The race tightens in the WPS
The Athletica go on the road and take three of four games over the course of a month, and when they get home, they still are in the thick of a race for second in the WPS.
The Athletica fell back to third in the league after Boston beat Bay Area 1-0 on Sunday night, though the Breakers have played one more game (or, as we like to say in the business, the Athletica have a game in hand). One thing the latest batch of games has shown is that there are now five teams competing for four playoff spots. Chicago and Bay Area are pretty much out of it. Gold Pride maxes out at 27 points and Chicago at 26, and the fourth place team, Sky Blue, has 22 points, meaning if they win two their final four, those teams are done. (Assuming Athletica and Boston don’t fall on their faces.) The big question will be to see if Washington can catch someone. Three of the remaining five games for Athletica are against Chicago or Bay Area.
The Athletica’s curse against Washington continued on Saturday. St. Louis is 0-2-1 against Washington, and in the one tie, they lost their best player, Daniela. In the two losses, they’ve been done in by bounces off of Kia McNeill. A mishit clearance led to a goal in the second meeting, and the the winner on Saturday went in off her foot.
I talked to Tina Ellertson after the game on Saturday and she thought communications could have been a problem on the goal. Jillian Loyden looked to have the angle covered on Sawa, but that message may not have gotten to McNeill.
“A little bit of communication may have been needed, saying, ‘I got it, I got it.’ It’s unfortunate,” Ellertson said. “It was a lucky goal. We’ll stay united, we’re keeping our heads up and we look forward to Wednesday. We’ll learn from our mistakes.”
Eniola Aluko, who flew back from England for the game, went the full 90 minutes and admitted she was getting tired at the end. “It was very tiring, more mentally than physically,” she said. “In the second half, I started to feel it in my legs a little bit, and the more I think I’m tired, the more I will be. The team needed me. It was a very frustrating performance.”
The fact that Niki Cross started up top with Aluko speaks to the struggles Christie Welsh has had. Welsh was listed as “probable” for the game with no specified injury on the league’s injury report.
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The Athletica have four home games to go, more than any team in the league. The Sol are done at home, Boston has two, Sky Blue has 1, Washington and Chicago have two and Bay Area has three. Though it’s also worth noting the Gold Pride are the only team with a worse home record than Athletica.
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In case you missed it, the United States beat Canada 1-0 on Sunday. Neither Hope Solo nor Melissa Tancredi played in the game. (Tancredi wasn’t even on the sub list for Canada. I don’t know what’s up with that.) Lori Chalupny went the full 90 at left back.
The teams meet again on Wednesday in Charleston, S.C. The logical assumption is that Solo will play in that game.
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And in case you weren’t watching on Fox Soccer, Kerri Hanks scored the game winner for Sky Blue on Sunday against Chicago, drilling in a shot from the top of the box in the 90th minute past a goalie who might have hard time stopping it even if she hadn’t been looking into the sun. Francielle also made her first appearance with Sky Blue in the game. There isn’t much time off for Sky Blue before they face Athletica on Wednesday, and then they play at Boston on Saturday. Three games in seven days is pretty rough.
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The TV broadcast of the Athletica game went well, though Rich Gould took a bite out of Eric Wynalda’s game when he introduced him on the pregame show. Wynalda’s best stuff came when he urged the Athletica to go after injured Freedom goalie Kati Jo Spisak, saying it was time to go over the top since she wouldn’t be able to come out and get a long pass.
Aluko told me they were trying to attack both Spisak and her backup Nicci Wright but just couldn’t make it happen.
If we had beaten Washington, we could have clinched a playoff spot on Wednesday. Now we’ll have to scramble just to make the playoffs.
As for our offense on Saturday, Washington could have put a cardboard cutout in front of their net and we wouldn’t have scored. Totally uninspired effort, almost like they were playing for a scoreless tie or trying not to lose.
You might also look at the 3rd Washington goal in our first meeting with them and how that one started…
Scramble??? That’s going just a little bit far there. As of now we are still in the playoffs and thankfully with the exception of Boston we are playing the minnows of the league the rest of the way. This week alone we have the two team that we have already beaten at home this season in Jersey and Bay Area. Following that we have Boston who we’ve had good showings against, and close out the home season against Chicago who can’t even beat a bad european nation in Ireland. Follow that up with another game with our “natural rivals” in Bay Area and we’ll be in the playoffs.
Your confidence is reassuring, JStats. Okay, I stole that from “Midway”. Sky Blue are not “minnows” anymore. They are 3-0-1 over their last four games with two wins over Boston and a tie against Washington. In fact, we’re the only team that’s beaten them in the last two months. We’ve won both games against Sky Blue, but we only survived the first game because Collette McCallum couldn’t kick the ball 10 feet and only survived the second game because Elise Weber lobbed a cross that happened to find the upper corner of the net. A loss to them and we’ll be sweating out those last four games. And while we have clinched the tiebreaker against 4th place Sky Blue Airways, we have already lost the tiebreaker to 5th place Washington Freedumb. Originally, I was thinking 26 points would clinch a playoff spot, but it’s starting to look more and more like 28 points.
Ok…allow me to rephrase. Jersey is a team that is currently residing in the lower half of the league tables.
How many believe this league will be around after next year? I doubt it. LA has a good chance of not being back after this year.
What source do you have for this information??
The league will definitely be around next year. Their target attendance was 4000-6000 and they are going to be in that range, although on the low side of it. They have just announced two expansion franchises. They have a television deal and a major sponsor deal. I’m confident the league will be around next year. Saint Louis is already selling season ticket renewals for next year.
The league is drawing about what the WUSA did. Additionally the LA Sol owner Tracey Liewieke said that he’s not in the business to lose money. He did say if this keeps up they are done after this year.
You can have season ticket renewals but that’s only as good as the paper it’s on.
Two years for this league and it’s done!
First of all, if you do some research, league expenses are only a fraction of what the WUSA’s were. Second, all of the owners including the Sol’s owners, knew they would lose money the first couple of years. Third, do you actually have a link with that quote from the Sol’s ownership or do you know the Sol’s owners personally? Fourth, how many different names are you going to post the same repeated message “Two years for this league and it’s done.” I believe this is about the 3rd different name you’ve posted this same comment. Yeah, future ticket sales are only on paper, but they’re still worth more than hot air.
Well first off the person who made the quote is in fact named Tim Leiweke. And second of all the league will not necessarily fail if AEG is not involved. Since the article found at http://articles.latimes.com/2009/may/17/sports/sp-jones-soccer17?pg=1 was dated May 17th I’m sure that Blue Star LLC and the league has been searching for other investors. In fact if nothing else AEG appears to have made it clear all along that they would only be involved for the first season so I’m a bit confused by all the alarm.