Freedom Insider

By StarCityFan

To make a long story short, I have been persuaded by my friends and fellow fans that my WPS boycott is going rather too far. So I have renewed my season tickets and am getting back into the fannish swing of things. This doesn’t mean that I’ve forgiven Hope Solo, the Atlanta Beat general manager who refuses to admit that Solo still needs to apologize, or the league for not stepping in. And there will still be consequences. I’ve done a lot in support of the Freedom and WPS that I didn’t really enjoy doing very much. That’s done. From here on out, I’m going to do what I like, and the heck with the rest. Fortunately for those of you who like to read this blog, writing about the Freedom is something I very much enjoy doing. So enough about me – let’s move on to that.

How big was Saturday’s win? Just about everyone realized that Saturday’s match against Sky Blue FC, our rival for the fourth and final playoff spot, was a big deal. However, math major that I am, I computed the odds and figured out just how big a deal it was. So I’m going to give the standard win-or-go-home playoff game a 100, that being the difference between the odds of advancing if you win (100%) and if you lose (0%). Doing a quick-and-dirty calculation based on the possibilities ensuing from Saturday’s match, I figured that if the Freedom had lost, they’d have about a 3% chance of making the playoffs – if you simplify the possibilities to just wins and losses, there was only 1 scenario out of a possible 32 that had Washington in the playoffs: the Freedom would have had to win both of their remaining matches, while Sky Blue lost all three of theirs. On the other hand, with a win, there are 26 permutations out of 32 that put the Freedom in the playoffs. Assuming that all possibilities are equally likely, that’s an 81% chance of getting in. So the StarCityFan Significance Factor (SSF) is 81-3, or 78, which isn’t that much less than a playoff match.

How big is Sunday’s game? Thus emboldened by my initial calculations, I put together a more sophisticated model to figure out how important Sunday’s match against Chicago is, given the current standings. I was somewhat surprised at the results. My current estimate of the odds of the Freedom making the playoffs is 70.48%. (I’m only putting in the two decimal places to keep from putting down a very approximate-looking 70%. Even I’m not that anal!) That’s based on weighting all of the possible results of the remaining four relevant matches (two each for the Freedom and Sky Blue), including ties. If Washington wins on Sunday, that goes up to 92.8%. If they lose, that drops to 30.4%. So the SSF is 62, still a pretty big number (A tie leaves them at 80.8%, so not losing is much more important than winning). More significantly, losing would mean that the Freedom have lost control of their destiny: even if they beat Atlanta the following weekend, they could still miss out on the playoffs if Sky Blue wins their two remaining matches.

But how good is Chicago, really? You’d think we wouldn’t have to worry too much about a team that would consider themselves fortunate at this point to finish in fifth place out of seven teams. However, they just had a solid showing against Philadelphia, winning 2-0, and their signing of Spanish international Veronica Boquete, fresh off playing for the undefeated W-League champion Buffalo Flash, has paid dividends already as she got the game-winning goal in that match. With nothing to play for, they would certainly like nothing better than to mess up the Freedom’s finish as they may well have done already with the Independence. Meanwhile, Washington is far and away the worst road team in the league, with a mere one road win on the season, and that one was against the Atlanta Beat before their infusion of Athletica players. But if they’re going to pull one out, now’s the time. You might remember that last year the Freedom went into Chicago needing a win and pulled one out off a superb late goal from Allie Long.

Can the Freedom earn a home playoff game? The surprising answer to this one is yes. If Washington wins out while Philadelphia loses their one remaining match, then the first playoff match will be at the SoccerPlex, just as it was last year. That may seem like a long shot, but really the only unlikely part of it would be Washington beating Chicago. After that, the Freedom come home to play the last place Atlanta Beat. Philadelphia, meanwhile, has to finish by flying to the West Coast and playing FC Gold Pride, who have only lost one home match all season. So, particularly given the Freedom’s road ineptness this year, this is certainly something we should be hoping for.

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By StarCityFan

Washington Freedom (4-5-5, 17 points, 4th place) at FC Gold Pride (11-3-1, 34 points, 1st place)
Saturday, July 24, 7 p.m. EDT
Maryland SoccerPlex, Boyds, Md.
All-time series: Even at 2-2-1
Last meeting: Gold Pride 3, Freedom 2

FC Gold Pride and the Freedom have been going in opposite directions since I wrote the preview for their last meeting: the league leaders have won three in a row to pad their lead, while the Freedom have lost two, holding at the same number of standings points. The Freedom in fact have not won a match since downing the Philadelphia Independence, 2-1, at the SoccerPlex on May 30.

With only 10 games left in the season, it’s crunch time. Starting today, Washington plays four games in 12 days that could decide its postseason fate. By the end of the evening on Aug. 4, the Freedom could at best have 29 points, likely good enough for second place and close to clinching a playoff spot, or they could still be mired at 17 points and needing to win most or all of their remaining games to reach the postseason.

Having to play the first-place team in that situation does not bode well, and against Team Marta (Sol last year, Gold Pride this year), Washington is 0-4-1. However, the Freedom did put on a battle the last time these teams faced each other, roaring back from a 3-0 deficit with two late goals to make the game competitive. And I may be a bit biased, but I think that if Kari Seitz had been refereeing that match, Gold Pride would have finished the game with 9 or 10 players. Seitz, you might remember, had the guts to red-card Los Angeles Sol defender Allison Falk in last year’s championship for fouling Natasha Kai when she was the last defender able to interfere with Kai’s attack on goal. Unfortunately for the Freedom, this referee was not so bold, despite one brazen foul and several very arguable ones in similar situations.

Again, I’d like to see Nikki Marshall up top. She gave the Gold Pride back line fits even in the few minutes she played in the prior match, scoring one goal and threatening repeatedly. With Abby Wambach back, that should give the Freedom the “lightning-and-thunder” combination they’ve been missing ever since Lisa De Vanna broke her leg. Lene Mykjåland, alas, has not been living up to expectations – I keep wondering if our Scandinavian is having issues with the heat of this miserable summer.

Sarah Huffman and Allie Long are back from national team camp and should bolster the midfield. If Marshall plays forward, Kristi Eveland will be in the back line, as she was in the previous game against Boston. The defense needs to hang tough for the full 90 minutes, though I think the key won’t be shutting Gold Pride down (practically impossible with Marta, Christine Sinclair and Tiffeny Milbrett up front) so much as scoring enough goals to stay ahead of them. So I’m hoping for an old-fashioned Washington Freedom 4-3 barnburner. Let’s see if they can chalk up their first-ever win against Team Marta.

P.S. There was a preview of last weekend’s Boston Breakers match, but it vanished in the ether somewhere between my email and the website.

[Note from Jim: It is lost somewhere in the website - I had it all ready to go, hit publish and it vanished. I was away from my computer all day Sunday so I couldn't fix the problem and have been traveling since then so my apologies to StarCityFan and all the readers.]

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I discussed this topic a little in my recap of Sunday’s loss, but it’s something that I’ve heard being discussed a lot lately so I thought I would delve into the topic a little more. Can anyone out there tell me what’s going on with Alex Singer?

The No. 8 overall pick in the 2009 WPS Draft, Singer was a key piece on last year’s Freedom backline, starting 13 of 16 games for a total of 1,143 minutes. Granted, her playing time tapered off as the season went on but a lot of that seemed to be due to a concussion she suffered midseason. She had played every minute of every game to that point and seemed adept at holding her own against the top-level talent in this league.

At the conclusion of the season, Singer seemed to be in good enough shape that she went with F Lisa De Vanna to play in Australia’s W-League and from all accounts it seems she played well there. And she seemed to be doing well enough that she earned a spot on the Freedom’s protected list. In fact, it seemed more people were concerned about why we were keeping Allie Long over Lori Lindsey.

So, if Singer was considered one of the 10 best players on the team at the time of expansion, what happened since then? She has logged only 60 minutes in 4 games played, and was one of only two players not to play last week when the team was extremely short-handed.

I don’t know how much sense it makes to shake up a defense that has produced 4 shutouts already but given the fact that the Freedom have struggled to score since learning De Vanna broke her leg while on Australian National Team duty, it seems like it might make sense to move Rebecca Moros or Nikki Marshall up top so Lene Mykjaland and Christie Welsh can revert back to their roles coming off the bench since they seem to be more productive in that sense.

Moving Moros or Marshall would then open a spot on the backline and given Singer’s experience starting with Cat Whitehill and Becky Sauerbrunn last year, doesn’t that seem like it would be a natural evolution of the lineup? The one wrinkle to all this is it seems Kristi Eveland has earned the role as the first defender off the bench but maybe it makes more sense to keep the rookie in that role and see if Singer still has what it takes to contribute to this squad. If she can’t, then maybe she needs to be the next one to go.

I hate sitting here at my computer and second-guessing Jim Gabarra’s decision not to play Singer because truthfully I have no idea what is going on behind-the-scenes. It could very well be that Singer suffered an injury in practice at some point and isn’t fit to play or it could be that she really has fallen that low on the depth chart. But since I can’t find any mention of either of things, I can only sit her and postulate on what I know. And what I know is Alex Singer used to be considered a top defender on this team and now she isn’t.

Hopefully as Gabarra continues to tinker with his lineup in an effort to jump start his club, he will keep Singer in mind. And hopefully if I’m missing something really obvious in this situation, someone will be kind enough to let me know.

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I don’t really know what to say about yesterday’s ugly loss other than I guess it was nice to see the Freedom continue to try to fight back until the final whistle. If you want more analysis than that, check out some great recaps here, here or here.

The losses of Abby Wambach, Sarah Huffman and Allie Long to WNT duty certainly hurt but the real issue is the Freedom have not found a suitable replacement for the loss of Lisa De Vanna. What we have seen since the injury is that Lene Mykjaland is a great sub for De Vanna and Christie Welsh is a nice fourth forward – someone who can provide fresh legs at the end of the match but can’t be counted on for more than 20+ minutes at a time.

And when Wambach is away, that only leaves Mykjaland and Welsh up top. Nikki Marshall seems to be a nice option to move up when desperate but who knows what impact moving her to forward full time will have on the defense. There may not be another forward that can step in at this point in the season but this is an issue that won’t be going away before the end of the season either.

At this point I think it would be beneficial to see Jim Gabarra shake up the roster a little more in an effort to not let this season get away. Alex Singer continues to sit on the bench and maybe she needs to start playing so Marshall and/or Rebecca Moros can move to forward (Moros played both forward and midfield last season).

Will that solve the Freedom’s consistency issues? Not likely, but it could be enough to keep this team from falling out of contention by August. Hey, when you’ve gone five straight matches without a win what do you have to lose?

LINKS

Here are some stories to take your mind off the Freedom’s woes…

• ‘Taz’ chasing WPS dream with Force (Reporter-Herald) – 2010 Freedom draft pick Lauren Robertson hasn’t given up on her quest to play in WPS.
• Freedom Newbies: Rookie Nikki Marshall (BleacherReport.com) – Speaking of Marshall, here’s an in-depth profile on the rookie.
• Show Your Support: The Washington Freedom’s Bravehearts (All White Kit) -Jenna Pel talks with one of the Freedom’s two supporters groups in this Q&A.
• Soccer: All or nothing for Wambach (Omaha.com) – The WNT is in Omaha tomorrow so the local paper talked with the Freedom’s star to preview the match. The best thing about this article is it talks both about Abby’s time with the WNT and the Freedom – that doesn’t seem to happen too often.

That will do it for today. As always, feel free to leave your opinions in the comments below.

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By StarCityFan

Washington Freedom (4-3-5, 17 points, 4nd place) at FC Gold Pride (8-3-1, 25 points, 1st place)
Sunday, July 11, 6 p.m. EDT
Pioneer Stadium, Hayward, Calif.
All-time series: Freedom hold 2-1-1 advantage, last meeting was a 1-1 draw

Cutting-and-pasting the information above from the last meeting between the two teams and then modifying it provides some insight in itself. Going into the last meeting, Washington was in second place and only two points behind FCGP. Since then, the Freedom have gone 0-1-4 to drop from second to fourth and fall eight points behind the pace, as Gold Pride went 3-1-1. It would be a nice time to turn that around, but I’m not hopeful.

The spanner in the works is that the US National Teamers have been called into camp. The Freedom will be without Sarah Huffman, Allie Long, and Abby Wambach for this game (and probably the next), while Gold Pride will be missing Nicole Barnhart, Shannon Boxx, Rachel Buehler and Kelley O’Hara. It’s a blow to both teams, but I think more to Washington. We will be without our marquee player and our pesky defensive midfielders while Gold Pride still has Christine Sinclair and Marta. If nothing else, we may find out just how much credit Allie and Huffy deserve for the Freedom’s improved defensive play this year.

To look on the optimistic side, Gold Pride is missing some key players as well. Boxx is simply one of the best midfielders in the world, and it’s a big step down from Barnhart to whomever will be starting in goal instead: Erin Guthrie was selected in the fourth round of the college draft this year, and Brittany Cameron was picked up as a free agent, so unless one of them turns out to be a sleeper like Karen Bardsley, they won’t be nearly as formidable.

For the Freedom lineup, I see Christie Welsh starting in Abby’s position, and perhaps she and Lene Mykjåland can get the ball past an inexperienced goalkeeper – or maybe Nikki Marshall will move up front again and show how she became Colorado’s all-time leading scorer even before her senior year (I was pretty excited by that little experiment – were you?).

In the midfield, I would expect to see Beverly Goebel and Brittany Klein. This might be promising. Goebel’s done well so far, and Klein earned her WPS All-Star position last year through determination and hard work. So perhaps we won’t be in as much trouble as I’m afraid of.

Anyhow, it should be an exciting match, and only the second Freedom road match to be on the Fox Soccer Channel. If any of you want to watch the game with some like-minded souls, feel free to join the Freedom Fighters viewing party at the Murphy’s Law Irish Restaurant, on the west side of Wisconsin Avenue just a few blocks north of the Tenleytown Metro station. See you there!

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