Throughout my life from the military to playing soccer to coaching I have NEVER seen a person react to her or his serious injury the way Abby did. Her pain threshold must be off the chart. Her demeanor never revealed the seriousness of the injury. In fact, when I watched her face while being trundled off the field and then loaded into the ambulance it seemed that her injury was not near as bad as the people around her were making it seem. Even after the commentators said that the preliminary diagnosis was both bones of the lower leg broken I thought that they were wrong because that kind of break would cause such pain that anyone I know would be screaming in pain and then reduced to barely responding to anything else. This says a LOT about her recovery. The only concern should be that she will hide pain and work too hard to get back to playing. She needs to have a talk with Akers about that. This is a dark moment for the team and it does reduce our chances at the Olympics but I was seriously concerned before the injury due to our inability dominate a Brazil without their front line. On the up side I am fairly sure that other players will step up and Pia will make tweaks to the attack to reduce the dependence on a target for part of the attack. It would not surprise me at all to see the attack more effective, at least for a few games, due to the shock factor of having a completely different look. I hope Abby travels to the games with the team as her leadership will help the youngsters a lot.
agree on the demeanor and concerns regarding pushing recovery. i'm not sure it's best for her to go to china though. she'll want to be there, and the team will want her there, but 20 hours in the relatively hostile environment of a high altitude flight, twice, can't be physically good for her recovery. as for the attack, a parallel might be drawn with van nistlerooy leaving manchester united. for years ruud scored most of their goals, often turning 1/3 chances into goals, even if he was double teamed and maybe a little slow. much of the game was to get the ball to ruud. manchester adjusted to his absence t with speed and flexibility from their other attackers, which opened up the pitch and blitzed opponents who were not used to this kind of stuff from united. pia has speed and skill available to her too, so there is opportunity in disaster if she and the rest of the team are up to it.
Last night I watched the MLS game of the week on ESPN as well as Fox Soccer Channel and Abbey's injury was shown over and over. And nowhere did I see that there was any intent by the Brazilian defender to hack or hurt Abbey. She came up to the ball pretty much at the same time and maybe a split second earlier than Abbey and stood her ground straight up as Abbey tried to take a shot. There may have been other incidences of hacking during the game (by both sides), but this was not one of them.
That is definitely the consensus. It was not a dirty play. It was just an accident. Abby was a little reckless in going for the ball and unfortunately she was injured. The ref didn't have much control of the match so Abby and the rest of the team were fouled a lot, but that was a clean play.
agree. much onus on the ref in my opinion. lots of crap going on that should have been controlled much earlier. abby likes to go at 120% anyway, but you gotta think the non-calls fired her up even more.
The consensus would be smarter if the Brazilian had made any attempt to play the ball. It was a nasty maneuver by a player who knew that her opponent didn't see her (in fact if she thought Abby COULD see her, she never would've stepped up) and came in OVER the ball. Jinga, ginga, baloney . . .
I just hope the next time you see on TV some clown in the men's game take a dive and act like he's been shot, that the TV producer juxtapose the replays with some footage of Abby calmly signalling to the sideline that she's hurt. Barring that, I hope that those of us here will tell our friends about it while we're watching that joker writhing around on the ground. We should be proud to be fans of the women's game.
I don't know if there was much choices for the Brazilian defender to make. Everything happened so quickly. What was she supposed to do, get out of Abbey's way? There is nothing wrong with what she did, IMHO. She did make an attempt to play the ball by stepping up to block the shot. If I was to say it was a reckless attempt by Abbey to go through a player that stood her ground. How did she know that her opponent didn't see her? I can't blame the Brazilian defender on this one at all.
I agree with this. I don't consider a player playing a ball a nasty maneuver. As I said before, there was a lot of physical play that was not handled properly by the officials, but the defender is not at fault for Abby's injury. I don't understand why the defender should have given an opposing offensive player a right of way to goal. If that defender hadn't been there we could be talking about poor Brazilian defending and #100 instead of the injury. Instead, Abby's frustrations and determination led her to not make the best decision considering the circumstances. Hindsight is 20/20 though.
Exactly. I think Abbey was playing on emotion. wanted to get to #100 and get it over with, she even mentioned that playing Brazil motivates her even more. The ref let the game get too physical, and neither team was backing down. Unfortunate incident. I must have missed it but why was Mitts booked for a yellow for? On USSF site it says delay of game. I'm going to watch the replay tomorrow night on FSC after the Fire/RSL game and see what happened.
From my perspective, both players came in fair and hard. In such challenges it is inevitable that one or both players will sustain injury. I am surprised that both chose such tackles because despite the rivalry, this was a "friendly" and meant nothing. It is even more surprising that Wambach, being the experience player that she is, would take such a risk. I think most experienced amateurs and pros eventually forego "play through" tackles if not rarely use it. Something to do with longevity of careers and what not. I think it's fair to assume that Wambuch will probably try to avoid such tackles in the future. It's just one of many learning experiences on the pitch.
No worries. I generally put "disclaimers" in my posts when I haven't seen something -- only read reports -- but in this case, because I grew up in Brasil and have played with and against so many Brasilians, I feel like I have a good idea of the thought process. (I moved to Brasil when I was 8 and lived there until 15. I actually *felt* more Brasilian than American at that time.) In this case, after having viewed the clip, I have to take a step back and regain my composure. Before these two games I was saying, "Why is US Soccer playing TWO games with Brasil right now. With the intense rivalry and the Olympics right around the corner, you know something bad is bound to happen." And with Abby's severe injury, I extrapolated way too much -- resulting in an incorrect conclusion. I am still lamenting Abby's injury and her exclusion from the Olympics. She is truly a World Class player and will be missed terribly. I hope this helps to galvanize the team to become more focused and determined .... and to bring home the gold!
This is a truly sad time for Wambach and for the WNT. I feel very badly for Wambach, and wish her the best in her recovery. There was a lot of attention on Wambach for that next goal, but she was not playing well in the second half of the CO game (altitude? heat? life?), and was also off to a weak start in the CA game. The CA game was physical and Wambach always catches more than her fair share. It appears to me like frustration at her own play, the pressure to clock "100", and irritation with Brazil and the refs all caught up with Abby in an understandable and tragic way. Probably many of us have been there-- I know I have! IMO, she was playing way out of control at the time of that accident, and it was a big error in judgement. I've done the same thing-- gotten overamped in the heat of the moment and made bad, reckless decisions. Sometimes I've gotten away with them, other times I've gone to rehab... I think folks should lay off Brazil-- they played their usual game and it wasn't any more trashy than their norm from what I could see on TV. On the Wambach injury-- she put herself in an extremely unwise situation-- heavy traffic, late to the ball, friendly meaningless game, days before a "once in a lifetime" match... It was a reckless, impulsive error by Wambach and one with terrible consequences, but its a mistake most uber-competitive athletes can empathize with-- it happened; its tragic; I see no reason to tee off on the Brazilian defender who was doing her job... On Wambach personally, and her role with WNT: I have never seen more composure under extreme physical and emotional stress. That is some tough and classy lady! As to what it does to our ability on attack, losing Wambach from the offense is not an opportunity in disguise! In one swoop, we lose set plays, leadership, the go-to anchor, the header-queen, and on and on... Not that other gifted players aren't there to step up-- but we will now have a very short time to reinvent ourselves before China. Without Wambach, we will need to be a more integrated, technically efficient, and nimble team throughout the midfield and attack if we are to have any chance against teams like Germany. Finally, on the subject of adversity, injury, and coming back with all barrels blazing-- how about that Heather Mitts! I am SO impressed. If Wambach needs inspiration for how to bounce back, how about that girl! IMO, she is looking GOOD.
I'm actually-- perhaps foolishly-- not all that worried about the offense. I'm feeling that there'll be about a decade in here in which folks will underestimate Ms Rodriguez at their peril, and that Kai is just coming into her prime. I'm feeling that Boxx will take over as the prime target on set pieces, and the other teams will have to figure out how much attention to give her while the Olympics are actually going on-- too much and you risk Kai or Lloyd or Tarpley killing you, too little and Boxx will kill you herself. Its not an insoluble problem at all, but they'll have to solve it under pressure. And I'm feeling that this team is well capable of winning five or six straight games by 1-0 scores. What worries me is: That Abby has been an increasingly important part of our set piece DEFENSE. That I wasn't feeling that we were a particularly good shootout team WITH Abby. Now... And the psychology of the whole thing. If I were Ms Cheyney, I'd get off the bus channeling Darryl Dawkins, Dizzy Dean, and Arrowhead Holmes all at once-- "You guys can follow me or you guys can do it yourselves first, but we ARE going to the top of the podium and we ARE going to have a blast along the way because that's who I am and that's who we are." I don't know if she's got that kind of style in her, but thats what somebody needs to do-- be so outrageously up for this that it paints Abby right out of the picture till next year, make themselves the lightning rod and bring the team to a whole different type of life. They don't need to be the continuous process of one of the world's great programs right now. They need to be a ten week rock'n'roll circus, capturing lightning in a bottle for breakfast, scaring the dragons off the edge of the map on their way to dinner, and wearing Babe Ruth's pajamas to bed. Leave so many people talkin' that they'll still be talkin' four years from now. And Cheney's the one with the opportunity to start that happening.
Thanks! You are very kind, and I value your opinion. IMO, their are many very sharp soccer minds on this thread and a lot of thoughtful comments. Glad you felt I was able to contribute.
I second that. On a side note, i was talking to a friend of mine who is Brazilian and was telling her how I thought Brazil is very physical and aggressive and I wonder how much culture has to do with that. She said it defiantly does. In Brazil most of the players come out of small towns in poor areas and start out playing against men. She said that unlike American culture will guys will tend to think, o that is a women i better go easy on her, in Brazil its not the same. She said the men will treat the women the same if not worse and thus they grow up having to be very aggressive, especially since their men play a rather aggressive style anyway. She also told me that once they move on to play on some of the womens teams they are very very aggressive. Tripping, throwing, elbows, etc. is the norm. So maybe its not to surprising them seem almost nonchalant about inflicting injuries. However that doesn't excuse fifa for failing to enforce the rules of the international game regardless of what is Brazil's norm, but i did find the cultural insight interesting in terms of explaining where they Brazilian players fire seems to come from.
Sorry if this was addressed already, but on this replay (I didn't see the live match), it looked like the leg was broken by the collision, not during her crash/fall back onto the ground?
I'd prefer she'd channel Jeff Hostetler, Jack Swigert, and Ronnie "Sunshine" Bass! BTW, anybody who can tell me what those three have in common, gets a gold star.
You can mail it to me. They were all replacements who succeeded Hostetler won the super bowl when Phil Simms got hurt. Jack Swigert replaced an astronaut who had the measles on Apollo 13, and Sunshine replaced an injured star in "remember the Titans" OK mr. smarty pants - who replaced Joe Theisman when he took the hit "no one who saw it can ever forget"? and how did he do?
Great answer, Clive. How about Jay Schroeder? He won the game, much to the dismay of all us Giant fans. I watched that game from the ER of Overlook Hospital in Summit NJ. It was a slow night, and we were all huddled around the TV in the lounge. I remember that night like it was yesterday.