Soccer Archives - Page 9 of 17

Meet the U.S. Women's Soccer Team: Kelley O'Hara

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.

Kelly O’Hara

Position: Defender

Number: 5

National team experience: 59 appearances, this will be her second World Cup, and she has 0 international goals.

What to expect from Kelly O’Hara: One of the things you might have noticed as you’ve been reading our U.S. Women’s national soccer team player profiles is how many of the players began as strikers in high school and college and then shifted to a midfield or defensive role on the national team. O’Hara both fits this trend and doesn’t fit this trend. She was one of, if not the best, attacking player in her year in college. Her senior year at Stanford, she scored 26 goals and won the coveted Hermann trophy as the best soccer player in the nation. At the international level, she played striker as well. On the U.S. Under-twenty team she scored 25 goals in 35 appearances. When she was called up to the senior team, it was as a striker. Then in 2012, an injury to Ali Krieger left the team without a good option for an outside defensive role. The team turned to O’Hara and she did not disappoint. She played every minute of the 2012 Olympics as an outside defender and helped the team win the gold medal. Despite this success, she continues to play striker on her professional team. All this versatility is impressive, but I wonder if it has done her a disservice. It’s hard to be the best at any one thing when you’re asked to do so many different things. Coming into this year’s World Cup, O’Hara has been unable to grab a starting position in any position. She’s played as a wing-defensive sub and also as a reserve midfielder. It’s comforting to have such a versatile substitute on the bench, ready to step in wherever she’s needed, but you have to ask yourself what could have been if she had been able to play one position for her whole career.

Video: I hesitate to choose a video that features a player fouling opponents twice and then getting a yellow card but it does show the physical play that has allowed O’Hara to transition to a defensive role.

Links: Read an interview of O’Hara by Eight by Eight’s Andrew Helms or listen to a Men in Blazers podcast with her. Check out her US Soccer page and follow her on Twitter.

What is a midfielder in soccer?

Midfielders are the work horses of the soccer world. They cover the most ground of any players and are simultaneously the most varied and versatile. There are lost of ways to play midfield and lots of types of people who play it but there are some things they all have in common. Midfielders must be able to run for 90 minutes. They must be responsible and have good judgement because no matter how promising an opportunity to attack looks, it is their responsibility to get back on defense when the opposing team counter attacks. Midfielders are fanatic about possession — both keeping it when their team has the ball and getting it back when the ball is lost to the opposition. Midfielders have the best sense of where they are on the field. This may sound simple, but no other position requires a player to roam the untethered area in the center of the field as much as a midfielder, and knowing, without effort, where you are, is harder than it seems. Playing in the middle of the field also demands great creativity. Every choice a midfielder makes is an unbounded one — they can run or pass back, forward, left, or right. The soccer world is an oyster to a midfielder but it’s a punishing oyster, to be sure.

Soccer people sometimes use numbers to refer to positions. Of the following types of midfielders, the central attacking midfielders are called 10s and the central defensive midfielders are called 6s.

Central attacking midfielder

If you were starting a dream soccer team, you would want your best player to be a central attacking midfielder. Playing just behind the strikers, this position provides the greatest opportunity for creative brilliance. As opposed to a striker, a central attacking midfielder is not beholden to anyone for anything. If they want the ball, they can drop farther back and get it easily from a defender. If the strikers on their team are not scoring, a central attacking midfielder should be able to pick up the slack themselves. They are wonderful dribblers, productive scorers, and the best passers in the world. Playing this position may not seem like the most physically demanding position — they don’t bear the defensive responsibilities of other midfielders — but don’t let that fool you, it’s still tough. Great central attacking midfielders take more physical abuse than any other players on the field. Defenders mark them carefully and would often rather hack them down with an early trip than let them pick up a head of steam.

Central defensive or holding midfielders

The central defensive midfielder or holding midfielder is often the toughest player on the team. Asked to take part in a team’s offense while also tracking back and tackling the opponent’s attacking midfielder — often the other team’s best player — a defensive midfielder has her hands full. Defensive midfielders are sure tacklers and tireless workers who pursue the ball fanatically. Defensive midfield is such a taxing job that only the very best are able to do everything it requires equally well. Most people in this position either specialize in the defensive aspects of the position and play a lot like a defender or lean more towards offensive soccer. A good offensive player put in this position will still “hold back” as the position requires but love to jump start the offense with highly technical long passes. From their deep position, holding midfielders can see the entire field and have a great opportunity to anticipate movement and provide service to an attacking player right where she needs it.

Left or right midfielders

Midfielders who play on the side of the field are hard working players who don’t often get the appreciation that their central midfielder teammates do. As opposed to central midfielders, who have one or two players in front and behind them (a defensive midfielder plays in front of a defender and behind a central attacking midfielder and a striker — an attacking midfielder plays behind a striker and in front of a defender and an attacking midfielder) a left or right midfielder is often one of only two people up and down their part of the field. Unless they are directly supporting a winger on offense, an outside midfielder is the most forward player on their side of the field. This doesn’t take away any of their defensive responsibility. Getting caught too far forward can mean leaving the defender on that side of the field outnumbered two or three to one — a hopeless position. The saving grace for an outside midfielder is the salvation of the sideline. Since their responsibility is primarily up and down that line, they learn to think about soccer from the sideline in, knowing nothing bad can happen beyond them to the outside.

Meet the U.S. Women's Soccer Team: Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan

Position: Striker

Number: 13

National team experience: 84 appearances, this will be her second World Cup, and she has 51 international goals.

What to expect from Alex Morgan: Morgan is one of the big mysteries of the World Cup. The high point of her international career to date has been 2012 when she scored a whopping 28 goals in 31 games, while adding 28 assists, just to prove she’s a well rounded player. At that point, it seemed as though the torch of great American strikers that started with Mia Hamm and was passed to Abby Wambach would be passed neatly to Alex Morgan. Morgan had everything you’d want from a striker. She’s fast, skilled, and opportunistic. Her goal scoring touch was only matched by her ability to put herself in the right place at the right time. Alas, things have not gone so smoothly since then. She’s been beset by a series of injuries, many to a troublesome left ankle, that have left her frequently unavailable to play and less effective when she does play. When healthy, she’s one of the best strikers in the world. Heading into this World Cup, Morgan is again out of the lineup, this time with a left knee injury that is said to be a bone bruise. She’s missed the last two U.S. games. Because of her injury, it’s not clear what to expect from her in the World Cup. Are they simply being conservative with a minor injury by holding her out? If that’s the case, we should expect a full-strength Morgan to explode onto the World Stage once more. If she’s not at full strength though, she could come onto the field as a sub or not at all. Sydney Leroux is a similar type of player and 100% of her is probably better than 80% of Morgan.

Video: It’s annoyingly difficult to find a compilation of Alex Morgan goals without being interspersed with glamour shots. This one is pretty good.

Non-gendered personal interest item: Sports Pro Media recently named Morgan the 19th most marketable athlete in the world. Admittedly, this does have something to do with how Morgan represents herself to the world (which certainly has something to do with gender) but that’s no different from the next two men on the list, Rory Mcllroy or Cristiano Ronaldo.

Links: Check out Morgan’s website, her US Soccer page and follow her on Twitter.

Meet the U.S. Women's Soccer Team: Carli Lloyd

Carli Lloyd

Position: Midfielder

Number: 10

National team experience: 194 appearances, this will be her third World Cup, and she has 63 international goals.

What to expect from Carli Lloyd: Carli Lloyd is one of the most powerful soccer players in the world. From her position in the center of the midfield, (although coach Jill Ellis has experimented with her in an outside midfield role), Lloyd works tirelessly on offense and defense. She is noticeably stronger than almost everyone else in the sport. This shows itself in different ways on offense and defense. On offense, you’ll notice that once Lloyd has the ball, it’s almost impossible to get it away from her. On defense, watch her make legal (most of the time) contact with an opponent and notice how they fly away from her, leaving her and the U.S. team with vitally important possession of the ball. Lloyd’s other noticeable super power is her shot, which she unleashes from long distance, often 20-25 yards from the goal. From most players, this type of shot would sarcastically be labeled, “ambitious.” From Lloyd, it’s totally realistic. She can’t score at will from distance, but it’s pretty close. Lloyd doesn’t have the vision, dribbling, or passing abilities of some of her midfield counterparts, but she more than makes up for it with power and determination. Lloyd should play close to every minute of the World Cup this year.

Video: Lloyd scores a lot but to really appreciate her game, you need to see her play away from the ball as well.

Non-gendered personal interest item: Lloyd was Rutgers University’s first four-time All American athlete. Not that my alma mater has a particularly fine athletic tradition, but Paul Robeson did play football and sing there, so back off!

Links: Read the definitive profile of Lloyd from Jeff Kassouf in NBC Sports World. Check out Lloyd’s website, her US Soccer page and follow her on Twitter.

What is a striker or forward in soccer?

Imagine you’re a striker. Your sole purpose in soccer and perhaps in life is to score goals. You are single-mindedly devoted to goal-scoring in the lowest scoring popular sport in the world. When you score, you are the hero of all heroes. If you don’t, you are the greatest failure in the history of the world… for that week, at least. Strikers should be fast, fast enough to run by defenders. They need to be strong, strong enough to fend of defenders who are often bigger than them. Forwards also need excellent ball skills, deceptive enough to fake defenders out and sure enough to hold onto the ball despite being surrounded by three, four, or five opposing players. It’s no surprise that strikers are typically the most temperamental players on the soccer field. Since they’re most often in a position to earn their team a penalty kick by being fouled, they’re usually the most frequent divers or “foul simulators” in the game. Strikers are dependent on their teammates to pass them the ball, a job which is actually called “providing service.” Like Wide Receivers in American Football, this doesn’t encourage them to be nice, humble, cuddly people, but instead it encourages flamboyant, self-aggrandizing, lunatics. Above everything else, the best strikers in the world have amazing instincts. They seem to know where a ball is going to bounce and how to kick it through and around the sea of legs to score a goal. They have a seemingly supernatural ability to accelerate and sprint by a defender just when he’s least expecting it.

Soccer people sometimes use numbers to refer to positions. Strikers may be referred to as number nines if they play in the center of the field and 11s if they play on one side or the other.

Center Forward

The center forward is the prototypical attacking player, so they are usually referred to simply as strikers. Strikers have a lot of flexibility about where they play, so you may see one on either side of the field, but their natural hunting ground is the center of the field. A great striker should be the fastest sprinter on the field. During most of the game, a striker will meander around the back line of the opposing team, probing for weaknesses. At opportune moments, she will sprint between defenders, trying to time things just right, so that she is a step ahead of the defender when she receives the pass but not offsides. Once the striker has the ball and sees a clear path to the goal, his instincts take over and every nerve and muscle in his body is devoted to scoring. Rifle a shot past the goalie or dribble around him and what awaits is the glorious feeling of seeing the ball hit the back of the net. Strikers should also be proficient at heading the ball into the net.

Target forward

Scoring in virtually impossible in soccer. Just moving the ball up the field while maintaining possession is difficult. Teams that deploy a target forward try to establish an attacking position by sending her up the field and then attempting long passes. A target forward will establish a position, turn her back to the goal she’s trying to score on, and then make herself available to receive a pass. The target forward uses his (usually big and strong) body to shield the ball from people on the other field, protecting it for long enough for his teammates to run up the field and join him. In this role, a target forward’s job is still to create goals, but she’s not necessarily the one who will score the majority of them. A good target forward is adept at flicking nifty passes to their teammates who are running towards goal.

Winger

In formations with two or more strikers, there’s often one player who plays less centrally than the other. This player is referred to as a winger because he or she spends more time closer to the side or the wing of the field than the center. Wingers are usually smaller and faster than their central attacking counterparts. They are less frequently used as the target for a long pass up the field or a cross swinging into the center, so their ability to out-jump and out-muscle defenders is not as important. Instead, wingers are crafty, quick, and manipulative. They are the masters of the dark arts of attacking soccer: how to time a run just right to beat an offsides trap, how to win a set piece by playing the ball off a defender’s leg and out of bounds, or by how to trick a referee into calling a foul.

Meet the U.S. Women's Soccer Team: Sydney Leroux

Sydney Leroux

Position: Striker

Number: 2

National team experience: 70 appearances, this will be her first World Cup, and she has 35 international goals.

What to expect from Sydney Leroux: At this point, even with only one friendly game left before the World Cup begins, no one is really sure who will be starting in the two forward attacking positions for the U.S. team. This is certainly a problem of excess — the team has so many good options, it’s hard to choose one. Sydney Leroux is one of those options. Whether she starts or comes off the bench, Leroux plays the same way: she looks to use her speed and physicality to run onto balls played to her through, around, or over the defense. Once she has the ball, it’s tough to knock her off of it. She often eschews early shots, seeming to prefer to dribble around defenders and even the goalie before tapping the ball into an open net. When she’s off her game, she doesn’t look as though she’s contributing, because she’s not a player who gets in position for easy passes and then plays the ball off to another attacker. When it’s not working for her on the field, she just basically can’t get the ball. When it is working though, she’s perhaps the team’s most high-octane, aggressive attacking threat. No matter what, her work rate is extremely high — she’s always running and she works tirelessly to harass defenders when the other team has the ball.

Video: This is a classic Leroux goal. She gets behind the defense with a well-timed, fast run, receives a pass, and then dribbles around the goalie to score.

Non-gendered personal interest item: Leroux is a dual citizen of Canada and the United States. She was born and raised in Canada and played for Canadian youth national teams but decided to play at the senior level for the United States. This decision has made her women’s soccer public enemy number one in Canada. Expect her to be booed by Canadian fans every time she touches the ball throughout the tournament but especially if the U.S. and Canada meet up in an elimination round game.

Links: Read all about Leroux’s unique background and soccer evolution in this comprehensive SB Nation story by Kevin Koczwara. Check out Leroux’s US Soccer page and follow her on Twitter.

Meet the U.S. Women's Soccer Team: Ali Krieger

Ali Krieger

Position: Defender

Number: 11

National team experience: 65 appearances, this will be her second World Cup, and she has 1 international goal.

What to expect from Ali Krieger: At 30 years old and going into her second World Cup, Ali Krieger should be a constant veteran presence on the back line for the United States. Four years ago, she played every minute of the World Cup in Germany and scored the final goal in the team’s shoot-out victory over Brazil to advance to the semifinals. The only fly in the ointment for Krieger has been injuries. She has had bad luck when it comes to the timing and severity of injuries throughout her career. In college, she broke her leg days before the NCAA tournament her Junior year. In 2012 she tore her ACL and MCL and was forced to miss the Olympics. Fans of her feared a repeat when she suffered a concussion in a NWSL game a month ago. She returned to play May 17 in the U.S. women’s national team’s second to last friendly before the World Cup. If all goes well, Krieger will play every minute of this World Cup, holding down the right side of the U.S. defense with confident, consistent play. She’s not quite as offense minded as her counterpart over on the left side of the field, Meghan Klingenberg, but that’s okay, the team has plenty of offensive weapons.

Video: It’s really a shame that people don’t create highlight videos from solid defensive plays. This is Ali Krieger’s one goal and also the one highlight (other than getting injured) I can find for her on YouTube.

Non-gendered personal interest item: One sure sign of gender equality in sports is when injuries suffered by female athletes are as written, talked, and obsessed about as men’s. Krieger’s latest concussion is evidence that we’re approaching that. Howard Megdal used it as an example of the difficult decisions athletes and teams are forced to make about head injuries in the New York Times, and Fox Sports‘ Laura Vecsey covered her decision to wear a custom-build protective headband.

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

Meet the U.S. Women's Soccer Team: Meghan Klingenberg

Meghan Klingenberg

Position: Defender

Number: 25

National team experience: 32 appearances, this will be her first World Cup, and she has 2 international goals.

What to expect from Meghan Klingenberg: Undersized world class athletes, like 5’2″ Meghan Klingenberg, survive in every sport by having one or two remarkable qualities. For pint-sized NHL star, Martin St. Louis, it’s his freaky lower-body strength. For NBA legend, Allen Iverson, it was a mixture of quickness and complete disregard for his own safety. For Meghan Klingenberg, it’s speed. When you watch her play, she’s consistently a step or four ahead of her opponents. At times, her teammates will pass the ball in Klingenber’s direction but so far away that you think, “oh that’s a bad pass…” and then you watch Klingenberg catch up to the ball. Her speed and her experience in college as a midfielder make her perfect for playing the outside defense position as coach Jill Ellis likes to utilize it. In Ellis’ system, the wing defender is expected to move all the way up the field, helping the team transition to offense by playing give-and-go with central players before launching a cross into the penalty box. Klingenberg will be doing that for most of the World Cup — she’s played in all eight games the team has played in 2015 and started seven of them.

Video: My favorite part of this video is how, even after a goal as magnificent as this one, Klingenberg’s speed is what sticks in her teammates minds.

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

Meet the U.S. Women's Soccer Team: Julie Johnston

Julie Johnston

Position: Defender

Number: 26

National team experience: 10 appearances, this will be her first World Cup, and she has 3 international goals.

What to expect from Julie Johnston: Going into a World Cup with an inexperienced central defender is something that would usually strike fear into even the most optimistic soccer fans. Julie Johnston is the exception to that rule. Despite being 23 and having only played ten games with the senior national team, Johnston has played so confidently and well this spring, that her presence on the field has the opposite affect. She’s a calming and confidence inspiring presence for teammates and fans. The United States often dominates games and so Johnston’s main job from her central defensive position is to organize, play passes up to the midfielders, and stay vigilant against any budding counter-attacks. When the team faces tougher competition, as it will during the World Cup, it will be interesting to see if Johnston will be able to remain as physically dominant and mentally prepared as she has so far in her career. If she does, there’s no reason to think she won’t play every minute of the World Cup for team USA. Talking about careers, three goals for a central defender is a reasonable career total for some who play the position, but Johnston has already reached that number in only ten games. Watch for her leaping, aerial runs to the near post on corner kicks and free kicks. That’s where she’s done all her scoring so far.

Video: One of three goals that Johnston has scored for the national team, all off Lauren Holiday set pieces.

Non-gendered personal interest item: Johnston led the U.S. Under-20 year-old national team to a championship in the 2012 U-20 World Cup. During that tournament, she played central defender, the same role she’ll play this year at the senior level, and captained the team. If Johnston helps the team capture what’s been an incredibly elusive World Cup victory, would anyone be surprised if four or eight years from now, Johnston was captain of the senior team and a fixture at the back?

Links: Read about Johnston in this Fox Sports article by Laura Vecsey. Check out her US Soccer page and follow her on Twitter.

Why do some numbers in soccer refer to positions? What do they mean?

Dear Sports Fan,

Why do some numbers in soccer refer to positions? What do they mean?

Thanks,
Susan

Dear Susan,

Numbers are often used in soccer to refer to a player’s position. The use of a number system to refer to positions is not unusual in sports. In American football, the NFL regulates jersey numbers so that each position has a set of numbers only its players are eligible to wear. It’s typical in basketball to refer to a player’s position by number but at least there, there are only five positions to keep track of and a player’s jersey number virtually never matches his position as it sometimes does in soccer. The use of numbers in soccer is legitimately confusing for a few reasons. First, there are 11 players on the field for each team and remembering 11 positions by number is difficult. Second, there was once an assumption that a player would wear the number of the position he played but that’s no longer the case. Third, the meaning of the numbers has evolved over time in twisted ways so that they can no longer be said to be intuitive. Luckily, only a few positions are commonly referred to by number and they are quite easy to learn. We’ll run through the history first and then get to the modern meanings.

Having players wear numbers on the back of their jerseys is actually a relatively modern phenomenon. It began in the 1920s in England with the club team Chelsea. Instead of giving their players a choice, the team assigned numbers by position. Of the 11 players on the field, they started with the most defensive player, the goalie, and counted upwards from one to 11, going from right to left when players were on the same line. Unfortunately for modern soccer viewers, the teams of the 1920s played a very different formation from ones that are common today. Chelsea played with two defenders, three midfielders, and a whopping five forwards. Today, teams play in more defensive formations with four defenders and either three midfielders and three forwards or four midfielders and two forwards. As you might imagine, this has magnificently jumbled the numbering. The shift in formation is only one of the evolutionary forces that make soccer numbers difficult to follow. Soon after they began using numbers, Chelsea took a trip to South America, where according to Wikipedia, they were called “Los Numerados” or “the numbered.” The South American host teams picked up the concept of numbering their players from back to front but, since they played with different formations, they used almost entirely different number to position pairings.

For a while, this must have been so confusing to international viewers as to make the numbers virtually useless in decoding the game. Over time though, as formations have continued to evolve and soccer has become an even more globally blended game, with players from all over playing everywhere, the differing number systems have coalesced into something of a consensus. Simultaneously, players became more empowered in terms of choosing their jersey number. Although they were in the past, today’s players are no longer required to wear the number of their position. What we’re left with is the use of some numbers to refer to positions despite the fact that their meanings are almost totally divorced from jersey numbers. Here are a few of the most important numbers to know:

9 — A nine is the central attacker on any team. Whether she uses speed to streak towards the goal and score or strength to receive long passes and hold on to the ball while his teammates move up the field, the nine is the focal point of the offense.
10 — The ten is the best playmaker on the team. The offense flows through her on its way up the field. He is often the best known player, the most well respected player, the highest paid player, and the team captain as well.
6 — A six is a holding or defensive midfielder. Like a nine, a player can be a six in different ways. A six may be a big, strong, tough player who acts as an additional defender, following the opposition’s best midfield player and tackling them hard. A six may also be a playmaker, like a ten, but farther back, helping the team transition from defense to offense.

Those are by far the most common positions you’ll hear called out by number. Here are a few others you could learn if you really want to impress people:

8 — An eight is an all-purpose central midfielder. Without the offensive playmaking talents of a ten or the defensive mindset of a six, the eight does a little bit of everything. An eight is often one of the hardest working players on the field, since they have equal responsibility for offense and defense.
7 and 11 — The seven or eleven are secondary scorers. If a team plays with three attackers, the seven refers to the forward on the right, the nine to the central forward, and the 11 to the attacker on the left. On teams that play with only two attackers, either the seven or the 11 may be an outside midfielder with an attacking mindset.
3 — Time to give the defenders some. Defense is by far the most confusingly numbered area (remember the original Chelsea team only played with two of them) but the three is always used to refer to the strongest central defender. A great central defender is big, tough, and indefatigable.

In putting together these definitions, I leaned heavily on this article by Buzz Carrick in the Dallas Morning News. I highly recommend reading it.

Now that you know the meanings given to these numbers, go out and use them in a soccer context. You’ll get some knowing looks from the soccer fans in your life. And if anyone tries to drop a number we haven’t covered, like four or five, just ask them, “Do you mean a South American four or an European one?” That’ll stop them in their tracks!

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer