The "Thoughts That Don't Require Their Own Thread" Thread XIV

That's his stomping grounds.

I'm sort of sure that I once saw Doug Flutie coming out of a pizza place in Natick.

 

Another Flutie/soccer anecdote: I was playing in a Futsal league years ago and there was a team that Flutie was playing for. I was so psyched to have a chance to go up against him, but that was the weekend of the NFL Pro Bowl and some QB was ruled out with an injury and Flutie was called in to replace him ... and I never got that chance.

 

The USWNT may not have played well enough to get much further, but that PK call was bogus - a defending WC-champion shouldn't have to go out that way.

I'm shocked at how invisible our local Sam Mewis was - after being so dominant at the WC. And, Rose Lavelle, another rising star wasn't much better.

Overall, our attacking players like Tobin Heath and Alex Morgan were very disappointing. Rapinoe was less that she had been in the past, but given her age that would be expected. We seem to be very good at scoring offside goals and running up scores on weak opponents, but our passing and ball-handling was too clumsy against good quality opponents.

I thought our brightest spots were Crystal Dunn (despite her erratic defending) and Linda Williams. More like that, please.

 

Women's Olympic final winds up with the winning team unable to manage a goal from the run of play (or anything other than a PK) throughout the knockout stages.

Where was England (sorry, GB), France?

Pretty poor showing for women's football overall IMO.

 

Maybe those were pandemic rules - to avoid 'extra' games?

Still, a huge loss to the competition. And, I imagine playing as GBR probably took a lot of the cohesion out of the England team that looked so good in the WWC.

 

Saw that - that was about as high quality ceremonial first pitch that you'll ever see. He probably could have been a serious pitcher (if he had some off-speed stuff). Clearly being able to throw a soccer ball out to the wing at midfield develops a pretty strong pitching arm!

 

Ah, thanks for that. They really should reform the qualification, since the best teams are clearly not well distributed around the world. Latin-America, other than Brazil, and Africa are way, way behind; CONCACAF is the US and Canada; Asia just Japan and China along with the Oceania duo of the Matildas/NZ; nothing from Eastern Europe or the middle east - and a stacked (and rapidly improving) western Europe.

Maybe a pre-olympic tournament, following an expended qualifying, to eliminate the no-chancers.

 

I imagine he was the kind of guy you'd bump into and be shocked at the inertia he brought.

I played in college against West Point and I swear those guys were made out of concrete and steel.