“You’re playing with more skillful players. Players who are very technical on the ball, who read the game very well.”
– Carli lloyd, on her season with Manchester City
Manchester City
Quote of the day: Carli Lloyd
Vero Boquete
Mark your calendars: Coming in April
Tobin Heath and Oriánica Velásquez of Colombia, June 22, 2015. (Erich Schlegel/USA Today Sports)
Events this month:
Two against Colombia, April 6 and April 10
Spring training
The U.S. women have only two games scheduled in April, both against Colombia, considered one of the rising squads in the hemisphere. (The Colombians are ranked 24th in the world, their highest ranking ever; seven years ago, they were No. 40.)
The teams last met on June 22, 2015, in the World Cup Round of 16. The United States won 2-0.
Lauren Barnes
Coach Jill Ellis has assembled a roster of 23 players for the two friendlies. It includes 21 of the 22 players who took the United States to the title in the title of the inaugural SheBelieves Cup in early March. The odd woman out is Lauren Barnes, a 26-year-old defender from the Seattle Reign who didn’t play in any of the team’s three SheBelieves matches.
The two players added to the roster are Allie Long, a 28-year-old midfielder with the Portland Thorns who spent time with the national team in 2014, and Ashley Sanchez, the captain of the under-17 team.
Allie Long
Ashley Sanchez
From her roster of 23, Ellis will choose 18 players to suit up for each match.
The April 6 game is at 6 p.m. CT in East Hartford, Conn. It will be on Fox Sports 1.
The April 10 game is at 1 p.m. CT in Chester, Penn. It will be on ESPN.
More than 18,000 tickets have been sold for the East Hartford match. Attendance could break the U.S. women’s record for a game played in Connecticut: 18,870 people saw a 2-2 draw with Germany in East Hartford on Oct. 23, 2012.
The game in Chester, just 30 miles from the hometown of Carli Lloyd, is sold out.
Carli Lloyd, Oct. 21, 2015. (Jennifer Buchanan/USA Today Sports)
Birthdays
April 6 – Julie Johnston (photo) turns 24.
April 9 – Vero Boquete turns 29. Anson Dorrance turns 65.
April 20 – Alyssa Naeher turns 28
April 29 – Mallory Pugh turns 18
Julie Johnston and Alexandra Popp of Germany. (Franck Fife/AFP/Getty Images)
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Entire Spanish team wants coach gone
After Spain’s early exit from the World Cup, all 23 players on the roster are calling for the removal of Ignacia Quereda, the 65-year-old who has coached the team since its creation in 1988. Jeff Kassouf of The Equalizer has the story.
As I wrote yesterday, Spain disappointed on the world’s biggest stage despite the presence of Vero Boquete, one of the game’s most dynamic players. Spain finished dead last in its group, playing Costa Rica to a 1-1 draw, losing 1-0 to Brazil, then losing 2-1 to South Korea.
The players acknowledged that the poor showing was on them. They said in their joint statement that they “made a self-critical assessment of our performance and we recognize that it could have been much better. This generation of players has the talent and commitment to have gone further in Canada.”
At the same time, they essentially accused their coach of putting in a half-assed effort.
“While assuming our own responsibility for our early exit … it is evident that the preparation for these World Cup finals was not adequate, there were insufficient pre-tournament friendlies, we were given limited time to acclimatize on arrival in Canada and the analysis of our opponents and the way the team prepared for our matches was simply not good enough — and that has been the case for a long time now.
“We believe that we have reached the end of an era and change is required. We have expressed these feelings to the coach and his technical team. Once confidence is lost and the ability to connect and transmit ideas to the squad is gone, it is very difficult for objectives to be reached.”
Ignacio Quereda (Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)
A sad departure for Spain and Vero Boquete
Veronica Boquete leaves the pitch after Spain’s 2-1 loss to South Korea on June 17, 2015, in Ottawa. (Lars Baron/FIFA/Getty Images)
Of the eight teams not moving on from the group stage — Costa Rica, Ecuador, the Ivory Coast, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Spain, and Thailand — the biggest disappointment may have felt by Spain.
The Spanish women, competing in their first World Cup, never won a game, playing Costa Rica to a 1-1 draw, losing 1-0 to Brazil, then losing 2-1 to South Korea.
It’s a shame, because the world never got to see the immense talent of Vero Boquete, Spain’s superb attacking midfielder. Boquete, who played last year for the Portland Thorns, is one of the quickest, most dynamic players in Europe, a crafty winger who can slice through the smallest openings in defenses and find the back of the net.
She didn’t score in the World Cup until the 29th minute of the game against South Korea on Thursday (June 17). The play that led to her goal begins at the :09 mark of this highlights video:
The tournament was far from the best performance by Boquete, a player Julie Foudy says belongs “on the short list for World Player of the Year.”
Who knows? Had Spain managed to survive its group, she may have shone in the second stage.
Four Spanish players (in white) leave two advancing South Koreans unmarked in the six-yard box as Kim Sooyun delivers the game-winning goal from the right wing in the 78th minute of the group match between Spain and South Korea on June 17, 2015. (YouTube screen grab)
Megan Rapinoe: ‘Canada doesn’t like us very much’
Paul Connors/AP
Megan Rapinoe, writing for The Players’ Tribune, lists ‘5 Reasons to Get Hyped for the 2015 Women’s World Cup.’
Mark your calendars: Coming in May
Events this month:
Sunday, May 10
‘Send-Off’ starts with Ireland
The U.S. women play Ireland in the first of their three games this month, their final tuneups before the World Cup. The ‘Send-Off Series,’ as it’s being billed, begins at 1 p.m. CT at Avaya Stadium in San Jose, Calif. The game is on Fox Sports 1.
The 18,000-seat stadium, home to the San Jose Earthquakes of Major League Soccer, is brand new; it opened on March 22 with a sold-out game between the Quakes and the Chicago Fire.
Avaya Stadium, San Jose, Calif. (San Jose Earthquakes)
The Americans won 2-0 the last time they played Ireland, on Dec. 1, 2012, in Glendale, Arizona. Expect no different outcome this time around. The United States is ranked No. 2 in the world; Ireland is No. 31. The Irish women have never qualified for a World Cup or a European Championship.
Sunday, May 17
Send-Off, Part II: Mexico
The United States and its rival to the south meet at 8:30 p.m. CT at StubHub Center in Carson, Calif. This game, too, will be on Fox Sports 1.
Team USA played Mexico three times last year. Three times, Team USA won. The combined score of those games: 15-0.
Abby Wambach vs. Mexico, Sept. 13, 2014. (Rick Bowmer/AP)
Monday, May 25
World Cup rosters due
Jill Ellis, of course, has already announced her World Cup roster. But the list isn’t officially due to FIFA until 10 working days before the start of the World Cup. In theory, Ellis could still make a change — in the event, say, of an injury.
Friday, May 29
Four more years. If not more.
FIFA is holding what it calls an election. In truth, it’s a hollow ceremony to renew the tenure of world soccer’s clown prince.
Saturday, May 30
Send-Off ends.
The Americans’ last stop before heading to Canada is at Red Bull Arena in Harrison, N.J., for a match against South Korea. The game, at 3:30 p.m. CT, will be on ESPN.
The U.S. record against Korea is 9-0-1
Sunday, May 31
SIX DAYS!! SIX DAYS!! SIX DAYS!! SIX DAYS!!
When you wake up, that’s how long you’ll have until the World Cup.
Jeff Roberson/AP
Birthdays
May 7 – Sydney Leroux (below) turns 25
May 29 – Tobin Heath turns 27
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Mark your calendars: Coming in April
Events this month:
Saturday, April 4
A robust crowd in St. Louis
The U.S. women have only one match this month. They play New Zealand on April 4 in Busch Stadium in St. Louis. The game, at 2:30 p.m. CT, will be televised on Fox Sports 1.
Ticket sales have been extraordinary. Initially, only 23,500 seats were being offered — just those in the lower levels. But when they went on sale on Jan. 30, they sold out in just two hours. So the rest of Busch was opened up, and now nearly every seat in the stadium is sold.
Busch Stadium, home of the St, Louis Cardinals, seats 43,975 for baseball.
A couple of days ago, I checked to see what’s still available for the USA-New Zealand match, and the only sections that weren’t sold out were a few at the very top top of the stadium — in all, fewer than 3,000 seats.
The final attendance could be the largest for a home game since 1999, when the World Cup was played in stadiums across the United States, and the Americans won.
Friday, April 10
NWSL tiptoes into third season
The National Women’s Soccer League opens what many believe is its critically important Season 3 when the Washington Spirit visit the Houston Dash at 7:30 p.m. CT on Friday, April 10.
Two earlier women’s leagues — the Women’s United Soccer Association and Women’s Professional Soccer — both folded after their third seasons. So far, the NWSL has been on more stable footing than either of those two previous ventures, thanks largely to salary subsidies from U.S. Soccer and the soccer federations of Canada and Mexico.
Still, the league is far from a roaring success. Crowds are often sparse. It’s not uncommon for fewer than 2,500 fans to show up.
Randy Waldrum, coach of the Dash, told the Houston Chronicle that ticket sales for the April 10 opener are lagging far behind what the team had hoped for. Season-ticket and group sales are down from a year ago.
Randy Waldrum. (Houston Dash)
“Quite frankly, I’m disappointed,” Waldrum said. “With a soccer community of over 100,000 people here in South Texas, there’s no excuse for that. We should be putting 7 or 8,000 into the stands every weekend to watch this team play.”
He warned that if fans don’t start buying more tickets, “in a couple of years when this team is no longer around, then we as a fan base will have no one but ourselves to blame.”
In 2014, the league title was won by FC Kansas City, a terrific team that featured, among others, Lauren Holiday, Amy Rodriguez, Becky Sauerbrunn, Erika Tymrak, Leigh Ann Robinson, Jen Buczkowski and Nicole Barnhart. The team averaged just 2,018 fans for home games, a drop of more than 56 percent from the inaugural 2013 season.
FC Kansas City players hoist the NWSL championship trophy after beating the Seattle Reign 2-1 on Aug. 31, 2014. (Elaine Thompson/AP)
Only the Portland Thorns consistently draw well, averaging 13,362 fans at home last year. In all, the Thorns sold more than 160,000 regular-season tickets. That accounted for more than 36 percent of all ticket sales in the nine-team league.
That’s great if you’re the Portland Thorns. But in many ways, the team’s success just serves to highlight how feebly the rest of the league is doing at the gate.
The average attendance throughout the NWSL last year was 4,121. Take out the Thorns’ 12 home games, and that average drops to 2,966.
The Portland Thorns routinely pack thousands of fans into Providence Park for their home games. (Craig Mitchelldyer/Portland Thorns FC)
And thanks to the World Cup in Canada, there’s every reason to believe that 2015 will be even worse.
To accommodate the World Cup, which runs from June 6 to July 5, the NWSL is trimming its regular season to 20 games, down from 24 last year, and it’s taking a 13-day break in early June.
It’s hard to see how either the reduced schedule or the June hiatus will do anything but hurt attendance.
Many of the league’s biggest stars will miss chunks of the season because they’re either getting ready for the World Cup or playing in it — and not just Americans, but also members of the national teams of Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Spain, and Japan.
USA Today Sports
Abby Wambach already made headlines by announcing that she’ll skip the 2015 season altogether to concentrate solely on the World Cup. She played for the Western New York Flash in her hometown of Rochester, where she’s a beloved figure. Western New York subsequently traded the future rights to Wambach to the Seattle Reign for Sydney Leroux.)
Her decision probably won’t have a huge impact on how well the Flash do on the field, notes Jeff Kassouf of The Equalizer. Even last year, Wambach wasn’t much of a factor. Injuries and national team obligations limited her to 10 appearances for Western New York. She had six goals and four assists. The team, which had the league’s best record in 2013 (10-4-8), slipped to seventh place in 2014 (8-12-4).
The impact of her absence may be greater at the box office, however. No player has been more closely identified with a market than Wambach has with Rochester, Kassouf writes, “and losing Wambach can only serve to keep fans away.”
However sensible it may have been for Wambach to conclude that, at 34, she should conserve her energy and preserve her body for the World Cup — and however convincingly her admirers may argue that she has more than earned the right to make that decision — the blunt interpretation is that she quit on her club team. Fans of the Flash, and, by extension, the NWSL, have to feel slighted. One of soccer’s greatest stars has made it clear that in the grand scheme of things, neither the team nor the league is all that important to her. And if Abby Wambach feels that way, why should the ticket-buying public feel any different?
That might not be fair. It isn’t fair. But if fans believe it, and if more seats go unsold as a result, it hardly matters whether it’s fair or not.
In theory, other national team players — unless they join Wambach and formally quit — should be available for NWSL games until the World Cup begins. But that availability will be spotty. There will be times when they’re called away for training camps or for tune-up friendlies. There may be times when they’ll want to rest small injuries or just take a break from the travel schedule.
Paul Riley, the coach of the Thorns, said months ago that he would prepare for the 2015 season by assuming that none of his players who are participating in the World Cup would be available until after that tournament ends. For Portland, that could mean up to nine players, including Alex Morgan, Tobin Heath and Rachel Van Hollebeke of the United States; Christine Sinclair, Kaylyn Kyle, and Rhian Wilkinson of Canada; Nadine Angerer of Germany; and Vero Boquete of Spain.
That’s not only a lot of football talent — it’s a whole lot of drawing power at the turnstiles.
Birthdays
April 6 – Julie Johnston turns 23
April 9 – Anson Dorrance turns 64; Vero Boquete turns 28
April 20 – Alyssa Naeher turns 27
Julie Johnston (right) and Eugenie Le Sommer of France, Algarve Cup final, March 11, 2015. (Francisco Seco/AP)
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Carli Lloyd: ‘ I want to be the best, and that keeps me motivated’
Carli Lloyd vs. Mexico, Oct. 24, 2014. (Rich Schultz/AP)
In an interview with the Women’s World Football Show, an Internet radio program and podcast, Carli Lloyd says that for all of her successes, she’s never stopped working to improve.
“I continue to fight like an underdog,” she says. “I want to just keep getting better”
She adds, “I live and breathe the game of soccer. It kind of rules my life. It’s hard for me to switch it off, take vacations and get away from the game. …
“I want to be the best and that keeps me motivated day in and day out to continue to get better. I know that what I’ve done in the past doesn’t mean anything.”
On another topic, Lloyd is surprisingly frank in her assessment of the National Women’s Soccer League, which is entering its third season.
The level of competition in the NWSL, she says, while improving, isn’t as good as that in Women’s Professional Soccer, the American league that folded in 2012 after three seasons.
‘There were some really good international players who came over to play in the WPS,” she says.
(The old league did attract, among others, Marta, Formiga, Daniela and Cristiane from Brazil; Kelly Smith from England; Sarah Walsh from Australia; and Homare Sawa from Japan. But top to bottom, were the WPS’s foreign players better than Nadine Angerer (Germany), Vero Boquete (Spain), Christine Sinclair, Melissa Tancredi, Erin McLeod and Diana Matheson (Canada), Samantha Kerr and Lisa De Vanna (Australia), Lianne Sanderson (England), Nahomi Kawasumi (Japan), Teresa Noyola (Mexico), Kim Little (Scotland), and Jessica Fishlock (Wales) — just some of the foreign stars who have played in the NWSL?)
Lloyd is also critical of some of the fields and stadiums in use in the NWSL.
“I would definitely like to see the quality of fields improve,” says Lloyd, who will play says, “especially playing on turf… We would eventually like to see all the NWSL teams play in pretty nice stadiums. I think the standards need to improve … to make it feel like a club environment.”
Lloyd played for the Western New York Flash in the first two NWSL seasons. She was traded to the Houston Dash for the upcoming season.
A print version of the Women’s World Football Show interview with Lloyd appears on Examiner.com.
Trade for Carli Lloyd makes Houston Dash ‘100 times better,’ exec says
Carli Lloyd. (John Raoux/AP)
The Houston Dash gave up a lot in the trade two weeks ago for Carli Lloyd, sending defender Whitney Engen, defending midfielder Becky Edwards, and a third-round draft pick to the Western New York Flash.
Well worth it, says Houston’s managing director, Brian Ching.
“Carli is a player that I consider one of the top two women’s players in the world right now,” he told Hal Kaiser, writing for Orange in the Oven, a fan site of SI.com.
Ching exaggerates. Alex Morgan, Abby Wambach, Hope Solo, Lauren Holiday, Christen Press, Becky Sauerbrunn, Vero Boquete, Naho Kawasumi, Nadine Kessler, Lotta Schelin, and Louisa Necib are all arguably better — and certainly, two of them are better. One could throw Megan Rapinoe, Sydney Leroux, Christine Sinclair, Nadine Angerer, and Marta into the conversation as well.
Still, Ching’s point is well taken. Carli Lloyd kicks ass.
Edwards was Houston’s MVP this year, starting 23 of 24 games. She led the team — by a wide margin — in minutes played and was sixth in the National Women’s Soccer League. She was tied with two others for team leader in assists. She was tied with two others for team leader in assists. Engen is a skilled defender, a member of the national team with 22 caps who more than holds her own on the international stage.
Whitney Engen. (Nuno Veiga/EPA)
But as Ching put it, “A player of Carli’s caliber doesn’t come available very often… We needed to do anything we could to get her.”
He added: “We’re a team that is looking to compete for the championship. She’s the kind of player that we can build a team around.”
The Dash, an expansion team in 2014, finished last in the league with a record of 5-16-3. But Western New York wasn’t much better. A year after playing for the NWSL title, the Flash slipped to seventh place, at 8-12-4.
Houston coach Randy Waldrum now has a roster that includes, in addition to Lloyd:
• Meghan Klingenberg, a star of the U.S. team’s recent triumph in the CONCACAF Women’s Championship. (See her spectacular goal below.)
• Kealia Ohai, a 22-year-old who helped lead the United States to the 2012 U-20 World Cup title, and, that same year, won the collegiate championship at the University of North Carolina;
• Teresa Noyola, the winner of the 2011 Hermann Trophy and a three-time All-American at Stanford who plays for the Mexican national team.
• Ari Romero, the 2013 Big Ten Defender of the Year at Nebraska and a teammate of Noyola’s on the Mexican team.
• Erin McLeod, the outstanding goalkeeper for the Canadian national team;
• Brittany Bock and Melissa Henderson, both standouts at Notre Dame when Waldrum was the coach there.
That’s a team, Kaiser writes, that could be on its way from the 2014 cellar to the 2015 playoffs.
Here are the 10 candidates for Women’s World Player of the Year
Abby Wambach, FIFA’s 2012 Women’s World Player of the Year. (Getty Images)
Abby Wambach is on FIFA’s short list of 10 candidates for Women’s World Player of the Year. Wambach won the award two years ago.
From FIFA, here are thumbnail sketches of all 10 candidates.
Among the others on the short list:
• Nadine Angerer, the German goalkeeper who is the reigning player of the year;
• Vero Boquete of Spain, who became a fan favorite this year when she played for the Portland Thorns;
• Nahomi Kawasumi, who starred with the Seattle Reign, playing alongside Megan Rapinoe and Sydney Leroux;
• Lotta Schlein, a three-time nominee from Sweden;
• Marta, the great Brazilian who won the award a stunning five times in a row, from 2006 to 2010 (and who Sepp Blatter, the clown prince of FIFA, still couldn’t recognize).
On Dec. 1, three finalists will be announced. The winner will be honored at a gala on Jan. 12 in Zurich.
Sepp Blatter: This is Marta. She’s pretty famous.
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