You've gotta have Hope, Musn't Sit Around and Mope

One of my co-writers is, if I'm lucky, handling the debrief today. So I want to turn my attention to the US Women's National Team story. I've waited until now for a few reasons. First, many others have been giving their opinion, and they are worth reading. Special call outs to Andrea Canales, Dan Loney, and I-66 who had the opinions right from the very beginning. Second, I wanted to wait until the tournament was over before I said a few things. Which is really what I hope the members of the US Women's team will do.

I think the first thing that must be said is that it is utterly ridiculous the way this story has been allowed to turn. Hope Solo is the one person who had nothing, NOTHING, to do with the US Women's loss to Brazil, so I suppose it is natural that U.S. Soccer and the rest of the Women's team is scapegoating her for the troubles. Ridiculous. On Solo, yes, it was impolitic for her to say some things about Scurry, but was she wrong? If you have a top keeper, don't you want them to believe that they can get to every ball, and make every save? That's certainly the mindset I would want my keeper in. So I have no problem with her comments at all, and like many I have more problems with her apology than her initial statements. You know things are a bit screwed up when the PTI crew on ESPN have the right sentiments.

For Greg Ryan to claim his mistake was not using Scurry soon enough is also utterly pathetic:

``My mistake was not leaving them more in a dual starting role from an earlier period of time,'' Ryan said Saturday. ``I think we needed two kinds of goal keepers in this World Cup.''

Apparently what Ryan is saying is that he wasn't happy with the two clean sheets that Solo handed to him, and that Brianna Scurry would have had Wambach's stitches done and the bleeding stopped in the North Korea game.

What's shocking is that I don't think anyone reading this blog disagrees with any of these statements. Everyone, but everyone, knows that Ryan is the one who screwed up. Well, everyone but the establishment. When there is such a divide between popular opinion and the feelings of the machine, one of two things is most likely true: Either they understand the process a whole lot better than the rest of us, or they are walled off from reality in a dangerous way. The latter looks to be the case in this situation. The masses are right, and we should have pitchforks right about now.

There's also one word that is floating around that no one has used, but I think should be brought up right about now, and that word is Patriarchy. I probably can't do as good a job explaining this as some people might, but there does seem something rather sexist about the entire ordeal. This article shows the way in which the male power structure as US Soccer was early on attempting to control the message:

We were busy getting a clip from Abby Wambach when I saw Hope Solo, clearly upset, walking by. I said quietly, "Hope, do you want to comment?" The press person for the U.S., Aaron Heifetz, said out loud to me, "She didn't play, you only want to talk to people who played the game." Hope spun on her heels when she heard Heifetz say that and said, "No, I want to talk!" This is after she had walked by ESPN and other crews waiting to get clips. We were the first crew to interview her, and the first thing she said is that it was the wrong decision not to put her in net, and that she would have stopped those shots. Also, she said, the only people who would have made that decision, didn't understand the game of soccer. A stunning announcement from her, and clearly something the press person didn't want her to say. She went on to say she didn't understand the decision, that this was 2007, not 2004 (a reference to Scurry's performance in the Olympic final in 2004) and that she was terribly upset by the decision to keep her on the sidelines.

She was honest, fair, and to the point, and in my opinion, quite brave to even do the interview when she was clearly devastated at the team's result. Even more interestingly, as she walked away from the interview, she again spun on her heels and said to Heifetz: "Don't you ever tell me what interviews I can do."

Then we attempted to talk to goalkeeper Briana Scurry about the game. The same PR person who told us we can only talk to players who actually played the game, refused to let Scurry stop to talk to us. I called out to Scurry to ask her to talk and she pointed to Heifetz and said, "He's the boss." I told her she was her own boss and Hope was willing to talk to us. Scurry shook her head, and walked away.

Heifetz, who may be played by Rainn Wilson in the movie, was doing his job trying to control the message on behalf of the power structure of US Soccer, a traditionally male power structure. Solo spoke truth to power, and for that she had to be punished. Of course, once the event had happened, you can expect a bunch of snide, yet telling, comments to follow:

A male colleague reported that some of his emails have consisted of "You're sympathizing with a backstabbing harpy because she's cute."

Interestingly, my wife voiced a similar opinion along those lines. To be cute is one thing, to be correct is another, but to be both is intolerable. And naturally the rest of the women's team turns on Solo. Why? To defend a man who sold them out, who doesn't deserve their support. They're upset at Solo for betraying one of their own, without realizing that Coach Ryan had already betrayed them all. He had one job to do: Put the best team out there with a chance to win, and he failed. Not only that, he failed repeatedly. The 4-3-3 was always a problem, and our midfield suffered because of it. But he didn't change that. Why do they rally around him? Why do they continue to ostracize the person who had the guts to call it like it was? I don't know. Some if it may be the fact that they know the field players are also to blame, and Solo takes attention away from them. But more of it seems to be a power dynamic based opinion.

We have to ask ourselves what this situation would be like if the team gender was different. What if Bob Bradley had, in a knock-out game, replaced Tim Howard with Tony Meola because Tony had a great performance against Brazil back in the day. And if Howard had called out Bradley, do you think the rest of the players would instantly ostracize Tim Howard? I don't. I think you might hear comments along the lines of "that wasn't the way to handle the situation" from the players, but there wouldn't be a rush to send Howard to the hinterlands of soccer. The team probably wouldn't decide he couldn't be on the team plane. No, part of this at least is an issue of gender. Some people don't like the idea that the mild mannered delicate flowers of womanhood might have controversial opinions, and therefore they must be silenced. What's worse is how many women who I normally respect (*Cough*Julie Foudy*Cough*) are enabling this opinion. It's self-sabotage of the highest order.

All I know is that in two years, if Hope Solo is looking for a team, I hope the Washington Freedom can make her an offer worth listening to, and I hope our fans support the one person who played in the 2007 Women's World Cup and never lost us a game. I mean, Solo and Kati Jo Spisak would be a pretty good one-two keeping combo. Perhaps good enough to even rotate between keepers with.

3 points; 2 red cards; 1-0

LA Galaxy earned 3 points last night in Kansas City and only needed a two man advantage to do so. I think the look on Landon Donovan's face at the end of the game was a bit of shock ("OMG - we won!") mixed with a bit of "I can't believe you guys pulled it off, in spite of me."

I'd like to propose a new entry into the American lexicon. Let's say you are having a horrible day at work but then you finally get to leave work and when you get home you find that your live-in girlfriend has moved out and taken the dog. You think to yourself, "Man, what a Vagenas!" You know, because of all the bad things happening to you, repeatedly.

The best part of the game for me was the discussion of the USWNT v Brazil match where all three ESPN commentators (Tommy, Dave and Eric) let loose on Greg Ryan. Every single second of their analysis was dead-on correct. If Greg Ryan is fired before the Bronze Medal match it won't be fast enough and even if he is fired eventually, I'm still making up some "Fire Greg Ryan" shirts just so that everyone knows exactly how I feel and in case he somehow gets a job in the new WUSA league. I'm so pissed about the Hope Solo situation. And my wife makes a GREAT point that I hadn't gotten to... you know, on account of the overwhelming anger. Who is the keeper for the Bronze Medal match? You can't go with Scurry again, can you? But if you go with Hope, then isn't that an embarrassing admission by Ryan that he F-ed up by starting Scurry in the Brazil match?

Now, all of that said, I must admit I haven't watched the second half yet, so there may be more to this that just a goalkeeper controversy. But before the game even started and before I knew that the final was 4-0 against, I heard that Solo was getting benched and I thought: "bad idea". Whether Solo might have done better, or if the US would've done better offensively without the distraction of a controversy overhead we'll never know. But I think it was the wrong decision. If anyone reads any good analysis out there on the interwebs, let me know in the comments.

Coffee for the rest week

A few notes and such, and then I have some posts I want to write during this brief moment when we're out of the constant stretch of games and can broaden our vision for a moment (before narrowing it for the final five regular season matches):

UNITED ACQUIRE MONTEIRO: The interesting thing here is the phrase "conditional pick." Typically, this means a pick that depends on the amount of playing time Monteiro will see. However, United does not have a #1 pick in the 2008 Superdraft (we traded that to Toronto to get Dyachenko back), which means that at best we traded a second round pick for someone that was drafted in the first round. More likely, the value of this pick will be between the third and fourth rounds. Now, is that a bargain? Probably not. Monteiro was a bit of a reach as a first round pick, he never made Carrick's list of the top 10 strikers, and JoeSoccerFan's analysis of the draft admired his instincts but hated his finishing. Whatever United traded for him is probably closer to his true value on draft day than the first round selection would have indicated. And that's before he's had a season's worth of evaluation with an MLS side.

That being said, both Kpene and Addlery may be made a bit nervous by this. Addlery is the most likely to be displaced: Monteiro is a bit younger and Addlery, and my impression is that Kpene has shown better in his time with the first team. The only reason that Kpene might be a bit nervous is that Guy-Roland Kpene is taking a Youth International slot which Monteiro would not.

WEEKEND RESULTS: Nice to see Chivas drop a few points against Colorado (Credit-where-it-is-due note: I-66 saw this in the cards. Still, United is playing with less than a one game margin of error in its upcoming matches (assuming Chivas wins its remaining game-in-hand on United). While I'm willing to overlook the Chicago match for now, given the number of people out for accumulated cautions, the four games after that may each have must win status in terms of the Supporter's Shield. Especially if United drops points against an improved Chicago side.

And I did watch some tivoed Women's World Cup games. Hooray for the US winning over Sweden, and all of that, but that Germany-England match was my favorite. Tense, cagey, smart soccer with some gaffs to liven things up, as well as some good end-to-end action. If MLS nil-nil draws were as enjoyable, people wouldn't worry about goal scoring so much.

NOTED: RSL blogger RSLFM visited RFK for the United-RSL tilt, and overall had favorable impressions of the match and crowd (except for a run-in with Talon.) A good read. One question: Who let her have an Eagles ticket and wear an RSL jersey? For shame, kids, for shame. (I know, it was the more tolerant 133 section... still, it seems a bit off to me).

Coming up in a bit: The big-lie told by the pointy-ball marketers, and a discussion of the strange quirk in the MLS Playoffs that punishes success.