DC Area Women’s Sports Bar Opens, “Hey Spirits” Goalkeeper Interview, and more: Tuesday Freedom Kicks
Good morning DC Footy Folk! It’s an unseasonably chilly morning in the nation’s capital today…
Quick 30+ soccer league update; I scored a left footed (!!!) goal in a 11-10 victory. It was quite a raucous game! Anyways onto to the news!t
The DC Area’s First Women’s Sports Bar Opens in Arlington (Washingtonian)
Westover Taco is now officially a women’s sports bar! I am excited to go catch a Spirit game there!
The “Hey Spirits!” interviews Spirit goalkeeper, Kaylie Collins.
What did the USWNT learn ahead of World Cup after Japan series? (ESPN)
My biggest takeaway is that Sophia Wilson won’t need as much time to adjust back to the USWNT setting. Though she didn’t score, her movement was great. Will Triple Espresso be the starting forwards for the 2027 World Cup? Will de facto Fourth Espresso, Alyssa Thompson, crash the party?
Donald mentioned yesterday that Balogun is in red hot form which is good because Pulisic has cooled down significantly for club and country after a banner year in 2025.
GK Jonathan Klinsmann breaks neck playing for Cesena (ESPN)
Best of luck to Jonathan! Sounded like a nasty injury. He’s had an interesting soccer journey over the years if you look at his Wiki page.
It looks like the NWSL coming to Columbus is getting closer to reality, but there are mixed feelings about the ownership…
Marie-Louise Eta, Union Berlin’s ‘Football Goddess’, breaks new ground in Bundesliga (The Guardian)
An update from last week’s story about the first female coach in the top 5 European leagues.
Airbnb to provide FIFA World Cup fans with free SEPTA rides after matches (NBC Philly)
It seems like people making noise over the high cost of transit to games has at least forced this change in Philadelphia. I expect more cities to make last minute changes to try to bring in as many fans as possible.
That’s it from me this morning! See you all in the comments!
Sean Johnson made the bench in this week’s Team of the Match Day on the league site.
https://www.mlssoccer.com/news/team-of-the-matchday-usmnt-s-luna-roldan-make-world-cup-push-md8-2026
Sophia Wilson has so much technical quality and soccer IQ, and Hayes won’t rely on her to “DO SOMETHING!!” in the way that Vlatko did. She can disrupt and combine brilliantly, and, when she’s gotten more reps under her belt, they won’t be able to leave her an opportunity, either.
Plus she has some great chemistry with Rodman. Triple Espresso plus Alyssa and Sears coming off the bench is just unfair to other teams.
💯
Although I think it’s quite likely that Alyssa does far better with some minutes to ramp up to speed, and hasn’t quite figured out the super sub thing- think Sentnor is actually better at it generally.
But Sears off the bench is consistently as terrifying to a left sided defense already tired of tracking a superstar as a village seeing Ghengis Khan coming
Team Leaders according to the stats on The Athletic for DCU
Attack:
Defense:
I just think its interesting to see after 8 games who is where. Its a shame that Kijima has only played in 2 MLS games for us so far this season. I think he should see more time.
Maybe he will? I haven’t listened to it yet, but Doyle spoke on the soccerwise podcast and said apparently a bunch of the players hate Weiler. Or he’s exaggerating and players are frustrated with him. I can see Kijima not being a fan, since he went from starting under Lesesne to barely seeing the field under Weiler. But even then he was not very polished and ran out of gas early. Now Markovic is seemingly preferred as a second DM. I’m wondering if we shouldn’t try a 4-3-3, with Kijima or Hopkins in the advanced CM role, and Clark/Baribo/Peglow up top. It doesn’t leave room for the other (or Munteanu lol). Maybe a 4-5-1 with some logjam of nominally attacking players in front of Peltola and Markovic.
Weiler has had success, but not lasted long term anywhere. If he was the type to develop deep ties with his players, that probably wouldn’t be the case.
My guess is that he’s concerned about Kijima not having his ideal level of defensive solidity for CM, and not enough explosiveness as an attacker. I think, if we need to forgo using Pirani and Louis, the lineup should utilize him.
Too many open questions to work with yet, from our outsider’s perch. Does Weiler not rate Kijima, or does he view Kijima as a three-man-center-midfield guy who isn’t good enough to force the team into a formation change? If some players are unhappy with Weiler, is it guys who aren’t cutting the mustard (Clark, Pirani, Murrell, etc.) or is it core components (Baribo, Peltola, Bartlett-as-captain)? Is a shift out of straight 4-4-2 to a double pivot formation with Peltola and Markovic something he’s too inflexible to roll with, or something he’s properly delaying b/c Peltola only just broke through to being effective on both ends in the last six months and Markovic is still developing that part of his game? Was Munteanu’s transfer merely a deeply stupid one or an actually criminal transaction; and to what extent was Weiler responsible?
The nicer answers to the above questions would point to a situation where a bit of experimentation could help us over the next month, while the nastier ones point to a situation where we should all check out until next year at a minimum.
Though I see in the pre-match press conference that Weiler rejected a characterization of our formation v. Philadelphia as a 4-4-2, and indeed at times it looked very 4-2-3-1-ish to my eye, so perhaps there is already some shifting going on there.
(Of course Weiler seems to be more on the side of a Dutch philosophy here, where describing a formation with numbers is antithetical to how he wants to think about the game; or at least that is how he phrases his responses.)
A bit of a surprise that Peglow is doing so well at tackles won.
10 years ago Leicester City won the English Premier League. Today they got relegated down to Ligue 1 from the Championship.