I’ll be more active on here once my ACFC take off next season and are in the playoffs… r/nwsl on Reddit is where there’s active discussions so I frequent there.
Well, both Portland and Seattle lost because their shooters were pathetic in front of goal. Seattle 23 shots, only 3 on goal. And a lot of those shots they missed seemed pretty easy (although I've only seen the highlights.) Portland had 21 shots and 7 were on goal. Chicago had only 5 shots the whole game and only 2 were on goal -- and both were goals. Both S. Smith and Weaver are going to have to improve the quality of their shots if they hope to play on the National Team.
PPG's do not interest me. They don't tell the whole story. Harvey is a constant nominee for COY, Dames making the playoffs 6 years in a row (7 if you count WPSL years), never gets a mention. It bugs me that people use the criteria he never gets over the top to win the Championship. Well neither does Harvey and yet she is on the ballet every year including this one where she took the team over in August. Scott Parkinson takes over NJ/NY in August and he is nominated for COY. Dames has had to deal with injury after injury to key players throughout the season, National Team call ups, shifting line-ups and systems game to game to accommodate and still somehow manages to get into the playoffs, get a home playoff game and get into the Championship game without his star player. Let's call it what it is, a popularity contest. Harvey is beloved and adored even though she has won nothing. Parkinson is very popular with players even though he has been a head coach for only 2 months.
And Casey Short Krueger for the two playoff games. Hats off to a truly team effort against PTFC (I cannot get that chant out of my head watching the game: P T F C, P T F C, P T F C ).
Fair point but give CRS defense some credit - have only given up one goal in last five games (knock of wood, one game to go).
Yes, I forgot to mention the loss of Casey for two games in a row. I've watched several games in Portland and when the Riveters start chanting, especially PTFC, it can be intimidating.
Feel free to knock on wood again, if you want, because at this point it can sound like jinxing, but it would be ironic if Chicago Red Stars would win the title in the only season when basically no-one (including fans, I presume) were actually believing it was possible.
Harvey won two Shields, both in domineering fashion. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Dames fan as well - but with the exception of this semifinal, Harvey outperformed Dames this year, and even Parkinson was undefeated with Gotham until the QF. If you are "uninterested" in PPGs, that is a massive, massive blind spot - and honestly, willful ignorance. PPGs don't tell the whole story, but they do tell a dang lot of it. Worth pointing out, too, that Harvey's nomination is definitely not just "popularity". She wasn't nominated in any of the seasons her team failed to make the playoffs. She is *far* from a "constant nominee". Honestly, I think Ward should've gotten a nomination - whether he bumped Parkinson or Harvey, I'm not sure and don't really care, but his PPG is was up there too, and honestly had to navigate through more adversity than just about any coach in the league. Again, I'm a Dames fan - if there's a coach of the decade award after season 10, it'll be between Dames and Parsons, no one else. But coach of the year doesn't look at long-term consistency, and Chicago's 2021 hasn't been that standout. They've done well in the playoffs for sure, but sadly preliminary voting closes before the playoffs.
That PPG you refer to is flawed, IMO. Harvey's and Parkinson's PPG is for a 2 month window. Rory's is for a 7 month window. They didn't have to sidestep all the mine fields Dames had to to get here throughout the whole season. Plus, the teams Harvey and Parkinson inherited were formed by other previous coaches. Red Stars are all Dames. Do you think the media, coaches and players who vote on COY really look at PPG before they vote? I don't think so. They vote who they like. Hey, as a season ticket holder of the CRS, I have been critical and have questioned the coaching staff over the years. My argument this time is that Rory gets no love for COY any time, any year and often the argument on social media is, well he can't get over the top. But yet they nominate two coaches who barely coached 2 months in the league this season. It's no secret that Harvey is adored for by media, fans, players. They swoon over her. And Parkinson is loved by players as he is a "players" coach particularly with his social issues stances with players, ex. Sarah Gorden. All good. He was a good coach as assistant with the Red Stars but come one, COY after only two months as head coach? This opinion will not change if the Red Stars do not win the Championship next saturday. I respect your points Siberian as always, just trying to point something out. All good.
Considering that COY nominations are almost* always only playoff teams? And every COY winner was the Shield winner (or tied for it) until Vlatko in 2019? Yes, I think PPG matters. Quite a bit. Maybe popularity plays into things a little bit after that first consideration, but COY as only a popularity contest? That's patently wrong. *I actually the "almost" isn't even necessary here, but I don't have all COY nominee lists on hand. Some of the early ones seem to be lost to the ages. In a normal year, I would actually totally agree with you on this point. That said, this year was an apocalyptic year in terms of coaching turnover. If you only limited COY to coaches who were there more than half of the season, you'd have just four - Parsons, Dames, Clarkson, and Williams. Only two of them made the playoffs, so I'm guessing voters decided to simply not consider length of tenure in their picks this year, because if they didn't, they'd get a non-playoff COY nominee. And that would go against rewarding the on-field performance (PPG) aspect of the award. Going undefeated through three or four games is too small of a sample, sure, but once you reach eight or ten, it's still very impressive.
Just for fun, what would Rory's PPG be for the last 10 games only, the same amount of games as Harvey and Parkinson are measured by?
There were three teams in the league this year that didn't feature a dominant goal-scorer. Two of those teams are sitting at the bottom of the table, while the third is playing for the title this Saturday. Rory Dames coached his team to the championship game despite not having a player on his squad who could reliably put the ball into the back of the net. That's a pretty remarkable achievement.
Hmm good Q! Going backwards from the season-ending win over ORL, their last ten games are: WWWLWDDWDL So their last five are great - 4W/1L for 2.4PPG. But the five before that are just 1.2PPG at 1W/3D/1L. Together, that gives 1.8PPG over their last ten. Noticeably lower than Harvey's 2.3PPG, and a hair under Parkinson's 1.86PPG but with 2 losses to Parkinson's 0. (For the record, Ward was 6W/3D/2L including the two forfeits, which were out of his control - 1.91PPG with the forfeits included, 2.33PPG only looking at games actually played.)
IDK, Own Goal was pretty darn prolific for a while there! I tease, I tease! Partially - without the own goals, CHI is right there at the bottom in terms of total team scoring. But their defense has been top-notch, especially if you give them a mulligan on that outlier opening day, and I think that's what's gotten them to the championship - both playoff matches were shutouts, after all. You don't need to score much if you can (reliably) keep the clean sheet. Risky business, though, if your opponent does happen to score!
Rory Dames has never had a losing season with the Red Stars, six straight playoffs, three straight championship appearances. Harvey had a "stacked" team this season (like she does every season), French stars, German stars, all kinds of international stars, Rapinoe and no team injuries and lost again. Rory gets his team to the Championship game with all kinds of injuries and issues throughout the year, recovering from a 5-0 loss in the first game of the season to beat that same team at their home field in the semifinal and still gets no respect.
So we have a women's pro Final in two days, NWSL, and no cares to discuss anymore. No on cares. Not just here but in other discussion boards, twitters, etc. So many story lines on both teams that are in this Final and ...crickets. If this was any men's final, NFL, MLB, MLS, NBA, NHL, twitter would be broken due to all the chatter, media outlets would be covering 24/7, we would know what the quarterback ate for breakfast this morning, but not for this. If it was Portland vs Reign in the Final, would there be more interest? Would we be on page 2,000 of the thread? Would we know by now what Harvey's favorite book or movie is? Would we see constant interviews with Sinclair? Stories of how great Parsons is as he's leaving? Even the regular pundits covering women's soccer seem to not be interested too much, except for a few token articles. But, Red Stars vs Spirit, no one cares, move along, nothing to see here. Disappointing.
Equalizer and other sources are continuing to publish articles about the final-bound teams regularly. Twitter is talking - just search "NWSL final" or "NWSL championship" and you'll get new Tweets by the minute, and that's ignoring team-specific discusion. IDK what circles you're not in that make it seem silent. "More interest" is relative. Outside of their respective fanbases? No, most likely not. Sure, there might be more Twitter traffic if only because those fanbases are bigger, but for neutrals? Nah. Not from CBS and not from journalists. Don't make it sound like it's a "who qualified" issue. As you already pointed out, NWSL isn't the NFL. We can't change that, and it's pointless to even try comparing a 9-year-old soccer league to one of the 100+-year-old leagues in the "big four" sports. And I state it that way because even MLS Cup is closer to the NWSL final than it is to the Super Bowl in terms of media saturation. But buzz is *growing* each year, and that's all we need.
it's probably more to do with the uneven moderators of Big Soccer(apparently there's a different one for every subject threat),/or at least I've been warned at this one(NWSL) & expelled at the International woso threat as both mods don't allow opinons or discussions that don't agree with theirs, yet the mod let’s UWSNT stay more unfiltered if your on facebook, this group has tons of posts while the game is going on https://www.facebook.com/groups/NWSLSupporters as allready mentioned, comment section of each article has a lots of after game, but no 'live' posts https://equalizersoccer.com/
Also, if you're specifically pointing at BigSoccer, there wasn't much discussion about this league overall, I'd say, even if just comparing to previous years. And it's not like, before the final was set, the threads were bursting with posts about play-offs. I'd say these has more to do with the sad reality of our current boards, than with any actual consideration regarding the league, the final or the teams in it.
Tbh, I haven’t been active these NWSL boards because I never had a horse in the race(until finally the announcement of an Los Angeles team after 8 years) I am however a lurker and kept up with important news and have a Paramount+ account for the matches. NWSL section of Big Soccer seems to have hit a low mainly because the usual posters have been MIA this season. To be fair, people will gravitate towards other social media platforms for discussion that are more active. Personally, I’ve only seen you here vigorously posting since your Chicago Red Stars team made the finals.
Fair enough. I'm trying to point out a couple things. As compared to men's Final coverage, not enough on the women's side. My other point is if this was Reign vs Thorns, as was expected, would there be more chatter? My guess is, yes.
I read Equalizer all the time. Yes, they have had a couple articles on the Final. The comments sections on ES though always seem to be hijacked by some regular posters who instead of talking on the topic of the article, start talking about European leagues, scores, story lines. Drives me nuts.
haha yeah, I really dropped off the amount I comment on EQZ articles precisely because of all the off-topic-ness there, it's insane! EQZ is a news site, not a discussion forum. I've tried mentioning this a few times and trying to get people to use BigSoccer or Twitter for that kinda stuff, but to no avail. Internet people are intractable. X-D