Looking back, looking ahead for Athletica
Usually when I talk to Athletica coach Jorge Barcellos, assistant coach Carlos Machado translates. (I feel real sorry for Carlos.) But after Sunday’s win in the Bay Area, Barcellos was willing to go without a translator.
“Three points, three points,” he yelled into the phone when I called him after the match. “That’s a very important three points for St. Louis!”
He was pretty excited. Then he gave the phone to Carlos.
Anyway, those obviously were three big points for the Athletica, who are back in second place, two points up on Boston. They’re five points up on fifth place Sky Blue, four points up on fourth place Washington, which has played one more game. It’s too soon to say what the Athletica need to do to get second but as the only team in the league besides LA to have a record above .500, they seem to be in decent shape.
It was also a big win because the next game is against LA, and with LA playing the way it has, if the team was going to get any points off this trip, it needed to get them for sure against Gold Pride. Not that it’s in much doubt, but the if the Sol win Wednesday afternoon — it’s a noon kickoff in Carson — they clinch first place and get to host the WPS championship game. If they don’t win Wednesday, they’ll win somewhere else along the way.
xxxx
Here’s the game story from the San Jose Mercury News. The most interesting thing is how Gold Pride forward Tiffeny Milbrett missed the game because of a “prior commitment.” How does that work?
xxxx
Last week, when Christie Shaner got traded from Sky Blue to the Sol, I dubbed her the luckiest player in the league. Maybe not. She broke her tibia in a gruesome, Joe Theismann-like collision with Abby Wambach on Sunday and won’t play again this season. (If you look at the game highlights on the league’s website, you can see the most telling replay of the injury. Frankly, I’m surprised they put that angle up. Seeing someone’s leg bend is never pretty.)
Interestingly, the two most serious injuries in the league this season, to Shaner and Daniela, were the results of collisions with Wambach, though there was nothing wrong with this one. I think it drives home the point that Wambach is pretty big, and if you took physics at some point, you learned that momentum equals mass times velocity.
xxxx
By the way, here are the league tiebreakers. Right now, Boston and Athletica are even at 1-1 with one game remaining and Washington leads Athletica 1-0-1. Boston leads the second tiebreaker 2 goals to 1, so when the teams meet on Aug. 1, the Athletica need to win.
A. In the case of a two-team tie:
Head-to Head record
Head-to-Head goal differential
Overall goal differential
Overall goals scored
Away points
Away goal differential
Away goals scored
Coin Flip
B. In the case of a three (or more) team tie:
Head to Head - as determined via points-per-game versus the other teams (if the teams are tied in points-per-game head-to-head, the next tie breaker is goal differential in head to head competition). If, however, there is an imbalanced head-to-head scheduling among the tied teams, the tie-breaker will jump to overall goal differential.
Overall goal differential
Overall goals scored
Away points
Away goal differential
Away goals scored
Coin Flip
Well, I’m glad that Millie is so focused on being a professional soccer player. None the less it was a huge 3 points for us and I think it’s time to do a little Sol-hunting.
I think I figured the absolute maximum number of points Athletica would need to clinch a playoff spot is 32 and that’s if a lot of weird things happen. More likely it’s around 26. Right now it looks good. The other good news is that we’ve already clinched the head-to-head series against Sky Blue, which is likely one of the teams that will be nipping at our heals.
But our next two games are on the road against the two teams we have had the most trouble with, Los Angeles and Washington. If we can win even just one of those games, we’ll still be sitting pretty. If we lose both, chances are we’ll be right back in the middle of a very close, messy playoff race. Let’s beat Marta and the little Sols!
As for Milbrett, my guess is that she was attending an AARP convention somewhere.
We’ve already proven we can hang with LA….just need to finish against them is all. I don’t think there was an AARP convention because Brandi and Sisi played…and I don’t think Millie has had that many birthdays (she’s like 36 or 37 right?) I would be betting more on the number being under 30 points simply because 30 points equals ten wins. When four out of seven teams make the playoffs somebody will come in with a losing record or are right at .500. 4 points in the next two games should be our goal and then with a nice homestand we can clinch ourself the Semi at home. Provided Abby the Assassin doesn’t strike again like she did last night
Our head coach speaks no english except 3 points 3 points…..Sad!
We got the best coach available. He’s learning the language just like you or I would struggle with Portugese after only a year. He had coached in Brazil until last September (I believe). And if you had read the blog post you could see that he did speak a complete sentence after saying three points.
I should say about Barcellos that he’s made progress in his English, and we’ve had a couple very casual and very simple conversations in English, but he still prefers to do interviews in Portuguese.
I also looked at the Gold Pride roster report for last week and it said that Milbrett was unavailable because she was “in Italy.”
I occasionally lurk on here and wonder why Tom doesn’t write a blog about the St. Louis Lions. Nothing against the Athletica(even if it is high school soccer quality) but it would be nice to have some USL soccer that is being played in Cottleville. And it’s being run by soccer legend Tony Glavin.
The Lions are amateur and Athltica are professional. The Cardinals always received more coverage than any amateur baseball in town such as say the Mon-Clair League. I would assume that has something to do with it. And let’s not get into the whole ugly “Men’s ball vs Women’s ball” argument.
Actually name the time and place and the Lions would destroy the Athletica. So While they may be ‘amateur’ the can beat a ‘pro’ team.
What else do you have?
Whether or not the Lions or a good high school team could beat the Athletica, which they could, is besides the point. By that standard, no women’s sport would ever be covered because any men’s team would beat them. The WPS represents the highest level of women’s soccer in, really, the world. Many of the players in the league represent their nations in the Women’s World Cup and the Olympics. That’s why we cover them.
An interesting question, and one I don’t know the answer to, is how we would cover a St. Louis USL-1 team if Tony Glavin or Jeff Cooper got one.