As you probably already know, the US Women's Soccer Team managed to give away the Championship multiple times in the final game, it was a Phil Hellmuth style performance on a grand scale. For those who might not know, Phil Hellmuth played extremely well in this year's World Series of Poker, repeatedly dominating tournaments and reaching final tables, and at least twice he had a HUGE chip lead when it was just down to him and one other person, and both times he somehow managed to lose. Our American team did the same thing, we had a totally dominant position, a goal up with just minutes to go two different times, and each time managed to give it away. As a fan of the UNC Tarheels, we saw this in the ACC Championship game. We played Duke, our arch rivals who we had already dominated in two regular season games (although we gave one of those away also after having a big double digit lead at halftime) but in the ACC Championship we simply looked like we didn't belong out there, due entirely to nerves. This is what our women's team looked like out there each time we took a lead, they started playing so badly it was as if they didn't even belong on a soccer field. It was clearly nerves, knowing they had almost won the World Championship was simply more than they could take. The UNC Tarheels were the best team in College Basketball, and it happened to them. They were men, and it happened to them. It can happen to anybody, men or women, no matter how good you are, it's just a human thing. The good news is, if we can keep the team together, it's probably not something that will happen again. Once you've been on that big stage, tasted the nerves and the bitter fruit of them, you tend to do much better in subsequent opportunities. Look how horrible Kobe Bryant was in the playoffs in his early days, I still remember that time with the game on the line, he took the last shot at the buzzer, and it was an AIRBALL. He was the laughing stock of the league, he was never going to be anybody, he couldn't win the big one, etc. With experience comes the ability to overcome the nerves, and that's what our women are going to show in London next year, when we win that major tournament.
It isn't possible for a great team to play worse than my Tarheels played in last year's ACC Tournament Finals, and it isn't possible for the US Women's team to play worse than they did at the end of regulation, overtime, and in PKs. My Tarheels recovered strong and almost won the NCAA Tournament, the US Women's Team will recover strong and win in London next year. We've still got the best goalie on the planet, male or female, and she's already announced she's sticking with the team. We've got a great striker in Abby Wambach, she may have had her worst tournament ever but she still scored what was almost the game winning goal, once she gets out of this rut of missing the vast majority of her shots for no reason at all she will be an unstoppable force. Alex Morgan scored what should have been the Championship winning goal in regulation, she was almost the biggest female sports star in American history, and because she's also very attractive she would've also likely been a millionaire several times over from endorsement deals. She will get another chance to attain that status next year.
This is a bitter, painful loss, but it's one we're going to learn from, we're going to grow from, and we're going to come back stronger than ever. I would say 'I hope Japan makes the finals again next year' but honestly I don't care, they're so far beneath us that the very idea of looking for 'revenge' is almost absurd. We owned them, and we would own them again, this time without the late-game choking, that's just a given. The matchup I'd like to see again is Marta vs Solo, the greatest vs the greatest. Of course we own Brazil also, but its not about wondering whether we can beat Brazil yet again, its just the idea of seeing those two greats going toe to toe again, that would be a Finals I'd like to see. But regardless of who we beat along the way, the bottom line is that Championship belongs to us. All other teams beware, the US Women have something to prove, and next year they're going to prove it, erasing any doubts along the way!
Showing posts with label Soccer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Soccer. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
Epic Win for US Soccer
By now you've probably already heard about the incredible victory by the US Womens Soccer Team, tying 2-2 and winning 5-3 on Penalty Kicks. It was an incredible game for an incredible team, playing not only down a man but down 3 referees, we came back and tied the game in regulation, and Hope Solo won it for us in the Penalty Kick phase by scoring a bigtime save on kick #3 by Brazil. This was an incredible win, and ironicly, it was BECAUSE of the horrible anti-American refereeing. Were it not for the referees awarding a red card for no reason, a penalty kick for no reason, then giving Brazil a SECOND penalty kick after Hope stopped the first one, we'd have had a pretty boring 1-0 win.
Imagine it for a second, USA beat Brazil 1-0, of course we did, our women are good, its the men who suck, naturally the women won. What's the score in the baseball game? That would've been the most common reaction by American fans, were it not for the anti-American referees, and of course the Brazil team's incredibly terrible and unsportsmanlike antics as well. It was because the referees literally gave Brazil that goal to force Overtime, then gave them ANOTHER goal in overtime, by refusing to call them offsides, that set up Abby Wambach for her incredible header at the end of Overtime, a goal that never would've happened if we had won the game 1-0 in regulation. Then of course Hope Solo making the big save in PKs, and the strikers making all 5 of their PKs, giving us an INCREDIBLY dramatic victory. And it's all thanks to the America haters! This is something that is actually pretty common, as a Christian, we know about God's power to take something meant for evil, and turn it into good. The anti-American refereeing seemed to be intent to cost us the game, and eliminate us from the tournament. Instead, it served to make the victory about a MILLION times sweeter than it otherwise would have been! They could hardly have helped us more if they had actually tried to! Isn't that some REALLY sweet irony?
So today we celebrate the greatest team in American Soccer history scoring perhaps the greatest win in American soccer history, even though this wasn't the finals, the dramatic and historic nature of the win is still very huge. It was the greatest goalkeeper on the planet against one of the best strikers, certainly the best striker in womens soccer. Hope vs Marta. Today, Hope won, even though Marta scored two impressive goals, neither of which should've counted but still struck very impressively. Hope came up with big save after big save, and got the final huge save in PKs, she proved once again why she should not only be starting at goalkeeper for the US Womens Team, but the Men's team as well. After the game, Abby, Hope, and the Coach Pia all were awesome in their interviews, Pia suggesting that God is indeed writing the story of this great American team, and she's enjoying watching it unfold.
Of course all the fans are enjoying it tremendously also. Abby was especially effusive in her praise of Solo's incredible saves, and actually said what I've been saying, that Hope is indeed the best goalkeeper on the planet. Of course our men's team would no doubt benefit from Wambach's abilities as well, her offensive leadership has been key, and while its true that up until that dramatic goal at the end of OT she had previously been the Queen of the Near-Misses in this tournament, having simply an unbelievable number of shots ALMOST go in, but somehow not quite scoring, today she came through when it counted far more than all those other shots put together! And how fitting is it that Abby bears a striking resemblence (at least she did in her post-game interview on ESPN tonight) to a young, in-her-prime, Martina Navratilova, the greatest female player of all time in her sport of Tennis.
An incredible win for an incredible team, a history making win for a team that will hopefully make a lot more before this tournament is complete! What a sweet win, an awesome win for America, and truly an Epic Win for US Soccer!
Imagine it for a second, USA beat Brazil 1-0, of course we did, our women are good, its the men who suck, naturally the women won. What's the score in the baseball game? That would've been the most common reaction by American fans, were it not for the anti-American referees, and of course the Brazil team's incredibly terrible and unsportsmanlike antics as well. It was because the referees literally gave Brazil that goal to force Overtime, then gave them ANOTHER goal in overtime, by refusing to call them offsides, that set up Abby Wambach for her incredible header at the end of Overtime, a goal that never would've happened if we had won the game 1-0 in regulation. Then of course Hope Solo making the big save in PKs, and the strikers making all 5 of their PKs, giving us an INCREDIBLY dramatic victory. And it's all thanks to the America haters! This is something that is actually pretty common, as a Christian, we know about God's power to take something meant for evil, and turn it into good. The anti-American refereeing seemed to be intent to cost us the game, and eliminate us from the tournament. Instead, it served to make the victory about a MILLION times sweeter than it otherwise would have been! They could hardly have helped us more if they had actually tried to! Isn't that some REALLY sweet irony?
So today we celebrate the greatest team in American Soccer history scoring perhaps the greatest win in American soccer history, even though this wasn't the finals, the dramatic and historic nature of the win is still very huge. It was the greatest goalkeeper on the planet against one of the best strikers, certainly the best striker in womens soccer. Hope vs Marta. Today, Hope won, even though Marta scored two impressive goals, neither of which should've counted but still struck very impressively. Hope came up with big save after big save, and got the final huge save in PKs, she proved once again why she should not only be starting at goalkeeper for the US Womens Team, but the Men's team as well. After the game, Abby, Hope, and the Coach Pia all were awesome in their interviews, Pia suggesting that God is indeed writing the story of this great American team, and she's enjoying watching it unfold.
Of course all the fans are enjoying it tremendously also. Abby was especially effusive in her praise of Solo's incredible saves, and actually said what I've been saying, that Hope is indeed the best goalkeeper on the planet. Of course our men's team would no doubt benefit from Wambach's abilities as well, her offensive leadership has been key, and while its true that up until that dramatic goal at the end of OT she had previously been the Queen of the Near-Misses in this tournament, having simply an unbelievable number of shots ALMOST go in, but somehow not quite scoring, today she came through when it counted far more than all those other shots put together! And how fitting is it that Abby bears a striking resemblence (at least she did in her post-game interview on ESPN tonight) to a young, in-her-prime, Martina Navratilova, the greatest female player of all time in her sport of Tennis.
An incredible win for an incredible team, a history making win for a team that will hopefully make a lot more before this tournament is complete! What a sweet win, an awesome win for America, and truly an Epic Win for US Soccer!
Sunday, June 26, 2011
American Soccer Plan For Greatness
Perhaps like many of you, I sat back tonight and hoped to enjoy watching my Countrymen score a Championship Victory in their bigtime Soccer game tonight, against Mexico. What I saw didn't sicken me because we lost, it sickened me because of HOW we lost, and that was by having what has to be the single worst Defense that I have ever seen. On offense we were great, we missed some scoring chances to be sure, but we didn't really have that many because of our offense's horrible supporting cast. When they weren't scoring they were almost scoring, it was a good night for our offense. Not a great night, to be sure, if we had taken advantage of those open goal opportunities we still could've won, but our offense got us a 2-0 lead that never should've been relenquished, you can only expect so much from any offense. We lost the lead, and the game, because our team's defenders are worse than any team I've ever seen, and I've seen plenty of both men and women's soccer. If our men can't defend, and certainly our current group of men can't, then perhaps its time to do something we probably should've done a long time ago, and that is start taking the best of our womens team, a team that is consistently either the best in the world or one of the best in the world, and putting them into select positions on our men's team. Our goalie Howard is about to retire and will need replacing soon, and our women's team has an incredible goalie, she almost never gives up goals, especially in the big games, and would be a great addition to the team.
However the reality of the current situation is that no goalie is good enough to save a team with defense as horrible as we played tonight, so the very first change I would make, and I would make it immediately, is I would replace our worst defender (that's if I could resist the temptation to fire the lot of them) with the best defender on our women's team. That would instantly make us a MUCH better team, if anybody reading this has never seen our men's team defenders you might not believe it, but if you have then you know I'm right. The reality of tonight's game is that if we had played with our regular men's team attackers, and our women's team defenders, we would have won the Championship.
However of course it isn't likely that bringing in women to play on the men's team will work as anything more than a short term solution, to be the best in the world, and to be the best on a long term basis, we are going to need a plan. Happily for American Soccer and American Soccer fans, I have one. I present to you an American Soccer Plan For Greatness:
We begin by noting the rules do not allow us to hire European Superstars for our American Team, unless said European Superstar has at least one American parent. That means we can't just go overseas, pick up a few more Landon Donovans, and score 5 goals a game. However, just because we can't hire European Superstars to play for our American Team, that doesn't mean that Europeans can't be used in an extremely key role as we seek to build Soccer Greatness. The key is to build up Major League Soccer (MLS) to the same kind of dominance that our other leagues like the NBA, MLB, and the NFL already have, and the way to do that is very simple. We should go over to Europe and find the best in the world, and pay them huge amounts of money to come to the MLS. No, I'm not talking about European Superstar players, I'm talking about COACHES! The secret ingredient that no-one is considering, the KEY ingredient that can bring us to a level of greatness America has never seen before in the world of soccer. We can't use Europeans players to make the American team great, but we can use European Coaches to make our American players great! Imagine if each MLS team were coached by one of the VERY best coaches in the entire soccer world. And by coaches I don't just mean the Head Coach, I mean the Assistant Coaches, the Trainers, you name it, anybody that has anything at all to do with Soccer, we bring in the best in the world that we can lure away from Europe with huge financial offers, and we turn our mediocre players with potential into Champions!
Of course this will not be a 'quick fix', no solution to a problem this long and this extreme is quick. For the quick fix, we bring in the best of the Women's Team to improve our horrible defense, that will help assure us of qualifying for the World Cup, and other such basic things, but for the long term dominance, the key is to bring in the best and brightest minds of the soccer world to turn all our players into the kind of great Superstars that our NBA and NFL leagues are filled with. That will take money, we'll have to be prepared to spend like drunken sailors for a while, but the payoff will be at the World Cup, perhaps not this coming World Cup, but by the end of the Decade we could definitely be drinking from the World Cup after we win it for the first time!
However the reality of the current situation is that no goalie is good enough to save a team with defense as horrible as we played tonight, so the very first change I would make, and I would make it immediately, is I would replace our worst defender (that's if I could resist the temptation to fire the lot of them) with the best defender on our women's team. That would instantly make us a MUCH better team, if anybody reading this has never seen our men's team defenders you might not believe it, but if you have then you know I'm right. The reality of tonight's game is that if we had played with our regular men's team attackers, and our women's team defenders, we would have won the Championship.
However of course it isn't likely that bringing in women to play on the men's team will work as anything more than a short term solution, to be the best in the world, and to be the best on a long term basis, we are going to need a plan. Happily for American Soccer and American Soccer fans, I have one. I present to you an American Soccer Plan For Greatness:
We begin by noting the rules do not allow us to hire European Superstars for our American Team, unless said European Superstar has at least one American parent. That means we can't just go overseas, pick up a few more Landon Donovans, and score 5 goals a game. However, just because we can't hire European Superstars to play for our American Team, that doesn't mean that Europeans can't be used in an extremely key role as we seek to build Soccer Greatness. The key is to build up Major League Soccer (MLS) to the same kind of dominance that our other leagues like the NBA, MLB, and the NFL already have, and the way to do that is very simple. We should go over to Europe and find the best in the world, and pay them huge amounts of money to come to the MLS. No, I'm not talking about European Superstar players, I'm talking about COACHES! The secret ingredient that no-one is considering, the KEY ingredient that can bring us to a level of greatness America has never seen before in the world of soccer. We can't use Europeans players to make the American team great, but we can use European Coaches to make our American players great! Imagine if each MLS team were coached by one of the VERY best coaches in the entire soccer world. And by coaches I don't just mean the Head Coach, I mean the Assistant Coaches, the Trainers, you name it, anybody that has anything at all to do with Soccer, we bring in the best in the world that we can lure away from Europe with huge financial offers, and we turn our mediocre players with potential into Champions!
Of course this will not be a 'quick fix', no solution to a problem this long and this extreme is quick. For the quick fix, we bring in the best of the Women's Team to improve our horrible defense, that will help assure us of qualifying for the World Cup, and other such basic things, but for the long term dominance, the key is to bring in the best and brightest minds of the soccer world to turn all our players into the kind of great Superstars that our NBA and NFL leagues are filled with. That will take money, we'll have to be prepared to spend like drunken sailors for a while, but the payoff will be at the World Cup, perhaps not this coming World Cup, but by the end of the Decade we could definitely be drinking from the World Cup after we win it for the first time!
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