Uhhhhhhh. Wait. What? We knew they were skint, but THIS skint? Can't even afford a full roster? Can't wait for the spin on this.
And out of those 19, 3 are goalkeepers. So they don' even have enough for a full 11 v. 11 scrimmage? Looks like the waterperson and Fitz Johnson may have to fill in and play as part of the "opposing team" in paractice. Unless Fitz Johnson, in order to save payroll money have added the job of waterperson to himself .
Don't forget that the Beat are also going to be missing Mitts and Lloyd for a lot of the season for National Team duties. Heaven help them if they get hit by injuries.
Atlanta Beat Katie Bethke Kerri Butler Lori Chalupny Keeley Dowling Colleen Flanagan Megan Jesolva Kristina Larsen Meghan Lenczyk Allison Lipsher Carli Lloyd Heather Mitts Katherine Reynolds Angela Salem Lauren Sesselmann Vendula Strnadova India Trotter Catherine Whitehill Allison Whitworth Kylie Wright why would he sign lori and keep trotter if he wasnt going to sign a top keeper? he should have drafted press at #3 for the same price as lori and dropped trotter upfront and got formiga in the MF. he still ends up with a cheap team. 3-4-4 def anchored by mitts formiga wins positions in the mid-field. you have press making runs since she has good wheels and has to be top 5 fastest in the league. the young lady from memphis has very good ball skiills would have been a nice compliment to pressure up front. nice little rookie pair. i cant see trotter scoring 3 goals. he will draw here and there but he may not win one game this season. could have had a better team for the same money. he can practice against u teams, high school boys and w-league so i guess he doesnt need a full roster. when he has an inj...just pick up a free agent college grad for minimum. he's doing that already.
There must be planned open tryouts and/or are thinking of picking up players who will be released from the other teams. They only need to get five more to get up to the maximum 24 roster. But this the Beat's strategy as last year - go low cost.
Kudos to Chalupa for standing by her team. Signing her was one of the two decisions that I can get behind. Everything else is beyond my comprehension. Equalizersoccer's podcast offers a good perspective: http://www.equalizersoccer.com/2011...-its-creepin-equalizer-womens-soccer-podcast/
Atlanta 5, South Florida 0 Couldn't tell from twitter who scored all of the goals. Jesolva, Strnadova, and Wright were three of the scorers. Whitworth started in goal, replaced by Lipsher at the half. Other players mentioned as playing...Chalupny, Lenczyk, Flanagan, Reynolds, Sesselmann (all in the 1st half so I assumed they started) and Bethke and Wright came in at halftime.
Hmm.... I know there's no banking on preseason games, but FWIW this is the most lopsided preseason score I've seen (to my admittedly bad memory) in WPS' three-year history. Which, if I knew more about S.Florida's team, I would say means the roster is more solid than it appears.
It means very little, IMO. South Florida is an above average team who achieved a lot of their success last year doing the brute force thing with some strong, physical players. I think they were ripe to be sliced apart by a team with the technical skill of professionals like the Beat has. Beat have wisely stacked their preseason with a lot of teams like USF, Auburn, Georgia, and Clemson that may have name value (or in Clemson's case HAD name value back in the day) but aren't going to have the chops to hold up against even essentially a talented college All-Star team. The results to look out would be the ones against FSU and UNC, but I still wouldn't put too much stock into it. If you recall last year, the Beat were pretty good in the preseason, and we all know how things turned out.
The press release is giving the first goal to Larsen and no goals to Chalupny, although I know that in the twitter commentary, Chalupny hit the post or crossbar at least once.
I know it's just preseason and I agree these games mean very little in the grand scheme, but considering most of Atlanta's players for the match (Lenczyk, Flanagan, Wright, Bethke, Jesolva, Larsen, Strnadova, Reynolds) are just out of college (or maybe one year removed from college as in Larsen's and Reynolds' case), it is nice to see them score some goals. Chalupny and Whitehill were the obvious exceptions to the rest of team being young. But then again, I thought Atlanta looked reasonably impressive in an exhibition match against St. Louis last year.
My goodness - what are you people on? Pre-season games last year were ridiculous - the college teams are devoid of their seniors in the spring and overall much weaker. Pre-season scores are meaningless - we scored a ridiculous amount of goals last year in pre-season - averaged about 5 per game - then were one of the lowest scoring teams all season.
I completely agree. Preseason is for 1 thing and 1 thing only: match fitness. Scores are irrelevant. All about getting your starting XI gelling and building some chemistry.
same stuff you are on when you said it cost 25-30M for a wps stadium. anyway...pre-season may be good indicator for atlanta to see if they can score on anyone. good going fitz.
No, really, it's not. Atlanta scored goals in preseason last year and couldn't hit the broad side of a barn in the regular season. College defenses are nothing close to what they're going to face against other WPS teams.
Maybe it doesn't mean much, but I guarantee if they had been shut out by South Florida, everyone here would have seen that as confirmation that Atlanta stinks. Then it would have meant something.