the glue that keeps the internet ticking – if a segment of the internet becomes unreachable, this protocol will allow auto-rerouting through a different path to reach the destination. And, at the time, I was working with it heavily and it did what it was supposed to do so darn well, I was just really really excited. Anyways, the next issue arrived and my blurb did not make it. Instead, the issue contained a shout-out to low rider jeans because they allow for a little more comfort when women maybe don’t have those washboard abs. So at that moment, I decided to cancel my subscription to Bitch magazine. No idea why I was thinking about that yesterday. Am I a sore loser?

* Los Angeles Sol named Johanna Frisk a post-draft discovery player who according to one site is Marta’s good friend. Another site says she’s her girlfriend. Either way, the transaction would indicate that LA Sol are still negotiating. But Umea have a multi-year contract waiting for Marta – presumably to stop this sort of thing from happening again next year and saving the rest of us the frustration.

* Goalkeeper Caroline Jonsson, is apparently in “advanced negotiations” with the Chicago Red Stars.

* Back in the US of Haaay, USL released a preliminary list of the W-League players invited to December’s WPS Combines.

I think I probably missed some stuff, but now it’s time to get off the internet and go celebrate Thanksgiving.

L.A. WPS GM Charlie Naimo will remain coach of Pacific Palisades-based W-League team Pali Blues, which becomes a feeder or reserve team to the WPS team.

Although, I’m not sure if any rules on reserve squads or “feeder teams” for WPS exist yet. I’m sure, because almost all W-League (and I believe all WPSL) teams are strictly amateur, it is entirely possible such a scenario can exist. But at the same time, it took MLS how many years now to sign it’s first youth academy player? Ok, it is likely the WPS will not follow the MLS model exactly, but I’m just asking the question. To WPS clubs with W-League teams and to WPS clubs with local affiliations, what is the connection? Can players move up or down? Are we just sticking to the traditional draft process? Or are we going to establish regional amateur and professional teams where players can progress in the local system? Don’t keep us in the dark about this. Inquiring minds want to know!

And I’m introducing a new segment here at the WPS Offside. So there have been complaints in the blogosphere as of late – that most soccer reporting is done online and that any nutjob with a free wordpress/blogspot/theoffside account can set up a blog and start typing nonsense about their favorite team. There have even been blog posts from other bloggers informing new bloggers how not to write crappy blogs. This is all well and good but the geek in me wants more. So from now on, I’ll be running the words I write here through the Stupid Filter which is (and I’m dead serious) “an open-source filter software that can detect rampant stupidity in written English. This will be accomplished with weighted Bayesian or similar analysis and some rules-based processing, similar to spam detection engines.” Perfect. Their beta software is already available to download and they’ve got a demo site up and running here. And the results of this post? “Text is not likely to be stupid.” Word. From now on, I’ll footnote my Stupid Filter results in every post.