Happy Monday, folks. It was a really fun Saturday down at Audi Field for the Washington Spirit, so let’s begin there!
Washington Spirit win their fourth match in a row, 2-0 against NJ/NY Gotham FC (DP)
4 in a row! The Spirit win again, beating the defending champions. We might have something going here!
Shorthanded D.C. United falls to New York City FC for first away defeat (WaPo)
D.C. United couldn’t get anything done against NYCFC, and they get their first loss on the road this season.
Bellingham hands Real Madrid comeback win over Barcelona (ESPN)
Jude is inevitable! Bellingham once again gets the game-winner in 2nd half stoppage time for Real Madrid as they beat Barcelona in El Clásico.
Maria Sanchez trade: San Diego Wave acquire winger from Houston Dash after request (The Athletic)
Maria Sanchez demanded an immediate trade, and she got one. She heads to the San Diego Wave for a transfer fee. It was the biggest of several trades at the NWSL trade deadline.
PSV announces Dest out for ‘extended period’ with knee injury (Pro Soccer Wire)
This appears bad. Sergiño Dest had an apparent knee injury in training and will be out for an extended period. This could put into jeopardy his availability for Copa América this summer for the USMNT.
Alex Loera, the first ever signing for Bay FC, will miss the rest of the season after she tore her ACL. Ban knees, for real.
Nottingham Forest dropped another EPL match this weekend to Everton. After the match, they took it out on the officiating.
Haji Wright was able to complete the comeback for Coventry City to send the FA Cup semifinal to extra time, but Coventry City did not have the magic in penalties as Manchester United escapes and will head to the FA Cup Final against Manchester City.
Enjoy the week, everyone!
Old Glory got outplayed and destroyed by Houston on Saturday.
Bethune, Hatch Buzzard Points dispatch Gotham 2-0. The tally to date:
Buzzard Points (home goals): Bethune (2); Hatch (pk), Hershfelt, Sarr, Sullivan
Talones (home assists): Rodman (2); Hatch, Krueger
Taloncitos (drew home pk): Bethune (2)
Catch an outstanding example of Trinity Rodman’s impressive soccer IQ in my comment on Annie’s report on Spirit-Gotham match Saturday. Plus JoeW’s follow up comment.
BTW, JoeW and I seem to be the only Commentariat that regularly follow Annie’s excellent coverage of the Spirit. More of you should do so. And Ryan’s coverage of Loudoun United.
Cincinnati is adding a player on loan.
This is a team that spends big on DPs, and is also able to go out and keep making significant additions, supplementing their Defender of the Year with Miles Robinson, and then getting DeAndre Yedlin as well, not to mention Corey Baird.
I’m not accusing them of any rule bending or anything like that. They just have a good GM.
Our roster is not full to begin with, and then despite shedding huge numbers of players and salaries, nearly everybody we signed was on a pretty affordable deal. There wasn’t any splashing of the cash. And yet we’re apparently still so hard up against the salary cap that there’s not any room to make additions to fill out the roster. So we get these situations where perfect storms arise and players are out hurt, or on yellow card suspensions, and there are at least four players on the already very thin roster that the coach just simply doesn’t want around (and we were SO thin that he was forced to play one of them on Saturday for a little bit). Anyway, the whole thing speaks to a roster that was in absolute shambles and horribly mismanaged before Ally Mackay got here. Everyone that could conceivably be moved in this past offseason has been moved, and I’m certain that plans are underway to move everybody else that can be moved as quickly as practicable. But also, everyone responsible for assembling that roster mess has been let go EXCEPT FOR FUCKING DAVE KASPER. I don’t care if he’s exiled and has no responsibility. He needs to have accountability, and be shown the fucking door.
Pitchforks! Torches! Burn, Baby, Burn!
It’s absolutely wild how poorly ran this organization is. Over a year to replace the GM and we got nothing for eleven players that left at the end of last season (Yamil Asad, Eric Davis, José Fajardo, Jacob Greene, Brendan Hines-Ike, Erik Hurtado, Andy Najar, Nigel Robertha, Gaoussou Samaké, Donovan Pines, and Derrick Williams). Combined with the two players we at least got some value for in Durkin/Ruan, we shipped out 13 players and picked up 9 (McVey, Bartlett, Stroud, Herrera, Murrell, Tubbs, Peltola, Crockford, Antley). Pretty much no organization in the world would be able to function well with that kind of turnover.
It seems like it might be getting a little better with Mackay, but the fact that we only have 24 players available to Lesesne is wild. Admittedly, the whole situation would feel less bad if Jeahze didn’t disappear.
We’re either going to end up buying him out, or some lower-flight team in Europe will pick him up for $10 and a hotel coupon. He must’ve put in the worst off-season of all time to get thrown in the doghouse this hard.
Add in Rodriguez, who is likely also going to leave on a “mutual termination” after finding a team this summer, and the season-long loans of Garay and Sargis, and we’re at 17 players out and only 9 in. Pretty…insane.
What’s even wilder is that the players in (with the exception of Peltola and Herrera) seem to be on much smaller contracts then most of the players we lost.
Don’t forget that one of those 9 in is a third round draft pick that’s our #4 goalkeeper.
Per Tom Bogert at The Athletic:
Naturally, there is no indication that we are front-runners, or even interested. Just “three MLS clubs.” Mind you, if I were Griffin Yow… “They say the new management is better, but then they said that about the management that didn’t want to hang on to me in the first place” is how I would see it.
He’d be a good player in the system, probably. But yeah, I think he’d balk at coming back.
Ian Harkes seemed pretty pleased to not return. Chris Durkin got a nice pay bump coming back, but then we ended up trading him away.
Perhaps he will go to Houston.