What I wanted to be when I grew up

I don't talk much about what I wanted as a kid - my goals or dreams. Never really had the inclination to say I wanted to be a teacher or doctor. Never felt I had a clue or a calling. The only thing I really ever wanted was something I never attained and knew in my teens I would never attain it (thanks for moving away from the soccer capital of the country mom).

I wanted be on the Women's National Team.



I wanted to score a goal in the World Cup and do the airplane and scream at the crowd. I wanted to put my finger to my lips and do the shhhh to the booers. I of course never got there however. Instead, I am relegated to having the high and low feelings as shown below by Wambach.....in my local area women's league. And of course when someone tells me to take it easy - I give them a screw you look. Because really - this game has never been about let's jsut go out and have fun. For me it is my deepest sense of competition. My deepest sense of feeling the burning desire to win and be the best I can be. To amaze myself and be the perfect player. Not that that happens or all the time as I am very hard on myself as a player - I expect to be perfect. I of course am not.



So I wanted to give a little love to the WNT since I gave so much love to the MNT (ok so I really gave all my love to Michael Bradley but moving on).

The US women kicked off their opening day World Cup match yesterday in China going against a tough North Korean team. In the end the result was a 2-2 DRAW (which means tie for us Americans). Here is a quick recap from my coaching perspective - cause you know I am so quality there too. LOL Anyway......

The US women were physical and that is probably the what I was happiest about the most. They were scrappy and came to play. See pic below.



Unfortunately so did the North Koreans. The NK's were quick, had a great first touch, were creative in the attack and their passing was almost impeccable. They were able to penetrate our defensive third and create several series in teh box likening that to a ping pong game. They scored both their goals during a time when Wambach (our leading goal scorer) was out for a period of ten minutes due to a head injury. Now since it is my blog I am going to digress for a moment and get on a soap box.

Wambach comes out because her head is darn near pouring blood. In these situations - even if it calls for stitches, usually what happens is the trainer cleans it up a bit, slaps some magic goo on the spot to stop the bleeding or at least clot it so it has no where to go and cleans off the jersey, and sends them back out on the pitch. In this instance, blood was trickling down her head so bad they had to walk off the pitch and then she was out for 10 minutes with no word on what was going on. This effectively put the team down to 10 men against a pretty good NK side. Now as a coach what would your inclination be:

A. Do a quick substitute after 5 minutes when you have heard nothing from the trainers cause they aren't even on the field. (They were still ahead at this point BTW)

B. Stay down to 10 men and hope for the best until you get word she can go back on (or not and then make a sub) since this is the World Cup.

C. Do an immediate substitution because: the player had a head injury with bleeding and the possibility of a concussion is highly likely coupled with the fact the player who is your leading scorer and biggest player on the field and is the target player on all set pieces to win balls out of the air with her HEAD could further complicate a concussion or her health and jeopardize her ability to play in all proceeding matches.

Take your time...........I don't think you really need to be a coach to figure out what I think as a coach. As a player - I would have done the same thing as Abby - Coach, I'm good to go - put me back out there!

Times up. Freaking C for crying out loud. There is no way she did not get stitches after that game and who knows what the state of her head was as well.

One of the things Tony and I talked about was what does Coach Ryan think of his bench? I mean if he is hesitant to go to his bench and only did so in the waning minutes of the game - which he subbed a different attacker out - does he not think he has options that can attack and cover?? That's a scary prospect. Or was it that he got caught up in a WC match and froze. When I say froze - I have seen Tony do this - sorry honey. A change needs to be made or should be made and the coach gets caught up thinking - do I sub out my best who is not playing their best for a second choice whose best may be the same(ish) as my best not at their best?? Coach Athena says - hell yeah sub em out! You gotta make adjustments on the fly and have faith in the gourp of chickas you picked!!!

Speaking of the coach. Today I will go down to the local Best Buy and pick up a wireless game controller...cause he clearly thought he could control everything that was going on out on the pitch. At least the U20 Men's coach was more composed at their WC. Come on Ryan - you gotta let the ladies figure it out on the pitch themselves - they have trained for this day in and day out under your leadership - they should know what to do and when to do it. I felt like I was watching a rec coach out there.

As to the play of our women - to be honest - I thought they looked a little sluggish. They looked like either the heat and humidity were getting to them pretty early on in the game - or they just weren't match fit enough. If they weren't match fit - then they should have been training in the Midwest this summer to acclimate to the weather conditions they were going to face in China. Their first touch was pretty heavy, they lost their team shape too many times to count and had problems getting organized. Their counter attacks were slow and did not have numbers pushing forward. The defense was not marking well and there were a lot of bad passes and misread runs.

But look at the hops on this girl!



Ladies...I wish you the best of luck against Sweden - you're going to need it.