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

Amazingly, despite the months-long drought of wins, the Freedom are still in the driver’s seat when it comes to making the playoffs. They’re competing against the Red Stars, Sky Blue FC and (just barely) the Beat for the fourth and final playoff spot. If they win out, none of those teams can catch them. That may sound tough, but they’re the only one of these teams that has no more matches against teams that are definitely bound for the playoffs, and all but one of their four remaining matches are at home.

Winning out would give them 34 points, but my prediction is that, given the other teams’ schedules and past performance, 29 would probably be sufficient.

The next two matches, both at home, are key as both are against their primary rivals, the Red Stars this Thursday and Sky Blue on Saturday the 28th. Games like these are six-point swings: the difference between winning and losing is the difference between being three points ahead of the opposition or three points behind. Two wins would give the Freedom 28 points with a road match against Chicago and a home match against a floundering Atlanta squad left. Just one point from either of those games should put them over the top, and if it’s not enough, then at least the must-win final match comes against the seventh-place team.

Sky Blue has a game in hand but a much tougher schedule. In addition to playing Washington here, they face the three playoff-bound teams plus Atlanta in Atlanta, where the Beat have actually been able to win a few. The matches against FC Gold Pride, Philadelphia and Boston are at Yurcak Field, which you’d think would be an advantage but has actually been the opposite. Sky Blue is only 1-4-3 on their home soil (guess they haven’t been paying attention to the “Defend Your Turf” campaign).

The Red Stars, other than the home-and-home against the Freedom, play the Independence and Gold Pride in Chicago and would be fortunate to pick up anything more than single points from each of those matches.

The Beat have a home-and-home against the high-flying Boston Breakers, plus they host Gold Pride and Sky Blue before ending the season at the SoccerPlex. They also have a game in hand on the Freedom but are five points back.

Coloring Thursday’s match against the Red Stars will be World Cup qualification matches by various European teams. Sonia Bompastor will be up with the French National Team, while the Red Stars’ Katie Chapman and Karen Carney will be playing for England. Additionally, the Red Stars will be missing defensive stalwart Kate Markgraf due to a concussion. These are all significant absences. Some have expressed a concern over losing Sonia’s presence in the Freedom attack, but I’m more concerned about not having her there to disrupt attacks coming from Washington’s left flank – many’s the time she’s either singlehandedly prevented balls coming in from that corner, or worked with Becky Sauerbrunn to do so.

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By StarCityFan

The Freedom went through the entire months of June and July without a single victory. You’d think that would kill any hope of making the playoffs, but it hasn’t. In fact, the Freedom are currently in fifth place, one point out of the fourth and final playoff position.

Right now I’m predicting a 2-2-2 finish, which gives them 28 points come the end of the season and should be just enough for the fourth and final playoff spot. Their next game is at Rutgers against a struggling Sky Blue FC team. I’m figuring a tie in that match. After that, they play the league-leading FC Gold Pride on the West Coast, which I doubt they’ll get points out of. Then they finish the season with three out of four games at home: Chicago on Thursday the 19th (one of the games added to the schedule after Athletica folded), Sky Blue on the 28th and Atlanta on September 11. The one final road game is against the Red Stars on September 5. I figure they should be able to get at least two wins and a tie out of that stretch.

All this of course assumes that their performance against Philadelphia on Wednesday night is now the standard, rather than how they’ve played in most of their prior summer matches.

One promising note is that the surprise of Wednesday’s lineup was the lack of surprise: Every player was in her accustomed position on the field: no more benching Cat Whitehill, throwing Nikki Marshall up front, or pulling Sonia Bompastor to the back line. I get the feeling that Jim Gabarra just told the team, “Okay, I’m not going to tweak, I’m just going to put our best XI out their in their best positions. The rest is up to you.” To the relief of Freedom fans everywhere, the team responded, pulling together and working hard for 90 minutes to produce a convincing 2-0 win against the No. 2 team in the league.

So I’m hoping that that result is the new normal, while June and July will become just a bad dream. Last year set a possible template, as the Freedom came off a three-game losing streak going into their final six matches but finished 4-1-1 to make it into third place. That, interestingly, also started with a weeknight match in New Jersey.

And, for what it’s worth, the Freedom had a similar season in 2003, when they started strong, stumbled badly in midseason, then recovered with help from a series of outstanding performances by Abby Wambach to claw into the playoffs in the fourth and final position. From there, they won two consecutive away games, one against the regular-season champions, to claim the final WUSA championship. Let’s hope that history repeats itself this year.

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By StarCityFan

By the numbers:
Position in standings: 4th (final playoff position)
Standings points: 17
Record: 4-3-5
Goals scored: 17 (3rd in league)
Goals allowed: 14 (5th in league)
Home record: 3-1-3 (2nd in league)
Away record: 1-2-2 (6th in league)

We’re halfway through the season, and the Freedom are in playoff position, though just barely and only after a fairly favorable schedule, with seven home games out of 12. And the Freedom are the most home-biased team in the league, with one of the best records at home but one of the worst on the road (The only worse road team is the expansion Atlanta Beat, who have had a hard time winning anywhere).

In fact, I think the Freedom should be in a better position than they are. If you look at the schedule and assume they should generally beat the teams below them and lose to the teams ahead of them, they’ve been upset more often than they’ve upset the opposition. They’ve faced the fifth place Chicago Red Stars twice and the sixth place Boston Breakers twice each, all at the SoccerPlex, but only have three points to show for it out of a possible 12 (one loss and three draws). On the other side, they beat Philadelphia at home and tied FC Gold Pride and Sky Blue FC on the road, and of those the only one that feels like a genuine upset is the Gold Pride match. But let’s be generous and say the Freedom picked up five upset points but while letting 12 upset points go for a net of minus-7.

Basically, that means that if Washington had kept to form they’d be in second place, one point behind the league leaders, instead of fourth and eight points behind.

But that’s all water under the bridge. Instead, let’s look ahead. As I’ve noted before, the Freedom start out the second half of the season with six out of eight games on the road, and the only two home games are against the top two teams in the league. But there are some glimmers of hope. Two of the road matches are against the Boston Breakers in Boston, where the Breakers have yet to win this year – heck, they’re worse at home than any other team is on the road. On the other hand, the Washington Freedom have never, ever beaten a Boston team in Boston, going back to the WUSA days (You can even extend this to the W-League days on a technicality, because the W-League Boston Renegades played in Framingham). Perhaps it’s high time.

With regard to play on the field, the Freedom have combined old problems with new ones. Washington has always had an issue of consistency throughout the WPS era: if the offense is successful, the defense is inept. If the defense holds on for a shutout, the offense doesn’t score. Freedom matches seem to be either 0-0 or 4-3, without a whole lot in between. The new issue is holding onto a lead, something I’ve discussed before and so won’t go into again.

I think we have the talent to compete at the highest levels in this league. Gold Pride may have Marta, but we have Abby Wambach. Philadelphia has Karina LeBlanc and Allison Falk, but we have Erin McLeod and Cat Whitehill. Sky Blue has Heather O’Reilly and Rosana, but we have Sonia Bompastor and Homare Sawa. I think it comes down to desire, teamwork and focus. We’ll find out in the remaining 12 matches if the Freedom have enough of all of those to remain in contention.

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By StarCityFan

Washington Freedom (4-3-4, 16 points 4th place) at Sky Blue FC (5-4-2, 17 points, 3rd place)
Wednesday, July 7, 7 p.m. EDT
Yurcak Field, Piscataway, N.J.
All-time series: Freedom hold 2-1-1 advantage (includes playoff match), this is first meeting in 2010

It’s taken almost half the season for the Freedom to get around to playing the defending champions.

There’s been a lot of luck in Sky Blue FC’s season so far, in both directions. The bad luck has been in the injuries and medical absences, with Natasha Kai, Carli Lloyd, and Jenni Branam out with injuries and Christie Rampone out on maternity leave. Possibly to compensate, the karma gods have made Sky Blue opponents prone to shots either off-target or right to the GK. Most significantly though, Sky Blue have serendipitously discovered that their backup goalkeeper, Karen Bardsley, is better than most other team’s starting goalkeeper, as she leads the league in shutouts (5) and saves (56).

But their luck has turned again, as Bardsley broke her collarbone during practice for the All-Star Game and is out for the rest of the season. For the Freedom, this is rather like having a battle with the Death Star on your calendar, only to find as the date approaches that its force field is down, not because some plucky teddy bears destroyed the power station but because a stormtrooper tripped over the cable.

To put it more prosaically, this puts SBFC in a situation similar to the one the Freedom faced at the beginning of the inaugural season, with their starting goalkeeper out and no reliable alternative to hand the job to. As Branam is still out, this makes Kristin Luckenbill the starter by default.

The report on “Lucky” is very similar to the one on Briana Scurry: a great goalkeeper in her time, but now well past her sell-by date. Luckenbill was WUSA Goalkeeper of the Year in 2002 as she helped her team to both the regular-season and playoff championship that year, but she hasn’t shown similar form in WPS. Last year she played about half the season for Boston and ended with a 1.44 goals-against-average. Her fellow keeper, Allison Lipsher, played about the same number of minutes but had a 0.58 GAA. In her only start for Sky Blue so far this season (when Bardsley was up with the English national team), she gave up four goals to the Philadelphia Independence.

Even so, SBFC is not to be trifled with. In their last match, they faced the high-flying FC Gold Pride on the road and managed to shut Marta down while winning, 2-0. With an already potent attack featuring Finnish international Laura Kalmari (4 goals, 0 assists), Brazilian Rosana (3g, 1a), and US national teamers Kai (3g) and Heather O’Reilly (1g, 3a), they’ve just added Italian National Team captain Patrizia Panico, who will be making her first WPS appearance tonight. Additionally, they have three national teamers on the back line in Rampone, Brittany Taylor and Megan Schnur, and solid midfielders in Kacey White and Kendall Fletcher.

So the Freedom may be salivating at the chance to take Lucky on, but they’ll have to get through the rest of the team to do it, and on what may be the hottest day of the WPS season so far – today’s forecast for Piscataway calls for a high of 97 degrees.

Regardless, this is a great chance for the Freedom to conclude the first half of their season on a high note – let’s hope they can come through with a win.

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