USWNT ‘futures camp’ coming, MLS 2024 award nominees, and more: Tuesday Freedom Kicks
Happy Tuesday, everyone! I am feeling good this week, having returned to a more normal situation at work after a couple months of craziness, (although Hey Spirits listeners will learn that I am feeling less good about the remainder of the Spirit season). I’ve got a mix of news and fun stuff to get you all through the mid-week, and please share any new things that come up in the comments!
MLS announces nominees for 2024 Year-End Awards (MLS)
These are not short lists! D.C. United’s Christian Benteke, Troy Lesesne, Matti Peltola, Ted Ku-DiPietro, Lucas Bartlett, Aaron Herrera, Alex Bono, and Pedro Santos are ALL nominated for awards.
First Black president of an MLS team talks sustaining growth amid $775 million valuation and record attendance numbers (Yahoo Finance)
D.C. United President of Business Operations Danita Johnson talks about applying her WNBA experience to MLS and her thoughts on player development and growing the sport.
USWNT boss Hayes reveals ‘futures camp’ to be held in January (Pro Soccer Wire)
Emma Hayes is hoping to see some of the best U-23s in the NWSL playing against her current USWNT squad. I don’t necessarily see any young Spirit players getting a call-up, but we’ll see.
Speaking of call-ups, Aaron Herrera has been named to the squad for the October Guatemalan camp.
SafeSport reopens investigation into former NWSL coach Rory Dames (Washington Post $)
The Washington Post appears to have successfully shamed SafeSport into reopening the investigation into Rory Dames. Hopefully they will actually do some investigating this time.
There’s one Wednesday night game this week, with Loudoun United facing Indy Eleven at home.
| Teams | When | Where | Watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Loudoun United FC vs. Indy Eleven | Wed., Oct. 8 at 7 p.m. ET | Leesburg, VA | ESPN+ |
And finally, because Mondays tend to be slow news days, some soccer videos from around the world to make you laugh or at the very least gasp. (For real, the second one from the Panamanian women’s league is WILD.)
Way to go with the Post and Rory Dames.
3 DCU players called up to their respective national teams this international window: https://www.mlssoccer.com/news/every-mls-call-up-october-2024-international-window
Boris Enow (Cameroon)
Aaron Herrera (Guatemala)
Matti Peltola (Finland)
Gregg Berhalter has been named the new head coach and director of football for the Chicago Fire.
https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/41680830/chicago-fire-name-ex-usa-coach-gregg-berhalter-head-coach
Chicago Fire can’t catch a break.
JK, I imagine he’ll be competent enough as an MLS coach. However, he got the USMNT job more on the fact that, at the time, he was one of the few untapped American managers who had experience in Europe. His Columbus Crew was not really something to write home about, I imagine the Fire will do better than they have. Overall, predicting comfortable mediocrity, which is good enough for a playoff spot most years
I don’t know how Berhalter will do with Chicago. But I’ll push back on your summary of him as a Crew coach. At the time, DCU and Columbus were consistently the bottom 2 teams in MLS (unless we added Rooney) for cap totals. But Columbus under Berhalter was always good and he had a reputation as being one of the more astute coaches tactically in MLS.
You don’t write home for basic competence. You write home for excellence.
Berhalter isn’t capable of that.
Guess what basic competence is going to look like to the fans of Chicago. And they deserve at least that much. As bad as we’ve been, I’ve always been able to say, “At least I’m not a Chicago Fire fan.”
I wonder if people actually read what I wrote.
I have every expectation that Berhalter improves their baseline.
Gio Reyna to Chicago……
That makes way too much sense, and is also hilarious
https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/41675457/como-marco-curto-banned-10-matches-racist-abuse
Any word on Andi Sullivan’s injury?
Can’t find any updates with a quick Google.