USWNT return to DC, Vermes out at Sporting KC, and more: Tuesday Freedom Kicks
Happy Tuesday, and happy April! I don’t have any April Fools’ Day pranks for you today, but feel free to share your own kicks and tricks (within reason) below.
USWNT to face Canada in Continental Clásico (Stars and Stripes FC)
The USWNT will play in DC for the second year in a row! If only they would choose a time to do it when it won’t be so stinking hot. This year’s match is July 2nd.
Meanwhile, in USWNT news I hate: Chloe Ricketts will not be attending the U-18 camp due to injury. The Spirit… may have a problem they need to address.
Sporting KC fires long-time head coach Peter Vermes: Sources (Give Me Sport)
This is, of course, official news by now: Peter Vermes is leaving Kansas City after 16 years as head coach.
Report: After mutually parting ways with Peter Vermes, Sporting KC has inquired about Kansas City Current’s Vlatko Andonovski (All for XI)
Who could replace Vermes? We’re already hearing some rumors.
USL Championship Goal of the Week – Week 4 (USL Championship)
Loudoun’s Abdellatif Aboukoura is up for Goal of the Week for his second in a brace last weekend. Vote for him (or someone else) at the link above!
Club America-LAFC playoff could decide Club World Cup spot, FIFA confirms (Pro Soccer Wire)
The winner of this match would take the spot previously held by Club León, facing Flamengo, Esperance Sportive de Tunis and Chelsea in Group D.
Is the Sports Draft Obsolete? (The Nation)
Reconsidering the sports draft in the wake of the NWSL’s first season without one. I think the draft will hang around in most American sports leagues, but should it?
Finally, we have a couple of mid-week matches coming up. First, Loudoun United plays their second round in the U.S. Open Cup against Virginia Dream. The same evening, DC Power FC play Dallas Trinity, home to a few loaned Spirit players.
| Teams | When | Where | Watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Loudoun United FC vs. Virginia Dream | Wed., Apr. 2 at 6:30 p.m. ET | Leesburg, VA | YouTube |
| DC Power FC vs. Dallas Trinity FC | Wed., Apr. 2 at 8 p.m. ET | Dallas, TX | Peacock |
The Sounders have signed a replacement for Paul Arriola who tore his ACL against Cruz Azul on 11 March and was placed on the season ending injury list. The Sounders have signed out of contract English winger Ryan Kent.
https://www.mlssoccer.com/news/seattle-sounders-sign-english-winger-ryan-kent
Arriola just can’t catch a break. I wish we had him on the right wing instead of Stroud….
Someone compared Peglow to Arriola and that got me kind of giddy. I don’t know if it’s exactly accurate, but it could be close.
Sorta took yesterday off, but just wanted to say about DC United:
The Crew are a strong team that should beat us at this point. But going up a goal, capitulating twice, and being unable to get into gear for like twenty minutes at the end, all at home… I’ve seen this game over and over again.
The unfortunate reality is, collapse is closer to our baseline than victory. We got an early goal, and it still didn’t change our fate. That positive initial game state saved us from a rout, but I’m unable to take the positives and run with them.
Our ceiling is still pretty low, our floor still cavernous. And it feels like our ceiling is way closer to a loss to the Crew still than a result. In a league that parity should still be the norm within, yikes.
DC tends to be much better in games when they concede first, as opposed to scoring first. We saw the same thing last year where they dropped like the second most points in the league from winning positions, but they also had like the second or third most points gained from losing positions. Don’t know why, if its down to style or Lesesne’s tactics or what, but my general rule of thumb is that if DC scores first, they probably won’t win
It seems to me you’re implying that we mostly don’t get the result we want, and the probability of a team scoring on us is directly correlated to how much they actually need to score on us, depending on game state.
Sounds like a team with a low ceiling and a cavernous floor to me.
Messi’s bodyguard is banned from being protecting Messi during matches.
https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/44489862/lionel-messi-bodyguard-banned-touchline-inter-miami-games
I find the quote “Let me help Messi” to be very funny
I don’t think the Sports draft is obsolete. My biggest worry about the NWSL right now is a lack of parity. If you were someone great coming out of college, would you choose Utah over Washington? Based solely on last year, the league had a group of teams at the top and a group of teams at the bottom and not a lot of middle. That’s not good for the NWSL.
And that’s a bummer about Ricketts. Being in a situation where she’s expected to be one of the “go to” players (ie: the U18 side) would be a big developmental step for her.
On the NWSL rookie situation, I think you’re just assuming rookies want to go to the best clubs at the start of their pro careers and likely ride the pine. Think there’s more pragmatism going on than that, and there’s already been some big performances from rookies within teams that struggled last season.
It also means that the teams that want individual players can entice them in, rather than teams being forced to choose the most valuable option left in a draft.
Where there would be an issue is more around location than club- whether young women want to move to Florida, Texas, or Utah in this era, we’ll see if that’s an issue.
The last point is an excellent one.
First, your last point–especially for women who might be lesbian–yeah, big issue.
Second, I don’t assume players will just want to go to big clubs or well-run clubs. There will be players who want PT or an opportunity. Or they’ll want to stay home. Or their significant other has a job in a particular area (my understanding is that’s why Kelly O’Hara requested a trade to New York). All of that is true.
But just look at MLS (where college talent has far less impact immediately than it does in NWSL). Players coming from Europe want to go to LA. NY would be second on their list. Those are desired locations. When you include how DCU is run/the ownership commitment, it means we spend a decade being an afterthought with a brief exception here and there.
Last season, we saw one in NWSL where there was no parity. There needs to be some way to try and insure some degree of parity in NWSL. Because the women’s game isn’t strong enough where a franchise can survive in Houston or Utah if they spend 5 consecutive years as a bottom-feeder.
I was talking specifically about NWSL, but I guess I didn’t make that clear. The super draft is dying in MLS, it’s probably fine IMO to nix it, let the players that are good go where they want.
I will say, in NWSL, I don’t think it’s anything to do with the draft if a side is a bottom feeder. That means they’re not a great organization, top to bottom, and you can’t draft your way out of that in soccer- it’s not a five sided game like Basketball. The incentive should be for the clubs that are struggling to revamp and do better, not suck and get a few decent players out of it when they give up.
The Sportsdraft is nominally about parity, though it also very much serves to tamp down salaries for rookies, by eliminating the choice for top college athletes. And unions are OK with this. Where it seems almost pointless is MLS because the calibre of players coming out of college is pretty limited, and most of the best college players are set up for Homegrown deals.
There’s still the question that Sasho Cirovski posed, in advocating for NCAA soccer to move to a Fall-Spring calendar. Would that help fix the problem that the NCAA faces with many players skipping college to turn pro? Perhaps, but would that filter down to the draft, or just give MLS teams another path to develop their academy products? Or, did that horse already sail, with MLS Nextpro?
All good points. I listen to Sasho but with a grain of salt. He originally claimed that MLS taking players before they had graduated would destroy college soccer. Instead, the quality of the men’s college game has gotten better.
My take about the Superdraft and MLS is: people don’t develop at the same rate and same circumstances. The majority of the best domestic American men will come through academies and Nextpro. But there will always be some players like Erwin Kostedde who become good in their 20’s and then really, really good. And if our only path was through an academy, we’d lose those players.
Any update on what the injury situation is with Chloe Ricketts?
Just reached out to the team about this. They say it’s a “minor knock” so she is staying home from international break as a precaution to prevent it from becoming more serious and so she can be ready to play April 12.
What? Sanity? /s
It is good to protect players.
I hope she is back in the saddle soon. I was really happy that she was considered. There will be other invitations.