Washington Spirit & DC Power win, DC United lose again, and more: Monday Freedom Kicks
Happy Monday, everyone. It was a fun weekend of soccer as we had Halloween and we entered the best month of the year to me: November! While you stumble upon clocks that weren’t somehow rewound yesterday, here’s the news from the weekend.
Washington Spirit see off Chicago Stars in 2-0 Decision Day win: Match report (Green Line Soccer)
The Spirit clinched a quarterfinal home match with a 2-0 win over the Stars on Sunday. And, yesterday’s sellout helped the Spirit finish a record attendance over the course of the season.
They will host the Portland Thorns in the quarterfinals next Sunday at 3pm at Audi Field!
DC Power went down to Florida to face the Tampa Bay Sun, and a late goal by Alyssa Walker was the difference in a 2-1 win.
DC Power is now second in the USL Super League table with a big match against Lexington SC this Friday. That match was graciously moved by the club to clear Audi Field for the Spirit to host their quarterfinal match Sunday.
D.C. United lose fifth straight in 3-0 defeat at Columbus Crew: Match report (Green Line Soccer)
It’s another loss for the Black-and-Red, and they limp towards the season finale next weekend at Audi Field.
Resilient Gotham wins first NWSL Shield: ‘That should be our standard’ (ESPN)
Gotham FC clinches the NWSL Shield, making some history in the process: they join the Courage and the Thorns as the only teams to win the Shield, the league championship, and the Challenge Cup. They are the only team to win those trophies and the Concacaf W Championship.
The USWNT U-17s are out of the U-17 Women’s World Cup after they were defeated by North Korea, who are in search of their 3rd straight U-17 Women’s World Cup title.
A-Leagues’ financial woes: How solvent is Australia’s top tier? (ESPN)
An in depth look at the A-League Men and A-League Women and their financial struggles. Hopefully they’re able to turn the finances around because I enjoy watching the matches when I catch them late at night.
Goalkeepers endure a lot to have their hands ready to stop 70-80mph shots. I’ve been a keeper…mad respect for them.
Ex-Liverpool, Man City star Milner runs NYC Marathon in just over three hours (ESPN)
Congrats to James Milner for completing the NYC Marathon yesterday!
Last thing I will say: tomorrow is Election Day. If you haven’t voted, please take the time to cast your ballot. If you’re in DC or Maryland, your employer is required to give you up to 2 hours of paid leave to go vote. If you’re in Virginia, you fight for that time to do it. If you need to find your polling place, here’s a place to start: https://vote.gov/.
Vote, vote, vote.
I want to be sympathetic to DC United — I started limping heavily this weekend, too. Something wrong with my knee or hamstring, but I worry it’s referred from my hip. Had that happening with my other leg for months until I got a cortisone shot two weeks ago.
Anyway, this franchise is crippled. They need a whole body rebuild, including the head.
Hope you heal and feel better soon Fischy.
And the thing that’s wrong with this franchise is the ownership. It feels like just DCU is a real estate investment and nothing more to them.
I think this is the first time in a while that I thought the soccer staff was ok. I think they tried to fix the roster in a way that made sense to me. I like that they were patient to try to find the right players, but we still end up in the same place. I like how they figured out how to move on from players they didn’t want. I didn’t understand why the coach played some of the players in the positions he plays them. It could be a coaching problem, but I really believe they made some mistakes that I can only guess the ownership is causing. I think they wanted to bring in some more players during the last transfer window. I think ownership did not want to spend the money. Maybe if they did we could have made a push to the playoffs. I know we had a short staffed roster for a while now. Maybe its because they want to spend on better players but cannot buy more based on a salary budget. Unfortunately, another year to not make the playoffs.
Just a fun little factoid that our team-record transfer signing played fewer minutes this year than Andre Dozzell.
(He still wound up with 10 goal contributions this year, and who knows, maybe could be better after a season of acclimating and maybe another DP to play with next year.)
Weiler and Sogut did well to bring in quality players. Baribo, Kurokawa, Hefti, Nono, Johnson and Dozzell are all quite good. The fullbacks in particular would probably be welcome additions to teams even in the upper third of the league. We had some good holdovers too – Bartlett and Peltola provide some bite in their respective positions.
As frustrating as it was to hear from him over and over, though, Weiler was right that there’s an overall gap in quality between us and the teams above us. I like Servania, he just shouldn’t be starting so many games (and wouldn’t be on a playoff team). Peglow and Rowles have been ok most games, which isn’t enough to get us past an opponent in a tight game. Hopkins has had a lot of ups and downs since Weiler came in. Ordaz wasn’t able to make a real mark after a few flashes of potential.
Really, as has been mentioned time and time again, the lack of a reserve team is killing us. Any of the young players glued to the bench would be getting real, competitive minutes, and ideally under some unified philosophy like Dallas, Philly, RBNJ and Columbus have. A starter goes down for a few games, bring in a kid who’s in game-shape to fill in for a few matches and get some top-level experience. Turn those free transfers into $1 million dollar ones and make up the cost of fielding a youth team in 1 week over the summer. It can’t be that painful.
I completely agree. The lack of an MLSNext team is crippling in a soccer hotbed area. It hurts our depth, it costs revenue, it makes it harder to sign good young talent. It means we have to send guys like Ian Harkes, Jason Murrell, Griffith Yow overseas (or to distant USL teams where coaches can’t watch them practice and play every game). I don’t need to have us spend more than anyone else or even in the top 5. But it’s true–we’re just a real-estate investment. It’s difficult to evaluate the GM and coach when they’re so hamstrung by the owners.
Hell we have a relative rugby hot bed in the DC area. Old Glory DC does not have their own stadium yet they have their Young Glory academy team for both men and women. We have Gonzaga College High School and Fort Hunt youth rugby that are annualy amongst the top high school age programs in the country. Plus we have St. Mary’s, Mary Washington College, and Navy that current college powers in the area as well. The team plugs into the youth sytem and even gets out and teaches safer tackling techniques from rugby to high school football teams in the area. Old Glory’s youth structure is better and stronger with far fewer resources than DCU’s youth structure.