An advice column for people who live with people who live for sports
Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Every week we publish a calendar with everything you need to know to plan your week. Here’s what’s going on today:
For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.
You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link. Music by Jesse Fischer.
Dear Sports Fan,
Ok, so I downloaded the app FotMob and being a newbie to soccer (thanks to Fancred), I have a few questions. What are all the different leagues in the U.S.? I thought I would start out following those and the World Cup stuff when it comes around. Just trying to figure out what all is going on. Would take any suggestions on who else to follow. What leagues and people should I follow as a new soccer fan?
Thanks,
Tim Lollar
Dear Tim,
Congratulations on getting into soccer! Learning any new sport can be a fun and intellectually stimulating experience. As you learn the new sport, it subtly changes the way you think about sports you already understand well and even other aspects of your life. You may even find yourself having eureka moments about something at work or with a relationship and be able to trace it back to something you thought of while learning soccer. Long story short, learning about anything sparks learning about everything. If you haven’t already explored them, we offer a few easy email courses on soccer: Soccer 101, Soccer 201: Positions and Logistics, and Soccer 202: Culture.
It’s a particularly interesting time to become a new soccer fan. Thanks to this year’s women’s World Cup and last year’s men’s World Cup, both of which were conveniently located for U.S. soccer fans, there’s a tremendous amount of excitement about soccer. Unfortunately, it will be another three years until the next men’s World Cup and four until the next women’s. That’s a shame because, especially for the non-totally-hard-core soccer fan, the World Cup is the ultimate competition. Luckily, the alternatives are plentiful and exciting in their own right:
As you can tell, there’s always something to follow in the world of soccer! Apps like FotMob, which provide news and schedules for virtually every league and competition in the world are great resources to have. Twitter is another great resource for following soccer. I would start by following Grant Wahl, a leading U.S. soccer reporter who works for Sports Illustrated. He maintains lists of other people in the soccer world to follow for breaking news, as well as the men’s and women’s World Cup. Poke around in his lists and you’ll find some great soccer people.
Thanks and good luck,
Ezra Fischer
Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Every week we publish a calendar with everything you need to know to plan your week. Here’s what’s going on today:
For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.
You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link. Music by Jesse Fischer.
If you are a sports fan or if you live with a sports fan then your weekly schedule becomes inextricably linked with what sporting events are on at what times during each week. The conflict between missing a sporting event for a poorly committed to social event and missing an appealing social event to watch a game is an important balancing act in any kind of romantic, familial, or business relationship between a sports fan and a non-sports fan. To help facilitate this complicated advanced mathematics, Dear Sports Fan has put together a table showing the most important sporting events of the upcoming week. Print it out, put it on your fridge, and go through it with your scheduling partner.
Download a full-size copy here.
Monday: With Wimbledon a fond memory and the Tour de France taking one of its rare rest days, this is the first morning in a while that there hasn’t been excellent breakfast sports viewing available. The evening’s lineup is full of events whose outcome doesn’t matter, at least for some of its participants. Major League Baseball’s All-Star game week gets started with a new edition of the Home Run Derby. This year’s contest will feature a time limit, which should make it better television entertainment, at least. In the Gold Cup, the United States men’s team has already clinched first place in their group but the outcome of their game against Panama and the earlier game between Haiti and Honduras will decide which one or two of those teams goes through to the knockout round.
Tuesday: After a day of rest, the Tour de France is back and for the first time enters the mountains. Stage 10 ends with riders climbing almost a mile straight up to the Col de Soudet. Hitting the mountains begins the process of weeding out the sprinters from the climbers and the true contenders from the rest of the field. The mountains also bring with them greater variety and interesting tactics. In the evening, you can choose between two more Gold Cup group stage matches and Major League Baseball’s All Star Game.
Wednesday: By now the week has settled into a bit of a pattern. Tour de France in the morning and Gold Cup soccer in the evening. Today’s stage of the Tour de France is a challenging mountain stage, which is exactly what some riders won’t want after their exertion the day before. Expect the field to really start breaking up during the last two climbs (12 km at 6.5% grade and 17 km at 7.3%!!) of the day. The Gold Cup matches will end Group C and the group stage. Trinidad & Tobago has surprisingly clinched a spot in the knockout stage already but Mexico, Guatemala, and Cuba are still fighting to advance.
Thursday: Another morning sports option enters the fray with the start of the men’s golf British Open. You have to get up pretty early to watch it begin – 4 a.m. ET!! If you’re determined to make a day of it, watch golf until the cycling begins at 8 a.m. ET — there are three mile-high climbs in today’s stage – and then switch back and forth between that and golf until they’re both done. Then nap.
Friday: Date night is uninhibited this week! That is, unless your date night begins at 4 a.m. (or more likely was on Thursday and is still going on at that time). Spend your morning watching the second round of the British Open and Stage 13 of the Tour de France. After that, you’re free!
Saturday: The single elimination phase of the Gold Cup begins with two games. Although we don’t know yet who the U.S. men’s national soccer team will play, it does look like they’ll play today. Golf’s British Open continues in the morning, as does the Tour de France. Stage 14 features a brutal 3 km at a 10% incline towards the end of the stage. My legs are burning just thinking about it! In the NWSL, the Washington Spirit play the Seattle Reign and the Chicago Red Stars play the Boston Breakers.
Sunday: Finish the week with a full day of sports. The final round of the British Open begins at a much more reasonable 6 a.m. ET, the Tour de France comes down from the mountains in what should be a much more reasonable day in the saddle for its riders, there are two more Gold Cup quarterfinal games, a NASCAR race in the afternoon, and an NWSL match between the Western New York Flash and New Jersey’s FC Sky Blue to end the day.
Caveat — This forecast is optimized for the general sports fan, not a particular sports fan. As such, your mileage may vary. For instance, you or the sports fan in your life is a fan of a particular team, then a regular season MLB baseball game or MLS soccer game may be more important on a particular day than anything on the forecast above. Use the calendar as a way to facilitate conversation about scheduling, not as the last word on when there are sports to watch.
Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Every week we publish a calendar with everything you need to know to plan your week. Here’s what’s going on today:
For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.
You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link. Music by Jesse Fischer.
Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Every week we publish a calendar with everything you need to know to plan your week. Here’s what’s going on today:
For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.
You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link. Music by Jesse Fischer.
Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on:
For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.
You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link. Music by Jesse Fischer.
It’s hard to believe in retrospect but after their first three World Cup games, the U.S. women’s national soccer team was in a state of crisis. After their first game, a 3-1 win against Australia, a staff writer for the Australian Football Federation concluded that the USA “just aren’t that good.” After the U.S. team’s next game, a 0-0 draw against Sweden, some of their fans were beginning to wonder if that staff writer had been correct. After the team’s third game, a lackluster 1-0 win over Nigeria in what was supposed to be the easiest game of the group stage, the rumors, doubts, and criticism began to flow freely. Despite being undefeated through the group stage and advancing to the single elimination knockout stage as a group winner, the American team did not look or feel like it could win the World Cup.
The problem, according to a consensus of critics, was that the team’s talented players were being misused by coach Jill Ellis. She was playing the wrong combination of players in the wrong formations with the wrong tactics. Although soccer is a very fluid game, players (other than the goalie) can generally be said to be playing in one of three positions, defense, midfield, or striker. Formations are referred to in soccer short-hand by a series of numbers referring to the number of players in each position, starting with defense and moving through midfield to striker. The U.S. had been playing a 4-4-2, which is a traditional formation made popular by Brazilian men’s national teams and Milan’s club team in the 1990s. When it’s at its best, the four midfielders each have distinct roles. Two play on either side of the field, supporting the outside defenders when the other team has the ball and joining the attack when their team has it. In the center of the field, one of the remaining two midfielders plays a primarily defensive role, almost as a fifth defender, while the other focuses on being an offensive playmaker. Of the U.S. team’s four starting midfielders throughout the first three games, three of them prefer to focus on being the offensive playmaker. As is said about cooks in a kitchen, that’s too many. As is said about having two starting quarterbacks in football, if you have that many playmaking midfielders, you really have none, because none of them can be effective.
The United States entered the elimination stage of the World Cup without any major changes to their lineup and were able to beat Colombia 2-0 without ever looking truly commanding. During the Colombia game, two of those three playmaking midfielders, Megan Rapinoe and Lauren Holiday, picked up their second yellow cards of the tournament (a yellow card is like a misdemeanor offense in soccer) and were suspended for the team’s next game, a quarterfinal matchup against China. This crisis, the loss of two of the team’s most talented players, provided an opportunity for coach Ellis. Forced to replace Rapinoe and Holiday with lesser known players, Ellis made sure that each of her four midfielders had distinct roles, well suited to their games. Enter 22 year-old Morgan Brian who played that defense-first midfield role which freed Rutgers University’s own Carli Lloyd to push up into her preferred offensive midfield role. The team responded with their best game of the tournament, beating China only 1-0 but looking dominant throughout.
Coach Ellis had clearly found something that worked but the question remained, would she have the nerve to bench Holiday and Rapinoe, two of her most well-known and talented players, in the team’s next game now that they were no longer suspended? And if she did, would that even be a wise decision against the powerful German side? Surely, going back to the team’s setup from the first four games was not the answer, but what was? Building off the success of the lineup against China, Ellis found a third solution. She reinserted Holiday and Rapinoe but changed the team’s shape. Instead of playing a 4-4-2 as she had throughout the tournament, she switched to a 4-5-1. This created distinct roles for Holiday and Rapinoe without interrupting the newfound and effective dynamic between Brian and Lloyd. The U.S. beat Germany 2-0 in Montreal in front of 51,000 screaming fans. In the tournament’s final game, Ellis repeated this setup and was rewarded with an almost unheard of four goals in 16 minutes and a long-awaited World Cup Championship.
The lesson of this parable is that talent is nothing without correct deployment. Okay, perhaps not nothing, the U.S. was still able to advance to the quarterfinals before finding a better way to play, but they likely would not have met their ultimate goal without being redeployed. Putting players into distinct roles which they understood and which fit well with each other was the key to propelling the team to a World Cup championship. The biggest benefactor and most obvious exemplum of this is Carli Lloyd. Winner of the tournament’s version of an MVP trophy, the Golden Ball, Lloyd scored six goals and had two assists, all after the formation change. Before then? Nothing. Whether you’re a player or a coach, a musician or a conductor, an employee or a manager, the message is clear: find a way to put yourself and the people you direct into well-defined roles that play to strengths. Success will follow.
If you are a sports fan or if you live with a sports fan then your weekly schedule becomes inextricably linked with what sporting events are on at what times during each week. The conflict between missing a sporting event for a poorly committed to social event and missing an appealing social event to watch a game is an important balancing act in any kind of romantic, familial, or business relationship between a sports fan and a non-sports fan. To help facilitate this complicated advanced mathematics, Dear Sports Fan has put together a table showing the most important sporting events of the upcoming week. Print it out, put it on your fridge, and go through it with your scheduling partner.
Download a full-size copy here.
Monday: Still partying from the U.S. victory in the 2015 World Cup as the sun rises? Never fear, you can fall into a slumber on your couch watching more great sports. The round of 16 finishes up at Wimbledon, including a Williams on Williams match and the Tour de France is just getting started. Once you wake up in the afternoon, you’re free to do non-sports related stuff, unless there’s a baseball game you have your eye on.
Tuesday: Wimbledon starts to get real with the women’s quarterfinals. In the evening, the U.S. men’s soccer team tries to piggyback on some of the success and popularity the women’s team just stirred up for the sport. It’s the first game of the Gold Cup, the Caribbean, North and Central American regional biennial men’s soccer tournament. The USA plays against Honduras in a game they should win.
Wednesday: Ho, hum, another morning of great tennis and cycling with not much else after that. We’ve truly entered the summer sports doldrums.
Thursday: More tennis, more cycling in the morning. Although, notably, and pending rain as all tennis schedules do, it’s the women’s semifinals at Wimbledon. In the evening, we get our first chance to show our continuing support for women’s soccer by checking out the NWSL. FC Kansas City travels to Boston to play the Breakers in a game that will feature five U.S. women’s national team players: Alyssa Naeher, Becky Sauerbrunn, Amy Rodriguez, Heather O’Reilly, and Lauren Holiday plus a smattering of World Cup participants from other countries. Go to the game in person if you can. If you can’t, it’s live and free on YouTube!
Friday: The men get their chance to move on from the semifinals to the finals at Wimbledon in the morning. In the evening, the U.S. men’s national soccer team plays against Haiti in their second Gold Cup group stage game.
Saturday: Honestly, this isn’t a bad weekend to go camping or surfing or kayaking or something outside that involves moving your body more than watching other people move theirs. It’s a pretty shallow weekend of sports with a few highlights. The highlight of this day is the women’s finals at Wimbledon which may feature Serena Williams playing for her third straight major tournament victory. In the evening, catch a NWSL double-header between New Jersey’s Sky Blue FC and the Portland Thorns and the Western New York Flash and Seattle Reign. If you watch these games, you’ll see Hope Solo, Megan Rapinoe, Kelley O’Hara, Christie Rampone, Alex Morgan, Tobin Heath, Whitney Engen, and Sydney Leroux! If cars are more your thing, catch a Saturday night NASCAR race on NBCSN.
Sunday: For a summer weekend, this isn’t a bad Sunday. The men’s final at Wimbledon is one of the highlights of the year in tennis. The Tour de France continues its ride toward the mountains. The men’s golf John Deere classic in Silvis, Illinois should offer some thrills. The Pan-Am games, an Olympic style competition held in Toronto gets some much deserved television time in the evening on ESPN2. And the final NWSL game of the week, between the Houston Dash and Chicago Red Stars, features a slew of USWNT stars: Meghan Klingenberg, Morgan Brian, and Carli Lloyd on the Dash and Julie Johnston, Christen Press, Lori Chalupny, and Shannon Boxx on the Red Stars.
Caveat — This forecast is optimized for the general sports fan, not a particular sports fan. As such, your mileage may vary. For instance, you or the sports fan in your life is a fan of a particular team, then a regular season MLB baseball game or MLS soccer game may be more important on a particular day than anything on the forecast above. Use the calendar as a way to facilitate conversation about scheduling, not as the last word on when there are sports to watch.
How should you watch the 2015 World Cup final between the USA and Japan? With enthusiasm and pride! With friends and family. In your living room, in a bar, in a public park or town square. Television coverage begins at 5 p.m. ET on Fox with the opening kickoff happening at 7 p.m. promptly.
Four years ago, Japan shocked the world by beating the United States in the 2011 World Cup championship game. Despite Japan’s sentimental appeal, playing for a country facing the aftermath of the triple earthquake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown disasters, no one expected them to be able to beat the United States. The United States was stacked with talented players and had proven itself in two giant knockout round wins over Brazil and France. The American team was the wolf and Japan was expected to be the sheep. Alas for the United States, no one asked the classic red carpet question, “What are you wearing?” As it turned out, the answer was “sheep’s clothing” and Japan showed itself to be the bigger, badder wolf, answering both U.S. goals with tallies of their own and triumphing in the resulting penalty shootout.
Four years later, the same two teams meet, and what’s at stake is legacy. Japan already has one title over the powerful American team. If they win today, they will ink their names into the history books as the ultimate World Cup performers — and the ultimate kryptonite to the United States. If the U.S. team wins, they’ll erase the memories of the 2011 team, a team that at the time was remembered more for its dramatic last second victory over Brazil than for its loss to Japan, but who, as time has gone by has been remembered more and more for its inability to bring home the cup. A U.S. win would end a generation of coming up short. For veteran players like, Shannon Boxx, Lori Chalupny, Heather O’Reilly, and of course, Abby Wambach, this is their last chance to leave the game with a World Cup championship on their resumes, and even though they have not played as large roles on this team as in past World Cups, it’s their legacies that are on the line today.
The United States had the hardest path through the Group Stage of any of the top-level teams. They opened the World Cup with a 3-1 win over Australia, a scoreline that disguises how close Australia was to scoring the upset. Next the U.S. team played a listless 0-0 draw against Sweden. At this point, doubts and criticism began to swirl around the team. A lackluster 1-0 victory over Nigeria, supposedly the weakest team in the group, did not help things. So, despite winning their group, the U.S. team was not looking all that strong. They then beat a feisty Colombia team in the Round of Sixteen, while still looking less dominant than people expected. It wasn’t until the next game, against China, that the team truly started looking like the overwhelming team we knew it could be. Tactical changes forced by suspensions to two midfielders, Megan Rapinoe and Lauren Holiday, seemed to be the reason. This left coach Jill Ellis with quite the conundrum going into the team’s semifinal against a very scary German team who was favored to win the entire tournament: go back to the tactics of the first several games or choose to bench the now no-longer suspended Rapinoe and Holiday? She chose option C – change formations entirely and play those players but in different roles. It worked and remarkably, the U.S. dominated the Germans and advanced to the championship game today!
If anything, Japan has had an even more impressive run to the finals than the United States. They’ve won every single game they’ve played. Admittedly, their Group Stage matches were against inferior teams – Switzerland, Cameroon, and Ecuador, nor have they played against anyone as good as Germany, the United States, or France in the Knockout round. In their first elimination game, they beat a talented Netherlands team that’s probably four years away from being a true World Cup challenger. They moved on to face Australia, who almost found a way to upset Japan despite losing the possession battle soundly. In the semifinals, Japan beat England on that horrible 92nd minute own goal. If there were any justice in soccer, England and Japan would have played another 30 minutes of soccer and potentially a shootout to decide who moved on to the championship game. Who knows what would have happened? Throughout all of their games, Japan has possessed the ball more than their opponents but despite moments of brilliance, they’ve mostly done just enough to win, not looked dominant.
Jill Ellis – Questioned throughout most of the tournament, Ellis shut up her detractors by pressing all the right tactical buttons during the United States’ semifinal match against Germany. With success has come respect for how she’s managed the many big personalities on the team as well as the strategic choices. All that will be for naught if her team loses today.
Carli Lloyd – Through the first four games of the tournament, it wasn’t clear “whose” team this was. Now it’s pretty clear — it’s Carli Lloyd’s team. With one more captivating performance, it will be her ferocious midfield play and intensity that people remember when they think of the 2015 World Cup side.
Abby Wambach – “Win one for Abby” has been a rallying cry for the team throughout its World Cup run. She’s the greatest international goal-scorer of all time but she’s never won a World Cup. To all appearances, she’s gracefully accepted a reduced role over the last several games. She’s okay coming off the bench as a super sub. She just wants a World Cup championship.
Morgan Brian – The youngest player on the team, Brian has proven to be one of the most indispensable. An attacking player by nature, Brian has been asked to play as a defensive midfielder and has done it wonderfully. This has been enormous for the U.S. team because it came to the tournament with five or six natural attacking midfielders and only one defensive midfielder, the 38 year-old Shannon Boxx, who has barely played over the past year.
Julie Johnston – Johnston had the most dramatic night of anyone during the U.S. semifinal win over Germany. She committed the foul that gave Germany a penalty kick and its best chance to take control of the match. She was up and down the field, on offense, and defense, exhausting herself and taking a physical pounding. She seems to be made of steel but how much can she really have recovered from Tuesday’s game? She’ll need to be at full strength tonight.
Meet the rest of the United States team with our player profiles here
Aya Miyami – The current captain of the Japanese team, Aya Miyami, is a wizard in the midfield. She seems to have eyes in the back of her head and is able to pass to open players, seemingly by sonar or telepathy. She’ll take most of the team’s free kicks and other set pieces. She’ll have to be perfect tonight for Japan to have a chance.
Homare Sawa – Sawa is Japan’s answer to Abby Wambach. Once a star, now she’s a legend who plays in a secondary role and often comes in off the bench. In the battle of legends, it’s most likely that neither player will be the deciding factor in the game, but how fascinating would it be if Sawa came through with something amazing?
Norio Sasaki – With all of the focus on Jill Ellis and the decisions facing her, it’s easy to forget that there’s a coach on the other side — and a proud World Cup winning coach too. What tricks will Sasaki have up his sleeve when the teams enter the arena tonight?
The United States has won games in many different ways this World Cup, but they’ve never had game where they were simply dominant from the starting kickoff to the last whistle. This is partially because they were in the “group of death” with three other very strong teams to start the tournament: Australia (the only team to score against the United States), Sweden (the only team to get a draw against the United States), and Nigeria. However, it’s also true that the United States team has been improving steadily from the moment it started its tournament to last Tuesday’s triumphant victory over Germany. In this final game of the tournament, I expect the U.S. team to be running on all cylinders. I expect them to be too powerful, too savvy, and too skilled for the Japanese team. I wrote before the semifinals that the winner of the USA vs. Germany game would be the enormous favorite in the championship game. Although I’m currently experiencing pre-game nervousness and although I’m superstitiously hesitant to jinx the team, I’m going to stick to my guns and predict a win for the United States. More than just a win, I expect a coronation. The U.S. will score early and maintain control of the game throughout.
