Wow, I didn't realize it was a 7:00 pm PDT game, 10:00 pm on the East Coast. That's really too bad. Earlier certainly would be better. I made an error, corrected in my first post on this: The MLS All Star game is not on August 2, it's on August 6. But MLS festivities begin on Friday, August 1 and will run the entire week. It looks like the 7:00 pm timing for the Thorns/Dash game was set to fit within the schedule of MLS events on Sunday, August 3 -- the last MLS event of the day is a concert at Waterfront Park from 5 to 7 pm. Waterfront Park is within about 15 minutes walking distance from Providence Park.
Cross-posting this from the NWSL General Info thread. Courtesy of Lunatica, a link to a very fine article on Steph Catley in the UK's Guardian news site. Covers many topics including the turmoil in the Australian national team (where Sermanni's successor wound up being sacked), the difficulty of adjusting mid-season to a "brilliant league", her conversion to left-back and her rapid rise in her national team, the thrill of playing in Portland with its remarkable fans, its good coffee, its "brilliant turf".* (*Has the pervasive use of "brilliant" extended beyond the Home Counties to all the Commonwealth?) According to the report, it was Tom Sermanni who alerted Paul Riley to Catley's talent. As for Riley, he says (quite obvious to those of us following the league closely) that she's become a key player in the team after a small period of adjustment: The Dilly-Dally. That's a pretty good nickname. Wonder if the Rose City Riveters want to work that into one of their chants. "One Dilly-Dally, There's only one Dilly-Dally..."
Why, thank you so much. I don't think I'll be able to get away in the next month, but thank you. Hope you sell out that stadium Aug 3 and 17. I do business with a company that used to be in Portland. Last year I was going to offer them a handful of tickets for their employees but they wound up moving back East. Huh, maybe I should think of who my favorite Oregon Pinot Noir winemakers are...
Does anyone else think all the recent injuries for Portland are partially due to Riley continuing to run 2-a-days? 5 players are out for this weekend, and 3 more have relatively minor knocks. Even last season when the Spirit and SkyBlue were having injury issues, it never got this bad for them.
No on Heath. No on Van Hollebeke (just a bad accident, a collision with her own teammate) No on Boquete -- that was simply a bad foul. Even if not red card-worthy, a play that shouldn't happen. No on Farrelly. Perhaps yes on Catley. Don't know on Moros.
I was on the Providence Park pitch last night and have an observation, after being on another pretty decent turf field the weekend before. The PP pitch is soft, like playing on real grass that is cut quite long. The other pitch I was on was an older, harder pitch although much better than what a lot of the NWSL teams play on. The Thorns practice mostly at PP. I'm wondering if the transitions among different kinds of pitches is causing problems. I know that the European teams would be very unlikely to agree to play on a lot of pitches of the NWSL teams because of potential injury problems. I'm not sure this means those pitches aren't viable. Maybe rather it means practicing regularly on one type of pitch (grass or very "deep" turf) and then making a significant change for a game is likely to cause injuries. For example, if I played regularly on a hard pitch, I would have trouble at PP. When setting up to take a good go at a ball, at PP my planted foot would sit much deeper from the surface than I would be used to on the hard pitch. I'd be much more likely to catch my kicking foot on the turf than if I were on my own harder pitch. I actually experienced this last night, planting my left foot and then scuffing my right foot on the surface as I kicked a ball.
I know I'm preaching to the converted here, but I really hope NWSL/USSF/MLS can work together to get more national TV coverage for NWSL games. I don't follow any NWSL team and only happened to notice that the Thorns-Dash game would be on ESPN. I get to watch so little women's soccer that I didn't really know what to expect, but it was a great game. I hope that this new wave of soccer popularity does as much for NWSL as it's doing for MLS.
It was. And, I just watched the ESPN2 broadcast. It's too bad, they grossly muted out the fan sound so that it didn't communicate in the broadcast. I think the BS posters who watched the game really would have enjoyed how truly noisy it was.
From the post-game interview with Coach Riley, which you can hear at either Oregon Live or at Stumptown Footy (transcript from Stumptown)
why would they keep him? it's clear that he has forgotten the basic rules of good coaching he used to practice. i could swear there was an outstanding coach of the same name in philly during the time of wps. whatever happened to him?
I don't see all that much difference - he believed in running an offense based around quick, technically gifted attacking midfielders then and he believes in it now. In fact, it's the same midfielder, isn't it? And who's questioning him on that? I think, just as fans of the game, we should be glad to have a coach like Riley in the league who does place such high value in that. Of course, Laura Harvey does, too. But one of the great things about the league this year is to see players like Kim Little, Jess Fishlock and Vero Boquete. He's made mistakes this year, no doubt. But as much as anything his main problem is, ironically, he's been "stuck" with two superstar strikers, Sinclair and Morgan, who have been stunningly inefficient at scoring this year and not, for the most part, for lack of chances or service.
since when can a riley team not play defense? a semblance of defense would have made the difference in a few games I can think of this year, and they would already be in the playoffs.
I think Riley is too in love with the firepower he has at his disposal. He's never had this much offensive potential before, and chose to focus on that and ignore the defense, much to the detriment of the Thorns.
Parlow won because she kept it simple. Riley I feel sometimes outsmarts his own self. Also, it may be time to break up the Sinclair/Morgan duo. It is not working. They often get in each other's way. I don't know which one you let go? Sinclair played at UP but you would be a fool to trade Morgan.
I don't see Paulson wanting to let either one leave. But of the two, Morgan has the bigger upside. She has a lot more years left than Sinclair does.
Parlow won because of her hat. It was bound to triumph over all at some point. As for Morgan/Sinclair duo not working, it's a good topic for discussion but it's odd, isn't it, that we still say it on a day when they had , what 15 shots between them? They weren't lacking for chances against Boston. Yes. I think there's some truth to that. But I don't blame him here. Having Sinclair and Morgan is not his choice. Once you have those two, there's some pretty high expectations for the offense. You couldn't grind your way to a playoff spot eking out 1-0 results and not have a lot of dissatisfied people. Besides, it almost looks like it's working, isn't it? It's intriguing to watch, for sure.
And for the record, I didn't think Portland played badly yesterday. They got a number of chances that on another day would have been put away. They just had the misfortune of running into a keeper who was on fire and a backline that got their crap in order for perhaps the first time this season.
They did not, however, put away their shots, which has been a problem for most of the year. And, on the second goal in particular, their defense messed up.
Ol' Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout. For no particular reason except someone mentioned it when we were talking about some guy who couldn't follow his company when they moved from Portland to Georgia because he couldn't find good beer there.