Guess What? Hope Solo’s Not the Only One Behaving Badly on the Internet!

Oh look, the online world of WPS is in a tizzy again. Not surprisingly, the woman at the center of it all is, once again, Atlanta Beat goalkeeper Hope Solo. After the last-place Atlanta Beat lost 1-0 to the Washington Freedom on an 88th minute tally from Freedom striker Abby Wambach, Solo took to The Twitter to air her frustrations.

It should be noted that A: I did not see the Freedom-Beat game. I was at Yurcak Field watching Sky Blue FC’s season come to an abrupt end. B: The game had no implications for the Beat, and some pretty huge ones for the Freedom. A win for the Freedom guaranteed DC a spot in the playoffs while a loss or tie left things a little up in the air. Atlanta on the other hand, had been long eliminated from playoff contention and a win would only serve to end their season on a high note, and play spoiler for the Freedom. According to various match reports there were a few calls that were maybe missed for each side. And each team also had a goal disallowed. And the Beat’s Lauren Sesselmann was ejected after receiving a yellow card in each half. Ultimately the Freedom won, and will play in Philadelphia next weekend in the first round of the playoffs. The Beat’s season is, uh, over.

So here’s where Hope Solo’s twittering comes in. After the match, Solo twittered (via 5 seperate tweets, someone sign her up for a WordPress acount already!):

Its official, the refs are straight bad. Its clear the league wanted dc in playoffs. I have truly never seen anything like this. Its sad.

A goal taken away with no explanation, one offsides call against dc, many against atlanta. An amazing all ball tackle for a red

We play with 10, DC with 12. Players punched in the face. Free corners. I am done playing in a league where the game is no longer

In control of the players

The head ref calls it a goal!!!! It even goes up on the scoreboard!!! Than no explanation! Its a joke!!!! An absolute joke!

Three comments on this. 1: Perhaps this was all an elaborate set-up for the pun that occurs in the first tweet (“It’s official, the refs…”). If so, brilliant. 2: I find it hard to believe that “the league wanted DC in [the] playoffs” mostly because I don’t think there’s anyone, at all, working in the league office anymore. Unless they got an intern to do it. 3: According to the boxscore there were only three offside calls, one against DC and two against the Beat.

And Now I Throw My Opinion-Hat into the Ring, Re: Hope Solo v. The Riptide

By now we all know about Atlanta Beat goalkeeper Hope Solo’s so-called “rant” on Twitter following the Beat’s meeting with the Boston Breakers last night at Harvard Stadium. It’s not the first time Solo has taken to Twitter to air her grievances, nor is it the first time the ‘keeper has spoken her mind. Since everyone else in the online world of WPS is weighing in and I’m often far wordier than Twitter’s 140 character limit allows, here goes…

If racist stuff was said, that’s pretty shitty. Obviously. I don’t need to go into the hows and whys.

With that said – a little controversy never hurts. People are talking about it. On Twitter and Big Soccer and in other places in the little corner of the internet that WPS fans have carved out for ourselves – for now. But that there is a problem, even a supposed one, points to another step towards real legitimacy for WPS, even if it’s in an ugly and sort-of-strange new-media way (a four tweet “rant,” many twitter replies, blog posts [oh, hi!], message-board posts, etc.). Let’s assume that The Riptide is telling the truth – that the worst thing said was “you suck.” If you take the racist part out – it becomes about a player being angry about being heckled by a supporters group. And supporters groups should be heckling the players (again, as long as the racist/sexist/homophobic/etc. line isn’t crossed). It’s part of the argument I was [poorly] making about being a fan of your club first, league second. You can be wowed by Marta’s skill, think Hope Solo is the greatest thing since sliced bread when she’s in a US jersey, or be just as impressed by the Lilly Legend as anyone else – until they step on the field against your team – then they’re the enemy. Heckle away! I’ve been a NJ Devils fan for a long time, but when Martin Brodeur put on the red and white for Canada at the Vancouver Olympics, you bet I was rooting for him to have a horrible game. I sort-of-support the Red Bulls, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t jump off my couch and cheer when the LA Galaxy’s Landon Donovan scored that goal against Algeria. But when the Galaxy come to Red Bull Arena next Saturday, I kind of hope Landon has a bad game. And so on.

And that a player had problems with a supporters group – real or imagined – is a sign of passionate fan support, which is certainly not a bad thing. That there was a supporter’s group there in the first place, and apparently loud enough to create a stir, is a credit to The Riptide.

Wasn’t Boston Breakers GM Andy Crossley the one who said “We need to get out of the ghetto of being a role model for girls. You can’t make dads feel like they’re visiting Chuck E. Cheese’s”? And also the one who said, via a tweet during a WPSChat “I want to see a WPS player be fined for a tweet. Like Mark Cuban. Push the envelope and create buzz.” And speaking of tweets, Solo herself once twittered: “Watching the seattle philly game…now these are great soccer fans! How do we bring this atmosphere and energy to the womens game?” I fully understand that a player accusing a club or their fans of racism is something that’s very serious. Racism/racist chants are something that’s been part of soccer’s ugly underbelly for a long time, hence things like “Show Racism the Red Card” and those kind of accusations leveled at anyone, are plenty hurtful in their own right. While no one has been fined and neither the league or any of the parties involved have released an official statement on the matter as of yet – and might not ever – it would seem that Andy Crossley, Hope Solo, and perhaps to a greater extent all WPS fans over the age of 12, sort of got their wish, albeit perhaps not in the way we’d imagined. However serious or not this incident proves to be, it’s launched a larger discussion: about how the league/teams should deal with racism/sexism/etc. at matches. And about the role of supporters groups in WPS, which again, for the 500th time, isn’t a bad thing.

A League, Not a Cause

My name is Lauren, and I’m a NY Mets fan. Phew. I feel so much better now that I’ve said it aloud. Allegiance to the Metropolitans isn’t an easy thing. Admitting an allegiance to the Metropolitans to the (tens of) readers of this blog, is even less easy. In case you haven’t followed baseball at all for the past– well, ever, let me give you a primer: The Mets suck. Since their inception in 1962 the Mets have won 3, 748 regular season games. They’ve lost 4, 093. In that first season in ’62 they won 40 games. And lost 120. Yes, 120. Even if you know nothing about sports, you can probably figure out that that’s, uh, really really really bad. They finished 60 1/2 games back of the NL-leading San Francisco Giants. After 1962 the Mets continued to suck, compiling a bunch of sub-500 seasons before the miracle of miracles happened in 1969 – for real, the team was nicknamed “The Miracle Mets.” The Mets won the 1969 World Series. Then they went back to sucking, albeit not nearly as bad as before. In 1986 the second miracle happened. The Mets won another World Series. Since then, there’s been mostly more sucking. In 2001 the Amazin’s made it back to the World Series, and lost. In 2006 they made it to game seven of the NLCS. And then, bottom of the ninth, down by two, bases loaded, 0-2 count, “here’s the pitch…”, and Carlos Beltran does nothing. Strikes out. Looking. The next year the team didn’t make it to the post-season, courtesy of one of the greatest collapses in baseball history. In 2008– ah, nevermind. You get the idea.

“True Believers” or a Rambling Case for Supporters Clubs

As a high school kid there were two things in my life that mattered to me; punk rock and soccer. Two things at odds with each other in my suburban high school but two things that had formed a bizarre synergy for those older and wiser. And most of what I learned about life I learned in equal parts on the field and in VFW Halls, Elks Lodges, firehouses. This is mostly about soccer. About fan support, or the lack thereof. But it starts with music, because, well, why not?

Some of the best concerts I’ve been to have been defined as “best” as much by the overall atmosphere as by the music.

A World Cup Thank You, Written “The Day After Ghana” at an Airport Gate in Jersey

The 2010 World Cup is in the rearview mirror now. It’s there, and you can look up and catch a glance of it, and smile. And no, things didn’t work out exactly like we’d hoped – but perhaps like we’d [secretly] realistically expected. The car’s continuing down the road. Soon a mere fond memory among a summer of soccer. But before we go around another curve and South Africa twenty-ten disappears from view, let’s take a moment.

A moment to say thank you.

Thank you for keeping us on our toes, for never a dull moment.  

XI Things That I’ll Remember [Until I Get Old and My Brain Turns to Mush] About the 2010 WPS All-Star Game

Should I go? Should I not? I debated this with myself for some two months. I wanted to go, yeah. Could I really afford it? It’s not too expensive. I can do it for pretty cheap. Hmmm… Finally I made my decision. Hotel: booked. Flight: booked. Transportation: booked. Credentials: secured. And just like that, from June 27th to July 1st, I was in Atlanta (er, mostly Kennesaw) for the 2010 WPS All-Star Game. Best decision. It was three days of soccer, things soccer adjacent, and obviously, fun. So, without further introduction, here’s XI things (get it?) that I’ll remember [until I get old and my brain turns to mush] about the 2010 WPS All-Star Game.

Smoking Section at the Rose Bowl

I started in a way I imagine so many others started; in second grade, signed up for the local rec. league.  I was the smallest kid on the team, never played before.  So obviously (?) the coach decided, I should be the goalkeeper.  I didn’t have gloves, my ‘keeper jersey a pinny or an old t-shirt that had to be knotted at the waist to avoid being tripped over during the game.  And I loved every minute of it.  Now, I don’t know if it was an actual ‘love of the game’ or if it was the prospect of being able to do something on a weekly basis that scared the crap out of my mother that my seven year old self loved.  But it didn’t matter, I was hooked.  We’d practice once a week, have a game on Saturday, repeat.  Fall soccer, spring soccer.

As the seasons went on, my position changed; sweeper, stopper, fullback, midfield.  “You want me to play center halfback?!  That’s like, all over the field!”  I remember the first time I was able to run a full lap around the field. The first time I thought ‘maybe I CAN play center halfback.’  I tried out for traveling teams, made it, got cut, went back to rec., repeat.  Switched to forward, ‘trained’ in my backyard with my neighbor, doing sprinting drills and trying to learn scissors and Maradonas and setting up cones for dribbling drills.    I played on teams so bad I could have a five goal game and we’d end up on the wrong end of a 10-6 decision and on teams good enough to bring home first place trophies and go undefeated.