women's sports Archives - Page 6 of 8

Who are the 2015 Women's World Cup coaches in Group A?

The other day on Facebook my friend and Dear Dear Sports Fan Fan, Natty, asked me about the backgrounds of coaches in this year’s Women’s World Cup. I had no idea! So, I decided to do some research. Over the next few days, as the teams all play their second games in the Group Stage, we’ll be profiling their coaches.

Canada – John Herdman

A 39 year-old English native, John Herdman had no playing career to speak of. He formerly coached the New Zealand women’s national team from 2006 to 2011 before being brought on as head coach of the Canadian team. Cathal Kelly in The Globe and Mail described Herdman as his team’s “emotional bellwether, hype man and head of psy-ops. He’s a warm, chatty fellow. He’s also a little odd, in an endearing way.” He is the only coach in Group A with World Cup experience as a head coach having led the New Zealand team in the 2007 and 2011 World Cups.

China – Hao Wei

Hao Wei was a fringe player on the professional and international level for his native China. Following his playing career, he took his first coaching job as an assistant with the Chinese club team he had been playing for. From there, he moved to an assistant’s role on the Chinese national women’s team and was promoted to head coach in 2012. The 38 year-old is the team’s fifth head coach since 2007.

Netherlands – Roger Reijners

At 51, Roger Reijners has had a longer coaching career than the rest of his competition in Group A. After a solid professional career in the Dutch Eredivisie, Reijners went directly into coaching and ended up coaching both his former teams before becoming head coach of the women’s national team. Is a fast talker.

New Zealand – Tony Readings

Tony Readings came to New Zealand from his native England as a solid professional player who wasn’t quite good enough to find a permanent spot in higher level English leagues. As a coach for the New Zealand women’s program, he coached the Under-20 side and was assistant to now head coach of Canada, John Herdman, at the senior level before becoming head coach himself. Now 39, he’s coaching in his first World Cup.

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?

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!

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

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.

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

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

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.

Meet the U.S. Women's Soccer Team: Megan Rapinoe

Megan Rapinoe

Position: Midfielder

Number: 15

National team experience: 102 appearances, this will be her second World Cup, and she has 29 international goals.

What to expect from Megan Rapinoe: Every player on the U.S. national team is a great soccer player. Every player in the World Cup is probably better than anyone you or I have ever played with. But there’s something different about the few players who are truly world class. World class players just look different from everyone else. They have at least one skill that virtually no one else can match. Megan Rapinoe is a world playmaker. She has exceptional vision. Vision literally means the ability to see the field, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Rapinoe has exceptional vision in one way or another, but it also means the ability to understand where every player on the field is and to anticipate where they are going to be. This is truly where Rapinoe excels. She seems to know exactly where to put the ball. Her other exceptional skill, quite handily paired with vision, is her technical ability to pass the ball to just the spot she wants. In the flow of play, Rapinoe’s approach to playing midfielder is acquire the ball, survey the field, move the ball to the player in the position most dangerous to the opposing team. Rapinoe takes the majority of the more technical set pieces, including corner kicks. Her skill on the ball allows her to be a formidable goal-scorer, especially on shots from a distance, but it’s not her primary focus. Rapinoe missed the team’s last warm-up game with a thigh injury. How much we see her on the field during this World Cup depends a lot on her health. The more she can play, the better it will be for the U.S. team’s chances.

Video: This goal, the latest scored in World Cup history, gives me chills every time I see it. Its sheer improbability has a lot to do with the skill involved in Rapinoe’s cross.

Non-gendered personal interest item: During the 2012 Olympics, Rapinoe became the first soccer player of any gender to score a goal directly from a corner kick. Oddly enough, this type of goal has been known as an “Olympic goal” since 1924 despite having never been accomplished in the Olympics until 2012.

Links: Read Sam Borden’s fine profile of Rapinoe from a few years back in the New York Times. Check out Rapinoe’s US Soccer page, her website, and follow her on Twitter.

Why is there so little sports in coverage of women's sports?

The sports writer covering women’s sports has a problem. Write articles like people are used to reading about sports or about women? At Dear Sports Fan, we think the answer to that question should be to write articles about women’s sports the same way we would write about male sports. This isn’t to say that people should reduce female athletes to genderless passing, shooting, sweating sports-machines in order to be acceptable, but it does mean that articles which cover female athletes as women to such a degree that their athletic feats are reduced to an afterthought or forgotten entirely are bad. Sports writing that covers women’s sports but neglects the sports side of its subjects make the sports world as a whole less inclusive. One of Dear Sports Fan’s key goals is to make the sports world more inclusive. This is why we’ve been publishing gender-story-free player profiles of each of the members of the U.S. women’s national team in the lead up to the World Cup. It’s why I plunked down $12 to buy a copy of Equalizer Soccer’s 2015 World Cup preview. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees with our sports-first approach. I was disappointed by a recent issue of ESPN the Magazine that had so much promise but failed to deliver.

The June 8 edition of ESPN the Magazine showed up in my mailbox with a big picture of three members of the U.S. women’s national soccer team on the cover. With the World Cup in Canada quickly approaching, it makes sense for a sports magazine to focus on women’s soccer. I am extremely excited for the tournament. Not only is it an ideal subject for Dear Sports Fan but I’m personally invested in the U.S. team. I’ve followed them since what has unfortunately turned out to be their hey-day in the 1990s and am rooting for this group to reclaim the World Cup title after 16 years without one. I am hungry for knowledge about the upcoming tournament. Who is going to start? Who are the biggest threats to the American team? Are there any new up-and-coming players who could break out during the tournament like James Rodriguez and DeAndre Yedlin did last summer in the Men’s World Cup? I want to know all of that stuff. So, imagine my disappointment when I read the first paragraph of the first article about women’s soccer in the magazine: The Authentication of Alex Morgan by Janet Reitman.

Alex Morgan breezes into a Kansas City restaurant called Cafe Gratitude one early spring day looking perfect. Morgan is one of those people who can pull off appearing well-groomed even when drenched with sweat, and today she is casually, yet impeccably, attired in a long gray skirt, a black-and-white short-sleeved shrug and a white tank top, all of which she threw on after realizing she was half an hour late. She apologizes; she was trying to curl her hair. “I don’t know where my blow dryer is,” she says. There was also a minor crisis with her skirt, which apparently at some point was a crumpled mess. “I put it in the dryer for five minutes because we don’t have an iron yet.”

Okay, what? Alex Morgan is one of the key players on the U.S. team and, going into the World Cup, one of the biggest mysteries. She’s a star striker, who has been identified by many as the obvious goal-scoring successor to living legend Abby Wambach. Unfortunately, her last two years have been riddled with injuries and she’s missed most of the team’s recent games with a knee injury. A fully healthy Morgan would be a big part of the U.S. team but her health is questionable. She’s also more easily replaced than other stars on the team. Sydney Leroux provides a reasonable facsimile of Morgan and Amy Rodriguez or Christen Press could also step into her position. There’s so much good sports coverage to be had here but instead we get an introduction that focuses solely on Morgan’s appearance while also suggesting that she is ditzy in a stereotypically female way.

I move on to the second (and only other) article in the magazine about women’s soccer. This is an article about Hope Solo, the team’s long-time starting goalie. By Allison Glock, its headline is “Pride. Regret. Hope.” The article begins with a description of Solo’s home in Kirkland, Washington. We get a description of Solo’s “tasteful living room,” learning that it is “tidy, inviting” with its “plush beige couches” and “throw blankets [that] are draped over armrests.” Okay… We get a description of Solo, who is:

Tinier than you imagine. Lean, compact. The planes in her angular face catch what little light Seattle has to offer, her hair a Breck-girl wonder, her teeth white as the queen’s gloves.

When we hear from Solo herself, her first two quotes are about her husband, Jerramy Stevens. The first is, “He’s the neat freak.” The second, “I can’t even leave anything on the stairs.” Within four paragraphs, we have a description of Solo’s appearance, with reference to classic 1950s era shampoo ads, a description of her house which sounds like it comes out of an interior design article, and Solo herself speaking only about her husband. This article doesn’t even pass the Bechdel test so far!

All right, before we get carried away too far in our indignation about gender equality, there are some ameliorating circumstances and I am by no means out to hammer the two authors.

First, this is a magazine; a paper magazine. So, its articles have to be written and prepped far in advance. It can’t compete with websites in terms of newsworthiness, so it doesn’t try. Profiles are therefore a reasonable approach to take and the magazine frequently runs profiles of male athletes that also focus on their personal lives to some extent.

The second issue is the choice of subjects. The focus on Hope Solo’s family life is a legitimate, hard news focus because of a legal history that involves domestic abuses charges among other things. Of all the U.S. women’s soccer players, Alex Morgan has the most consciously constructed image. Her image is so carefully constructed that it’s hard to imagine writing about her without examining it. Solo and Morgan are both celebrities as well as athletes. Reitman recognizes this in her article when she writes:

If Hope Solo, with her complex personal life and frequent outbursts, is perceived as the Dark Queen in women’s soccer, then Alex Morgan is Snow White.

This is a hysterically accurate representation of how Morgan and Solo are viewed. So then, why choose those two? There are 21 other players on the team. Abby Wambach is the greatest goal scorer in international soccer history, men’s or women’s. Julie Johnston is a young player who is expected to play a major role on the team. Christie Rampone will be playing in her fifth World Cup. Why not profile athletes who are less set in the cultural understanding?

Admittedly, women’s sports is an active battleground in the gender-equality culture war, and its athletes consciously or unconsciously make and are seen as making statements about gender all the time. Ignoring the issue of gender completely (as I’ve chosen to do in my profiles) is sticking your head in the sand a little. As the articles go on, both authors make very clever and insightful comments about the diverging pressure women athletes are under to be feminine and win. Here is Reitman on Morgan:

Morgan has her own list of contradictions that don’t make her any less authentic: waving the flag for tween body image but contemplating breast implants; wanting her sport to be taken seriously while consciously leveraging her looks to attract male viewers…

In her article on Solo, Glock uses a quote from Solo’s teammate Carli Lloyd to describe the plight of being a world-class female athlete.

Lloyd has “felt pressure to be a certain kind of girl.” She too chafes at the double standard for women in sports, finding the impetus exhausting, if not impossible, to be sweet and approachable, to sand down every edge, to exist in a state of constant gratitude. “We live in a world where hair color and taking bikini selfies is more vital than stats,” sighs Lloyd, noting, “You can get shafted if you don’t play.”

The sad truth is that Lloyd is right. She has gotten shafted. She doesn’t construct a gendered image of herself as carefully as Morgan does or as Solo once tried to do, so she doesn’t get profiled in ESPN the Magazine. The editors of the magazine chose to focus on Solo and Morgan for a set of reasons. Their conventional attractiveness, enormous social media following, and status as known quantities in the culture were all part of that choice and all defensible to some extent. That’s kind of the problem with these types of social issues. A series of tiny defensible choices lead to the production of articles that focus almost exclusively on women’s athletes as women, not as athletes. That’s a shame.

I don’t mean to pick on ESPN. Some of their work has been excellent. ESPNW, its female focused branch provides consistently good coverage of the team. The Louisa Thomas profile of Sydney Leroux on Grantland was excellent and even better is the series of articles about leading players from other country’s teams by Allison McCann. Five Thirty Eight, another ESPN property, is doing a statistical model of the World Cup just like they did for March Madness and other sporting events, male and female. In fact, this model was the only piece in the magazine aside from these two profiles to focus on the World Cup and it gives the U.S. a slight edge over Germany as the favorites to win it all.

I hope the team does win the World Cup, and if they do, I hope it nudges us a tiny bit closer to a world where we cover athletes the same way, regardless of gender. The U.S. women’s national soccer team plays its last warm-up game before the World Cup today against Korea at 4:30 p.m. ET. The game will be televised live on ESPN. If you’re looking for less gendered coverage of the team and the World Cup, (aside from this site, of course) I suggest purchasing a copy of Equalizer Soccer’s 2015 World Cup preview. Led by editors Jeff Kassouf and Ann Odong, this beautifully written and produced preview is chock full of coverage that’s sports focused.