Category: Soccer

What do the 20 most common strange soccer terms mean?

Soccer has always has an air of “otherness” in the United States. It’s the major world sport we are the worst at. Somehow in the 1960s or 70s, it became culturally associated with the liberal political leanings that often went along with an inclination towards international and particularly European ideas and culture. Unlike ice hockey, which is still primarily a Canadian and European sport, the best soccer leagues in the world do not reside in the United States. For all these reasons, soccer terminology remains opaque to many casual fans or non-fans of the sport. To help with this problem, here are definitions for the 20 most common strange soccer terms.

  1. Cap – Not part of a team’s uniform (or kit — bonus word!), a cap is an appearance on a country’s national team. The number of caps a player has is used as a sign of how experienced she is.
  2. Nil – Fancy sounding word for zero. Used by British and Anglophilic soccer fans.
  3. Pitch – The field of play. As in, the place you would pitch the ball from if you were playing baseball or cricket.
  4. False nine – Soccer has a traditional system or systems of numbers that refer to positions. Nine is the striker or forward. A team is said to be using a false nine when their farthest forward player frequently drops back farther than a normal striker would.
  5. Stoppage/injury/added time – Soccer is the only timed sport whose official clock is kept secret during the game. Only the ref knows how much time is really left. Stoppage time, injury time, and added time are all phrases used to refer to the period between when 45 minutes have elapsed from the start of a half to when the referee blows her whistle to end the game. The ref announces an estimate of how many minutes this will be at the end of each half but he is not held to it.
  6. 4-4-2 – A common soccer formation. In numerically expressed formations like this, the numbers refer to the players in each level of play, starting on defense, right after the goalie. 4-4-2 is four defenders, four midfielders, and two forwards.
  7. Clean sheet – Close to synonymous with a shutout in American sports. Credit for a clean sheet is usually given to a team’s goalie and defenders. Some may even have contractual bonuses for clean sheets.
  8. Switch the field – To pass the ball a long way across the field. An attacking team may switch the ball from the left side to the right if they aren’t having success creating offensive chances on the original side.
  9. Golazo – An unusually beautiful goal. The creativity and technical excellence of the goal matter more for qualification as a golazo than the importance of the goal.
  10. Nutmeg – When one player tricks another player by passing, shooting, or dribbling the ball between their opponent’s legs. The term’s derivation is disputed but one great theory involves spice counterfeiting.
  11. Parking the bus – When one team commits all their resources to defending. This can be a good strategy against a superior team. The U.S. Women’s National Team expects that a lot of their opponents will play this way against them.
  12. Advantage – If a team has a foul committed on them but would be disadvantaged by stopping the game, a referee can choose to play or call advantage and let the play continue. If the foul warrants a yellow or red card, the ref can give the offending player her card the next time the game stops.
  13. Professional foul – An intentional foul committed by a player (usually a defender) to prevent a scoring chance. The best professional fouls are ones that anticipate the action by enough to avoid being penalized specifically for taking a scoring chance away from the other team.
  14. Through ball – A pass that is designed to go behind the opposing team’s defensive line where it can be picked up by a teammate of the player passing the ball.
  15. Tiki-taka – A style of play, popularized by the Spanish men’s national team, that relies on high volume, relatively safe short passes to move the ball and maintain possession. World soccer seems to be at the tail end of a time when this style was ascendant.
  16. Woodwork – The goals may no longer be made out of wood, but the goal posts (sides) and cross bar (top) are still referred to by their original material. A shot that hits the goal may be said to leave the “woodwork” ringing.
  17. Work rate – An imaginary stat that refers to how hard a player is playing. Technology has recently made it possible to quantify part of this by tracking how far each player runs during a game. Central or defensive midfielders usually have the highest work rates and sure enough, they usually run the farthest.
  18. Overlap – A common track a player might run in relative to her teammate who has the ball. Overlapping or running an overlap is to run between the player with the ball and the sideline, from behind the player to ahead of her. This serves to give the player with the ball a passing option and also to stretch the defensive players farther away from each other by forcing one of them to follow the player making the overlap run.
  19. Booking – When a referee disciplines a player by giving him a yellow or red card. Two yellows in one game or a single (called a straight) red means immediate expulsion from the game. After being expelled, the player’s team has to play the rest of the game down a player, they cannot add a substitute.
  20. Cynical – A play that violates unwritten rules. On offense, this usually applies to flagrant simulation or diving. On defense, this is normally a professional foul. A foul need not be violent to qualify as cynical.

Meet the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team

International sports are said to be one window into a country’s character. It’s a lovely idea, but there’s a giant, obvious problem with it — which national team are we talking about? Sometimes, during some eras, in some countries, you might have a style of competition that’s universal across all sports, but that’s the exception, not the rule. Most of the time, a national basketball team will play differently from a national ice hockey team, and the men’s version of a team will play differently from the women’s. The question becomes, which team and narrative do you want to choose. If the way a national team plays says something about your country, what do you want it to say? If you like the idea of the United States as the world’s sole superpower, root for the men’s or women’s national basketball teams. If you like the picture of the United States as it was in the early 20th century, its potential as a world power still untapped, root for the men’s soccer team. If you want a representation of the United States that is powerful but still struggling to its peak, root for the U.S. men’s ice hockey team. Plus, that way, you get to (sports) hate Canada.

Heading into the 2015 World Cup, the U.S. Women’s National Soccer team represents the best combination of accuracy and positivity of all United States national teams. This team was a dominant power in the 1990s (check) but has not had a big victory on the world stage since 1999 (check). It is still thought of as the world’s most powerful team (check) but the second and third and fourth strongest countries are breathing on its neck, not materially behind (check). You can root for this team without feeling sheepish because they are so much better than their competition and without feeling hopeless because they have no chance. After sixteen years without a World Cup victory, it’s not selfish to feel like the team deserves a victory and it’s not paranoid to be afraid that they won’t get it. This team is basically perfect to root for.

To help prepare you to root for the U.S. Women’s National Soccer team, we published short profiles of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews strove to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Goaltenders

The goaltender or goalie is the only player on the field who can use her hands, a goalie’s task is to organize the defense and prevent the other team from scoring however she can. It’s a position for the reckless, the non-conformists, the obsessive, and the very brave. Learn more about the position here and in our Soccer 201 course.

Hope Solo – Widely considered the best goalie in the world. She’ll be looking to cement that title with a World Cup title.

Ashlyn Harris – The team’s second choice in goal. When Solo was suspended this past winter, Harris played and played well.

Alyssa Naeher – Break glass if needed. Naeher would start at goal for most of the countries in the world. For the U.S., she’s third in the order.

Defenders

Defenders are strong, physical, and extraordinarily reliable. An attacker who makes 17 mistakes and has one success is a hero, a defender who has 17 successes and makes one mistake is the opposite of a hero. Some defenders help out on offense by making runs up the field or by acting as targets for corner kicks and other set pieces. Learn more about the position here and in our Soccer 201 course.

Megan Klingenberg – An offensive minded left fullback, Klingenberg may be the fastest woman on the team. Watch for her to create offensive chances by moving up the field and playing crosses into the penalty box.

Becky Sauerbrunn –  A true defender’s defender, Sauerbrunn is used to being an ironwoman. Don’t expect her to leave the field during the World Cup.

Julie Johnston – Johnston broke into the starting lineup this winter with a series of strong defensive and offensive performances. She scored three goals in three successive games, all on runs to the near post on set pieces.

Ali Krieger – Krieger career has seemed cursed by a series of major injuries, most recently a concussion. If she can stay healthy, she’ll provide veteran play from her right defensive position.

Kelley O’Hara – O’Hara can play every position on the field and play it well. We could see her as a defensive or midfield sub.

Christie Rampone – The last active U.S. National Team player who played in the 1999 World Cup. Until an injury this winter gave Julie Johnston the opportunity to take over, Rampone was expected to start. She’s still capable of playing quality time if needed. If not, she’ll provide valuable leadership from the bench.

Whitney Engen – A likely mainstay of future teams, Engen is unlikely to play in this World Cup.

Lori Chalupny – Comes off the bench as an outside defender. If Klingenberg or Krieger falter, Chalupny will be the first choice to replace them.

Midfielders

Midfielders run and run and run and then run some more. Asked to play a role in every phase of the game, midfielders are like the connective tissue of a soccer team. It’s also the most varied position. Some midfielders focus on offense, some on defense, some on scoring, and some on passing. Learn more about the position here and in our Soccer 201 course.

Lauren Holiday – A playmaking midfielder who has been asked to play a holding or defensive midfield role on this team. Look for her to jumpstart the offense anyway with inventive long passes.

Megan Rapinoe – Rapinoe is one of the most technically gifted players in the world. She has amazing vision, precision passing ability, and a penchant for coming through when the team needs her the most.

Carli Lloyd – Lloyd is the hardest working woman in soccer. She’ll run for 90 minutes and more. She’s physically dominant. Lloyd looks to score from outside and possesses the rocket-powered feet to do it.

Christen Press – A gifted striker forced back into the midfield by the USA’s unprecedented logjam at forward. Press thrives at midfield, making long attacking runs from her deeper position.

Shannon Boxx – Boxx was Lloyd before Lloyd was. Now, she’s a veteran who can be counted on to  provide a reasonable facsimile of her old self for short periods.

Morgan Brian – The youngest player on the team, and the only college player, Brian would be the driving force on most teams. For this team, she’s probably going to be the first midfielder off the bench, able to replace any midfielder well.

Tobin Heath – Heath is one of the most talented and creative dribblers in the world. When she gets into the game, watch for her to run at opposing defenders. They’ll need two or three defenders to stop her.

Heather O’Reilly – O’Reilly has a knack for goal scoring. If she sees action in the World Cup, she’ll have a nose for goal.

Forwards

Forwards or strikers care about only one thing in the world, scoring. Even with that singular goal, forwards have a few different ways of going about it. Learn more about the position here and in our Soccer 201 course.

Amy Rodriguez – The forgotten forward, Rodriguez is an all-around proficient striker who can score in every way possible. At 28, she’s perfectly placed to step in if the older Wambach or younger Leroux, Morgan, or Press falter.

Sydney Leroux – Leroux scares the heck out of opposing defenses with her speed and limitless will. Make one wrong move on defense and she’s behind you with the ball in scoring position.

Alex Morgan – This was supposed to have been Morgan’s World Cup but a series of ankle and knee injuries put that in question. If she’s healthy, she should be a prime weapon.

Abby Wambach – Wambach is the GOAT — the Greatest of All Time. But she’s never won a World Cup, and at 35, this will be her last chance. When she’s got it going, she’s still the best striker in the world. The question will be, how much does she have left?

What is a goalie or goaltender in soccer?

Goalie or goaltender is a distinctive position in every sport that has it. Ice hockey goalies stay on the ice for the entire game while their teammates substitute in and out almost constantly. Lacrosse goalies have enormous sticks. Water polo goalies are the only players who can legally touch the bottom of the pool. None of these distinctions come close to a goalie’s distinctiveness in soccer. Goaltenders in soccer are the only players who can use their hands. Although this privilege is limited to when a goalie is within her own penalty box, it’s sets them apart so much that they’re required to wear distinctively colored shirts to make it easier for refs to tell them apart.

You might think the enormous advantage of being able to use one’s hands would make goalie the easiest position to play. Not true! The extra privileges of the goalie in most sports are a recognition of how difficult their job is and nowhere is this more true than in soccer. The first thing a soccer goalie has to come to terms with is the size of her task… literally! A soccer goal is 24 feet wide and eight feet tall. That’s an enormous area for a single person to cover. It’s too much, even for the most athletic goalie to be able to leap from the center of the goal, all the way to the side to stop a shot. So, the smart soccer goalie uses angles and anticipation. If an attack is coming from the right, they move towards it; out and to the right. From the shooter’s perspective, this has the effect of effectively making the goalie a larger obstacle which is harder to shoot around. If this doesn’t make intuitive sense, think about having to hit a barn with a tomato but needing to avoid the barn door. It’s pretty easy but it would be a lot harder if someone detached the door and stood it up right in front of you. You’d have to throw the tomato over the door or around the door. Same size door, different size challenge.

The issue with playing the angles is that if a goalie guesses wrong or if an attacker is able to pass to a teammate on the other side of the field, the goalie will most likely be too far out of position to recover in time to make a save. Some goalies play deeper in their net and trust their athleticism and reaction time. Goalies need to have incredibly good judgement and fast, decisive, decision-making skills. One wrong move could be one too many. The margin of error for goalies in soccer, because it is such a low scoring sport, is tiny and the consequences for error are enormous. Take poor Robert Green, for instance. In 2010 he was one of the best 40 people in the entire world at his profession yet all he will be remembered for (literally, it’s going to be the first line of his obituary one day) will be this momentary lapse against the United States in the World Cup.

Beyond simply getting in the way of the ball when it’s shot at the goal, goaltenders have a number of other responsibilities. If you watch soccer on television, you’ll often see shots of goalies screaming at their teammates. They’re not cursing them out or at least, they’re not  just cursing them out. Goalies are responsible for organizing their teammates on defense. Any single defender may have to turn his back to one side of the field or the other, or may be too far forward and miss what’s going on behind them. From their position closest to the goal, only goaltenders can see everything that’s going on. It’s their job to communicate.

The challenges and pressure that goalies face seems to attract or create two types of people: those who compensate through obsessive behavior and those who compensate through aberrant behavior. Almost all goalies are one of the two types, some are both. This is true across all sports. Hockeygrrl lists some of the more well-known obsessive behavior in her post about hockey goalies, including Patrick Roy’s refusal to let anything, even ice shavings into his net, Henrik Lundqvist’s ritual of tapping the wall the same number of periods he’s played so far in the game, and my new favorite, Jocelyn Thibault’s tradition of pouring “water over his head precisely six-and-a-half minutes before a game began.” For the more far-out their behavior on the other side of the spectrum, see Colombian soccer goalie Rene Higuita, who was literally nicknamed “the lunatic” and hockey goalie Ilya Bryzgalov who once responded to a question about the offensive threats on an opposing team by saying that he was “only afraid of [a] bear.”

It's time to get serious about the Women's World Cup. The world is.

The Women’s World Cup begins today in Canada with the host nation playing against China at 6 p.m. ET on Fox Sports 1. If you haven’t been following women’s soccer, now is the time to start. You won’t be the only one. The tournament is receiving an unprecedented amount of coverage and attention. Or should I say, it’s receiving an unprecedented amount of coverage and attention for a women’s sporting event. For reason’s that escape me, when it comes to sports, women always get the short end of the stick. Less money, less attention, less adulation, less of everything. That’s starting to change and this World Cup is proving it in a number of ways:

  • Every game will be televised live on Fox, Fox Sports 1, or Fox Sports 2. This is being viewed by many people as a test run for Fox’ coverage of the next few men’s World Cups, which they bought the rights to. Suffice it to say that they’re throwing every resource they have at the tournament to make it enjoyable and exciting.
  • The next edition of EA Sports’ soccer video game, FIFA 16, (part of the world’s best selling video game series of all time,) will feature women’s soccer teams. This may not sound like much, but playing video games is one of the key ways that I’ve gotten into and learned about sports. Having playable female characters is a big step towards treating soccer like something that is equally male and female. The fact that EA Sports did it without any kind of annoying over-compensating pink girl’s mode makes it even better.
  • One of the great things about the video game is that boys and men who love soccer will end up playing as women, learning about the players, and growing into fans of the teams. As sparse as resources for women who love women’s soccer have been, what’s available for men who follow women’s soccer has been even less. Until this year, a man who wanted to buy a U.S. Women’s National Team jersey had to either buy a youth size or a woman’s size shirt. The women’s jerseys were not made in men’s sizes. The other option a male fan had was to buy a men’s jersey and customize it to have one of the woman player’s names and numbers on the back. This year, for the first time ever, NIKE is selling the women’s jerseys in men’s sizes! You can buy a legit Abby Wambach, Alex Morgan, or Sydney Leroux jersey or customize your own.
  • Finally, the sports media has also been taking the tournament more seriously than ever. Deadspin has run an impressive series of World Cup previews. Five Thirty Eight, in true Five Thirty Eight fashion, created and beautifully illustrated a model predicting the likely outcomes of the World Cup, and then had Allison McCann write a survey of the tournament that interpolated the model without relying on it too heavily.

We’ve been taking the Women’s World Cup seriously since this blog started four years ago. This year around, we published short, gender-free profiles of all 23 members of the U.S. Women’s National Team. We’ll be rooting for them and writing about the tournament for the next month. Follow along on Twitter, Facebook, or on email:

Thanks for reading and enjoy the tournament!

 

Dear Sports Fan joins the real world: Meetup

Watching sports with someone who knows more or less than you can be a frustrating proposition.

If you’re the person who knows less about sports, you probably have a lot of questions. How many can you ask before the sports fan you’re watching with gets annoyed? When is the right time to ask? You don’t want to ruin the game for your companion by asking a simple question right at a suspenseful moment. Talking about simple questions, it can be difficult to learn when it seems like the answers to all your questions contain vocabulary words you’re not completely clear on. Words and concepts that are second nature to a sports fan, like offside, holding, second set, third and seven, or two and two, are not easy sailing if you don’t know what they mean. It often feels like a choice between pestering your companion incessantly or accepting that the sporting event can only be pleasant but indecipherable background noise.

Being the person who knows more about sports can also be tricky. Knowledge often comes from passion, so the person who knows more often wants to focus more on watching and less on talking. It can be legitimately difficult to explain the components of something you may have learned very gradually from an early age or from the altered perspective of being a participant.

It’s difficult to watch sports without understanding them but it’s impossible to learn without watching. It’s a Catch 22 of Hellermanian proportions — at least it was, until now. After four years of explaining sports online, Dear Sports Fan will be making its first foray into the real world. I’ve started a Meetup group called Dear Sports Fan Viewing Parties for people who want to watch sports with explicit permission to ask question and for sports fans who want to help create a supportive setting. Our first Meetup will be this Monday, June 8, at 7 p.m. to watch the U.S. Women’s National soccer team play its first game of the 2015 World Cup against Australia. We’ll be gathering at Orleans bar in Somerville near Davis Square. If you or anyone you know lives in the Boston area and would like to be a part of this experiment, let me know or sign up here.

Meet the U.S. Women's Soccer Team: Abby Wambach

The 2015 soccer Women’s World Cup begins on Saturday, June 6 in Canada. The United States team is one of a handful of favorites to win the tournament and they’ve got a great story. Despite decades of excellent play, the team has not won a World Cup championship since 1999. That’s a whole generation of dreams denied and all the reason anyone should need to root for the team this year. To help prepare you to root for team and country, we’re going to run a short profile of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews will strive to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Abby Wambach

Position: Striker

Number: 20

National team experience: 242 appearances, this will be her fourth World Cup, and she has 182 international goals.

What to expect from Abby Wambach: Abby Wambach is the greatest of all time. She leads all international players, men or women in goals. It would be a vast understatement to say she looks like a woman among girls. When she’s at her best, Wambach is a jaguar among kittens. She’s simply bigger, stronger, and better than everyone else. Her specialty is going up in the air and scoring goals with her head. She’s so prolific and proficient at this, timing her jumps perfectly, out muscling anyone who gets in her way, and directing the ball exactly where she wants it to go, with pace, that it’s almost a surprise to see her score with her feet. She’s so monumentally good in the air that it’s easy to forget that she can pass, dribble, and shoot better than anyone else too. Wambach is tougher than nails and it’s not uncommon to see her play through broken noses or with blood streaming down her face from a cut on her head. Having just turned 35 before the World Cup started and with many hundreds of miles on her legs, there are questions about how much she will be able to play. She probably won’t start every game and may even be given a game or two off if the United States looks to be able to win it without her. When she is on the field, she’ll still be the most powerful figure out there. She’s not just someone to be reckoned with by opponents, her own teammates respond to her presence. Wambach is the undisputed leader of the team.

Video: Here are 100 of Wambach’s 182 goals. It’s almost funny how easy she makes many of these look. They’re not, she’s just that good.

Non-gendered personal interest item: One of the biggest story lines of the World Cup for the U.S. team this year is that Wambach, the greatest goal scorer ever, has never won a World Cup. She’s been up front about feeling that her career will be incomplete without one. It’s safe to say that the entire team would be driven to win the World Cup without this additional motivation, but at the end of 90 minutes, when legs and lungs are burning, it might provide them just a tiny bit of extra juice. As a fan of the team and of Wambach, the thought of her leaving soccer without a World Cup championship makes me about three times more nervous than I would otherwise be.

Links: There are hundreds of Abby Wambach profiles out there but the definitive record of this era in her career was written by Kate Fagan and published by ESPN last fall. Read it now!  Check out Wambach’s website, her US Soccer page and follow her on Twitter.

Meet the U.S. Women's Soccer Team: Hope Solo

The 2015 soccer Women’s World Cup begins on Saturday, June 6 in Canada. The United States team is one of a handful of favorites to win the tournament and they’ve got a great story. Despite decades of excellent play, the team has not won a World Cup championship since 1999. That’s a whole generation of dreams denied and all the reason anyone should need to root for the team this year. To help prepare you to root for team and country, we’re going to run a short profile of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews will strive to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Hope Solo

Position: Goalkeeper

Number: 20

National team experience: 170 appearances, this will be her third World Cup, and she has 83 international shutouts.

What to expect from Hope Solo: Hope Solo enters this World Cup as the best goalie in the world. This is an honorary she’s used to having. She’s been considered the best for at least the last seven years. Solo’s greatness is not obvious during most games. Part of the reason for this is that the U.S. team’s defense as a whole is so strong that she often doesn’t have a lot to do. That’s just a small contributing factor though. Largely her greatness is subtle because she understands the game so well. This means she’s virtually always in the right position. She knows how to use geometry to cut down on the available space an offensive player has to shoot at. When a shot is on the way towards her, she reads it and sets herself up to make the save with as much efficiency as possible. There’s very little wasted movement in her saves. She does have supreme physical abilities and reaction times, so she can wait to leap longer than most goalies. Almost uniquely among all the soccer goalies I’ve seen, Solo seems like she focuses not just on making the save but also on where she is going to direct the ball if she can’t catch it. Solo will play every game for the United States and the team should be able to rely on her to make all the saves she should be expected to make and most of them that she shouldn’t.

Video: Watch how relaxed Solo looks during this whole collection of highlights. Only once do I think she looks like she has to scramble and that’s when a shot deflects off a defender.

Non-gendered personal interest item: Hope Solo has had a long and sometimes sordid history as a celebrity. Perhaps her lowest point was this past fall when she was being compared to Ray Rice because of an assault charge she picked up after a physical altercation with her sister and nephew. By no means is Solo free from guilt about this and other infractions but that comparison was unfair. Ta-Nehisi Coates explained the falseness of the comparison better than I ever could in his article in The Atlantic.

Links: Check out Solo’s US Soccer page and follow her on Twitter. She also has a website on which she just wrote a beautiful birthday tribute to teammate Abby Wambach which I strongly recommend. 

How is the women's World Cup different from the men's?

Dear Sports Fan,

How is the women’s World Cup different from the men’s?

Thanks,
Derek

Dear Derek,

 

One of the beautiful things about soccer is that there are very few differences between the women’s version of the sport and the men’s. This is surprisingly rare in sports. Women’s ice hockey, field hockey, and lacrosse have drastically different rules, which mostly make them less rough and sometimes more difficult to play than the men’s version. The rules for women who want to play baseball are so different that we call the resulting sport by an entirely different name: softball. American football, long played exclusively by men, is only now beginning to be played by women in significant numbers. Ironically, this has led to women’s football being much more identical to its male counterpart than most other sports. The only real difference between men’s and women’s American football is that, like in basketball, women play with a slightly smaller and lighter ball. The Women’s World Cup is identical to the men’s edition (here’s a post on how that works) except for two major differences. Both differences are temporary and are likely to disappear as time passes.

You’ve probably heard about the first difference. The women’s World Cup will be played on artificial turf instead of grass. When this was announced, it was so odious to the majority of players that many of them banded together to sue the Canadian Soccer Association and FIFA on charges of gender discrimination. The men’s World Cup never has and never will be played on anything but grass. Any organizer that even dreamed of trying to use turf would get laughed right off the planet. Unfortunately, the lawsuit eventually failed despite reported offers by several companies to install grass fields for free. You can see why many of the World Cup players had a special reason beyond all the obvious corruption-related reasons to celebrate when Sepp Blatter stepped down the other day. Why is playing on turf so bad? Tactically speaking, the ball bounces and rolls differently on turf which changes how the game is played and offers advantages to some teams over others. There’s also the issue of injuries. Playing on turf makes the type of sliding and falling that’s common in soccer a distinctly painful experience. For evidence, we need look no further than a tweet from U.S. national team striker, Sydney Leroux:

https://twitter.com/sydneyleroux/status/323630086249140224/

Of course, there isn’t a single player on any of the World Cup teams that wouldn’t volunteer for that type of injury if it meant winning a World Cup. The bigger issue is the thought that turf contributes to more major injuries as well. If there are a rash of blown out knees and ankles during this World Cup, players, coaches, and fans will be pointing to the turf.

The second difference is that there are fewer teams in the women’s edition of the World Cup. Currently, the men’s World Cup has 32 teams. The 2015 women’s World Cup has 24 teams. This actually represents an expansion of the field for the women’s World Cup, which from its first tournament in 1991 has grown from 12 teams to 16 in 1999 and now to 24. It may seem strange to change the number of teams involved in the World Cup but the same evolution has happened in the men’s edition. It went from 16 to 24 teams in 1982 and then to 32 in 1998. The switch from 16 to 24 teams has a major impact on how the tournament works. Until now, with 12 or 16 teams, the tournament has started with a group stage consisting of groups of four teams each. The top eight teams from the group stage advanced to the single elimination knockout round. With sixteen teams, this meant that the top two teams from each group qualified to be in the final eight. This year, the 24 teams are divided up into six groups of four teams each. Instead of trying to winnow the field straight from 24 to eight, the organizers decided to add an additional knockout stage round in — a round with 16 teams.

Now bear with me for another minute, because here’s where the technical mumbo jumbo actually starts meaning something. With 24 teams in six groups of four each, taking the top two teams from each group only gives us 12 teams. We need 16 for the knockout round. So, the top four third place teams will qualify to the single elimination stage of the tournament. This gives an enormous life-line to teams stuck in difficult groups, of which the United States’ group is thought to be the most difficult. The way the third place teams will be compared to each other is the same as the tie-breakers within the group. The first condition is number of points (three for a win, one for a tie, zero for a loss) during the group stage games. The next is cumulative goal differential (goals scored minus goals given up) during the group stage, and the final way is total goals scored. If teams are tied after that, a coin will be flipped. Yep, your country’s fortunes could be decided by a coin flip.

The weirdest thing about adding four third place teams into the round of sixteen is deciding who they play. Usually, all the first place teams are rewarded by playing a different group’s second place team in the first knockout round. Theoretically this gives the first place teams an easier path to the second round. That will still be true for the winners of groups E and F. The first place teams in groups A, B, C, and D will play the third place team from another group as determined by this insane chart.

Screen Shot 2015-06-03 at 4.08.00 PM

If I were a fan of a country stuck in group E or F, I would be angry that my team had no chance of picking up a relatively easy matchup against a third place team. I don’t know whether groups E and F are intentionally weaker to reflect this advantage or if it was just the (bad) luck of the draw.

Given the indignation about the turf, I don’t expect another women’s World Cup to ever be played on anything but grass. And in another decade or so, I expect the women’s World Cup will move to 32 teams and be identical to the men’s. That is, unless the men’s World Cup keeps expanding also. Only time will tell.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

Meet the U.S. Women's Soccer Team: Becky Sauerbrunn

The 2015 soccer Women’s World Cup begins on Saturday, June 6 in Canada. The United States team is one of a handful of favorites to win the tournament and they’ve got a great story. Despite decades of excellent play, the team has not won a World Cup championship since 1999. That’s a whole generation of dreams denied and all the reason anyone should need to root for the team this year. To help prepare you to root for team and country, we’re going to run a short profile of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews will strive to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Becky Sauerbrunn

Position: Defender

Number: 4

National team experience: 81 appearances, this will be her second World Cup, and she has 0 international goals.

What to expect from Becky Sauerbrunn: Becky Sauerbrunn is a prototypical central defender. She’s strong, physical, and totally reliable. If you’re a midfielder, you feel secure knowing that if you make a mistake, Sauerbrunn is right behind you to clean it up. If you’re a goalie, you know you can count on her to keep the front of your net clear. With newcomer Julie Johnston taking over the other central defensive position and doing so with a distinct attacking flair, Sauerbrunn has become the leader of the back line and an even more firmly defensive player. Barring a major injury, we should expect to see Sauerbrunn on the field for every minute of the World Cup. She’s the only player to start in every match the team has played so far this year and she barely ever comes off the field. She’s used to being a workhorse — during her two years in the now defunct WPS professional soccer league, she was the only player in the entire league to play every minute of every game. At her current professional team, the NWSL’s FC Kansas City, she is captain and reigning two-time defensive player of the year.

Video: Like I said, Becky Sauerbrunn is the person you want cleaning up your idiotic mistakes.

Non-gendered personal interest item: Every player who makes a national team remembers their first game with the team. It’s a goal that many of them have been fighting toward for most of their lives. For Becky Sauerbrunn, that sublime memory was cemented and complicated by suffering a broken nose. Can you imagine what that would feel like? Not just the broken nose, but to have made it to the pinnacle of your profession only to break your nose in your first day at work? Crazy.

Links: Read Joe Steigmeyer make the case that Sauerbrunn is the “most important” player on the U.S. Team in the Bleacher Report. Check out Sauerbrunn’s US Soccer page and follow her on Twitter.

Meet the U.S. Women's Soccer Team: Amy Rodriguez

The 2015 soccer Women’s World Cup begins on Saturday, June 6 in Canada. The United States team is one of a handful of favorites to win the tournament and they’ve got a great story. Despite decades of excellent play, the team has not won a World Cup championship since 1999. That’s a whole generation of dreams denied and all the reason anyone should need to root for the team this year. To help prepare you to root for team and country, we’re going to run a short profile of every player on the 23-person roster. When female athletes take their turn in the spotlight, they often receive coverage that is slanted toward non-game aspects of their stories — marriage, children, sexual preference, perceived lack-of or bountiful sexiness, social media activity, etc. In the hope of balancing things out, just a tiny bit, these previews will strive to stay on the field, with only a little bit of non-gendered personal interest when possible.

Amy Rodriguez

Position: Forward

Number: 8

National team experience: 123 appearances, this will be her second World Cup, and she has 29 international goals.

What to expect from Amy Rodriguez: Amy Rodriguez is the forgotten striker. At 28 years of age, she has played her whole career in the shadow of Abby Wambach, seven years older and, more to the point, the most prolific goal scorer in soccer history. She’s also not one of the new generation of strikers who are vying to inherit Wambach’s position: Alex Morgan, 25 years old, Sydney Leroux, 25, and Christen Press, 26. Caught between a rock (clearly Wambach) and three hard-charging pebbles, it’s easy to forget that Rodriguez started all but one of the games in the last World Cup. By the end of this World Cup, if things break right for Rodriguez, she might be much, much easier to remember. If Wambach shows any signs of age, if Morgan can’t get on the field because of her knee injury, and if Leroux or Press show any signs of immaturity, Rodriguez will be there to cooly do her thing. What is her thing? Rodriguez is a powerful player whose strength and low center of gravity help her excel in the crowded, chaotic areas of the field. She is often able to get to passes you think she shouldn’t be able to by throwing a shoulder into a larger defender as she runs by them. Once she has the ball, it’s very hard for the other team to get it back. She scores many of her goals by knocking a shot in from up close or by placing it over or around the goalie from afar. You don’t often see her smash the ball, her outside shots are surprisingly delicate for such a bullish on the ball player. It remains to be seen how much playing time Rodriguez gets but I would expect her to make the most of whatever time she does get.

Video: Pay close attention to Rodriguez’ physical play and technical outside shooting

Non-gendered personal interest item: As befits her low profile, there isn’t much out there about Rodriguez that isn’t about her “surprise pregnancy” or returning to play after giving birth. Way to gendered for this section. Instead, here’s a bonus video of her scoring five goals in a single match. In case you were wondering, that isn’t a record. The record is 13 (!!) scored by Australia’s Archie Thompson.

Links: Check out Rodriguez’ US Soccer page and follow her on Twitter.