Freedom Insider

By StarCityFan

New Jersey Wildcats (6-2-1, 19 points, 3rd place) at Washington Freedom Futures (7-1-1, 22 points, 2nd place)
Saturday, July 10, 4 p.m. EDT
Maryland Soccerplex, Boyds, Md
All-time series: Washington leads 5-3-3
Last meeting: 3-3 draw at the College of New Jersey Lions Stadium, Ewing, N.J.

It’s a battle for second place in the Northeast Division this Saturday, with the winner all but assured of a playoff spot, while the loser has to rely on other teams’ results in order to get in. If you’ve ever thought about attending a W-League match but wanted to wait for a worthwhile one, then wait no longer – this is it!

The Futures are one of the elite teams in the W-League, like the others something of a regional (if not worldwide in some cases) all-star team, while most of the other teams are either doormats, who lose to everyone but each other, or middle-of-the-road teams, who beat the doormats, split among each other, and at least look respectable against the elites.

You might think being an elite team in this league is a pretty cushy position, and you’d be right – so long as there aren’t more elite teams in your division then there are places in the playoffs. Unfortunately for the Futures, this year in the Northeast Division there are three elite teams and only two playoff slots. Under those circumstances, there’s little room for slipping, slipping meaning anything other than winning.

The other two elite teams are the Hudson Valley Quickstrike Lady Blues and the New Jersey Wildcats. Washington has done well against them this season, beating Hudson Valley and tying New Jersey. As a result, the Futures were in a great position last weekend. As of Sunday morning, they were coming off a solid 3-0 win against the 4-6-0, middle-of-the-road New Jersey Rangers, thanks to two goals from Lydia Hastings and one from Furtuna Velaj, and held first place in both the division and the league. Later that day, they had what seemed to be the minor task of getting past the New York Magic, perennial league doormats who had a 1-7-0 record on the season.

By the end of the evening, though, the Magic had somehow withstood a 21-shot-on-goal barrage from the Futures attackers without letting a single one in, while Rashidah Sherman, a candidate for the league’s Golden Boot, had put in two for New York.

Just like that, the Futures went from leading both their division and the league to having a nontrivial risk of missing the playoffs entirely and turning Saturday’s match into a must-win.

Even though the Lady Blues lost to the Futures, that’s their only slip, letting them take over first place in both the division and the league. The Futures have two slips, the tie with the Wildcats and the recent loss. Finally, the Wildcats have slipped three times, tying the Futures and losing twice to the Lady Blues.

That sets the stage for the upcoming showdown. If the Futures win, they clinch a playoff spot because the Wildcats can’t catch them. If the Wildcats win and win the rest of their games, the Futures can’t catch them and will be in third place, out of playoff position (This relies on the first W-League tiebreaker being head-to-head competition, which will go in favor of whichever team wins this match).

There is some hope for the third-place team: if Hudson Valley wins the regular-season championship, which they would do if they win their last three games, they get a bye into the W-League final four and don’t figure into the divisional standings. So the third-place team would make it into the playoffs after all. But I doubt either Washington or New Jersey wants to count on that.

As indicated by the all-time series record given above, Washington and New Jersey have a long history of competition, having played a home-and-home series every year since 2005. It’s actually been something of a seesaw battle. The Wildcats back in the middle of the decade were the team to beat in the W-League, compiling a 41-1-0 record from 2004 through 2006, winning the regular season championship in 2004 and 2006 and the overall championship in 2005. Their roster featured names familiar to WPS fans like Karina LeBlanc, Kendall Fletcher, Formiga, Kelly Smith, Kacey White, Lindsey Tarpley, Heather O’Reilly, and our own Christie Welsh, Rebecca Moros, and Cat Whitehill.

The Freedom Reserves (as they were called then) mustered only an 0-3-2 record against this team, though every match was a battle (Their very first meeting, on July 9, 2005, is still one of the best women’s club matches I’ve ever seen, a hardfought 1-1 draw. The Freedom goal was scored by Joanna Lohman and assisted by Ali Krieger).

New Jersey then fell on hard times as their coach left for Sky Blue and then for the Pali Blues, and Washington chalked up five wins in a row against them. Last year they were a clear middle-of-the road team, finishing fourth out of eight in the division with a 7-6-1 record.

However, this season the Futures went up to Jersey and had their hands full, going down 2-0 after 23 minutes, pulling back to tie, then going down again 3-2 in the 48th minute before equalizing in the 60th minute on a goal by Omolyn Davis. The three goals given up by the Futures in that match are as many as they’ve given up to every other team combined this season. On the other hand, Washington hasn’t given up a goal at the SoccerPlex since the Pali Blues scored two on them in last year’s W-League championship.

So Saturday should be a real battle. Again, if you only catch one W-League game this season, this should be the one. As usual, WPS Freedom season ticket holders get free admission, as they do to all Futures matches.

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Interesting story from the Washington Business Journal. [UPDATE: Here is the article from the Freedom web site, which includes the new logo] Apparently, Joanna Lohman has been named the GM of the Freedom’s W-League squad. And her first item of business is changing the name of the W-League squad from the Washington Freedom to Freedom Futures according to the story.

This move is interesting on multiple fronts but the two things that jumped straight into my head are this is a good move for Lohman, who has stated before that she would love to eventually become the GM of the Washington Redskins. There is still a long way for her to go to get there but being the GM of a team is a good start to getting there so congrats to Jo.

Second is what impact will this have on Jo’s playing career. Jo was moved from the full roster to the developmental squad during the 2009 season and is currently a free agent. However, given the fact that she will only play for Washington because of her off-the-field job it seems that if she continues her career it will again be as a developmental player. It will be interesting to see how this situation develops.

Finally, one non-Freedom news item. For those starving for roster news, Saint Louis has added two international players, Swedish forward Madelaine Edlund and Brazilian midfielder Elaine. Both previously played for Umea IK.

That’s it from me. As always, feel free to comment on anything Freedom or WPS related below and have a happy and safe holiday.

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Well, I am finally over the bug/virus that wiped me out for all of last week so now comes the task of getting back to business as usual.

Apparently the new way to break news in WPS is in 140 characters or less … or at least it is that way for the Freedom. Over the course of the past week we have learned via Twitter that the team has retained the rights to International players Lene Mykjaland and Louisa Necib and that the 2010 options for Abby Wambach, Homare Sawa, Lisa De Vanna, Erin McLeod, Rebecca Moros, Sarah Huffman, Becky Sauerbrunn, Allie Long, Jill Gilbeau and Alex Singer have been picked up.

Don’t bother looking for that news on the team web site, it has only been mentioned on Twitter and on the team’s Facebook page.

For those of you looking for something longer than 140 characters, check out this article on the W-League combine. Coach Jim Gabarra is quoted throughout and it looks like 4 of our W-League players (Jessie Wolfe, Kimmie Germain, Katie Watson and Brittany Tegeler) were there to participate. As of Tuesday morning the WPS Draft is still 108 days away, but it is never to early to speculate who from the farm team might make an impact in WPS this year.

Finally, a bit of sad news out of Germany. According to this article (which is very poorly translated via Google’s translate page), Ali Krieger has yet again broken her foot. There was no mention of how long she will be out but this is not good for her. If you remember, it was her recovery from a broken foot last year that got Frankfurt FC to loan Krieger to the Freedom in the first place but with her contract up in June, you have to wonder what will happen. This situation bears watching.

Ok, enough from me. As always, feel free to leave a comment or you can send me an e-mail through the site’s contact page.

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Leave it to Abby Wambach.

On a roll since scoring that 100th international goal in Rochester last month, Abby was named the WPS Player of the Week for the third time this season after helping the Freedom secure the No. 3 seed in the playoffs.

Abby has been through a lot lately and it’s nice to see her finally getting back to where she was before last year’s leg injury. Congrats to Abby and here’s to hoping for another POTW-worthy performance again this week.

W-LEAGUE COMBINE PARTICIPANTS

The first set of participants for this year’s W-League combine have been named, which include 3 Freedom W-Leaguers – Brittany Tegeler, Katie Watson and Jesstine Wolfe. While this combine is not run by WPS, it will give WPS coaches a chance to look at potential players for next season. Of course if you are Jim Gabarra, you will get to see how close your own players are to being WPS ready as compared to others.

The most interesting thing about the Freedom participants has to be the fact that Tegeler and Watson were in camp with the WPS Freedom this year.

COMING UP ON THE BLOG

I haven’t been much for previews this year but I plan to change that this week as I will look back and ahead at the year vs. Sky Blue FC. I do plan on doing a full season recap, breaking down player, game and position performances but feel that nothing should be done in that regard until there are no more games left.

If you have any suggestions for what I should talk about, leave a suggestion in the comments or e-mail me at admin(at)freedominsider(dot)com.

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They waited until the final game but the Freedom finally got themselves into the playoffs, and earned a home game in the first round for their troubles.

With a 3-1 win over Sky Blue FC on Saturday, Washington forced SBFC to be the team seating bullets and handed control of the final playoff spot to the Boston Breakers. The Breakers couldn’t capitalize though, and so we will have a rematch of Saturday’s match this week, with the game scheduled for 4 p.m. at the Maryland SoccerPlex.

If Abby Wambach can take control of this game early like she did last week, there is no reason the Freedom won’t be heading to St. Louis to take on Athletica next Wednesday.

W-LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP

Bad news for the W-League team. Hosting the championship game on Friday, the Freedom let an early lead slip away and eventually fell to the defending champion Pali Blues 2-1. These two squads now have a bit more history as the Blues knocked the Freedom out of the W-League playoffs last year.

OTHER NEWS AND NOTES

With a roster littered with European players that will be unavailable for the game, WPS announced roster replacements for the league’s All-Star Game on Aug. 30th in St. Louis. For the Freedom that means U.S. National Team players Abby Wambach and Cat Whitehill will be part of the team that takes on Umea IK on Sunday, Aug. 30.

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