Freedom Insider

I am probably one of the most optimistic sports fans I know, always believing that on any given day my favorite team can win a game no matter who the opponent is. But given the Freedom’s history in Boston between WUSA, W-League and WPS, I couldn’t help but assume it was going to take more than a miracle for the Freedom to snap their winless streak.

And unfortunately, my lack of optimism was spot on. Saturday’s loss in Boston was the team’s 10th straight match without a win, pushing things from serious to critical. Washington now sits in a tie for last and the playoff window is being slammed shut.

Just about every roster combination has been tried lately and nothing is working which leads to the question of what is truly wrong with the Freedom? Have the players stopped listening to the coaches? Was the early season success a fluke? Is this group of players strong enough to compete at this level?

Something is clearly broken and there aren’t many other things to try in order to fix them. The growing fan sentiment of Jim Gabarra needing to be replaced continues to get louder and that may be the only thing left to do at this point. I hate to make that suggestion given all that Gabarra did to keep the franchise alive between pro leagues but at even that sacrifice can only help him for so long.

It would be nice to see this slide end Wednesday when the Independence come to town but at this point I will have to see the Freedom win before I believe they can do it again. And that may be a pretty pessimistic attitude to have at this point but 10 straight winless matches will do that to you.

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I feel like the Washington Freedom are playing right now – lousy.

I’ve spent a lot of time traveling lately with another week on the road before I am back home and I am already run down. Sitting here on the West Coast, I imagine things are that much different for the Freedom – mired in a terrible losing streak with no sanctuary in sight.

If you can’t hold on to a lead against the last place team in the league, where are you going to catch a break?

While the losses continue to mount, so do the calls to fire Jim Gabarra. But let me ask you this – will a coaching change really turn this thing around? I think the truth of the matter is that Gabarra doesn’t have the necessary pieces to keep things going. A couple of months ago this team was on a roll and everything looked good. Now things have gone from bad to worse and the Freedom are stuck trying to break out of a funk relying a lot more on unproven rookies and young players then previously thought.

Jeff Kassouf of The Equalizer tackled this question earlier this week and right now I stand behind his argument of patience. But as GM Mark Washo said, this is a team that expects to win championships and a 9-game winless streak is not going to accomplish that. If things don’t turn around soon, Gabarra may find he has finally run out of time.

That’s too bad though in my opinion given the fact that Gabarra stuck with the Freedom through all sorts of uncertainty. But this is pro sports and often times the right decision and the hasty decision often conflict, usually ending in a coach looking for a new job.

Those are my thoughts as we head into the weekend taking on a Breakers squad the Freedom always seem to struggle with, so now I ask you – should Gabarra stay or go?

LINKS

I’ve been sitting on some of these for a while so I apologize if some of these are a little stale. I did try to weed out the ones that no longer apply so hopefully these are still good reads. Enjoy.

• Washington Freedom could join Crystal Palace Baltimore downtown stadium if approved (The Equalizer) – Ah, the old stadium story. Would be interesting to see though if a change of venue would increase ticket sales given that Baltimore is a lot more accessible than Germantown.
• Freedom, WPS heed lessons of history (Gazette.net) – Coaching, stadiums and league sustainability; it’s been a rough time for the Freedom and rough times seem to bring out the core stories and arguments. This story is from the local Gazette and does a good job of reminding us that there is still a long way for the league to go.
• WPS Restructuring Means Loss of Jobs, Move Towards Decentralization (All White Kit) – As someone who lost his job during a front office restructuring, you hate to see news like this. But then again, this all goes back to what will allow the league to sustain itself and hopefully these moves will have a positive impact on the long term plan.

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By StarCityFan

Washington Freedom (4-6-5, 17 points, 4th place) at Atlanta Beat (3-7-4, 13 points, 7th place)
Wednesday, July 28, 7:30 p.m. EDT
KSU Soccer Stadium, Kennesaw, Ga.
All-time series: Freedom lead 2-0-0
Last meeting: Freedom 2, Beat 0

Once upon a time this looked like an easy three points. Unlike Philadelphia, Atlanta was behaving like a proper expansion team, losing five matches in a row and being little threat to the competition. Of course, that was before the St. Louis Athletica folded and Atlanta picked up a bunch of their key players: Hope Solo, Lori Chalupny, Tina Ellertson, Eniola Aluko and Aya Miyama.

More recently, alas, it’s Washington that’s looked like the expansion team. Since the beginning of June, the Freedom have gone 0-4-4 and are on a three-game losing streak, while the Beat have gone 3-2-3 and are on a two-game winning streak.

When these two teams last played, the Freedom won 2-0 thanks in large part to a stellar, seven-save performance from Erin McLeod in goal. Unfortunately, McLeod is now gone for the season, and Washington will instead rely on their single pickup from the Athletica refugees, rookie goalkeeper Ashlyn Harris. Harris was the primary goalkeeper for the North Carolina Tarheels her sophomore and senior years and split the time her junior year. She’s also spent significant time on the US U-19 and U-21 teams as well as receiving a callup to the full national team last year.

Players to worry about:

Hope Solo – Despite her well-deserved reputation, the Freedom always seem to have Solo’s number. Their all-time record against Team Solo is 2-0-1, with the draw being the first match between the two teams, in which the Freedom managed to claw back from a 3-1 deficit with a header from Sonia Bompastor in stoppage time to eke out a draw. However, this trend is not something we can count on. If Hope is on her usual form, it could be a frustrating night.

Johanna Rasmussen – With Eniola Aluko away on national team duty and Ramona Bachmann not having much impact so far, the Danish forward is the Beat’s primary scoring threat, though with only two goals on the season that’s not saying much. Still, the Freedom’s defense, backed by a rookie goalkeeper, may be vulnerable.

Kia McNeill – If I were to compose a drinking game for this match, one of the entries would be “Kia McNeill fouls Abby Wambach (Double if she gets carded).” And against the Freedom, McNeill has a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time: Bompastor scored her aforementioned header goal after the ball bounced off McNeill’s head first, then in last year’s match at RFK Homare Sawa’s shot bounced off McNeill’s leg and into the net for the game-winning goal. We’ll have to see if the Hope/Kia curse holds or gets broken.

Players to root for:

Ashlyn Harris – Well, duh! Goalkeeper staffing has been an adventure for the Freedom through much of the WPS era, first with Erin McLeod’s green card issues, then with coach Nicci Wright having to don the gloves when Kati Jo Spisak got injured while McLeod was on national team duty. On the other hand, there seems to be a WPS tradition of unsung goalkeepers rising to the task, with Jillian Loyden last year earning Player of the Week honors when she stepped in for Hope Solo, and Karen Bardsley this year proving to be All-World after Jenni Branam was injured. Let’s hope Harris is another name to add to this list.

Abby Wambach – My impression is that the key difference between the Freedom and FC Gold Pride last Sunday was that their world-class striker was better than our world-class striker. Abby had as many chances at Marta, but they all seemed to go off-target or right to the goalkeeper. She seemed to start off the year strongly but has faded in the stretch. Washington needs a Player of the Week performance out of her again, and soon.

Sarah Huffman – Huffy would be my Woman of the Match from Sunday. Full of energy and all over the field, she worked hard to make things happen. Her finest moment might have been one occasion when she was triple-teamed when deep on the right flank but nevertheless cut and weaved into enough room to get off a promising-looking cross. We need more of that.

The bottom line is that, barring a possible Sky Blue FC collapse, there are no easy points any more. Atlanta has bolstered its lineup, FCGP is unstoppable, Philadelphia is formidable and Chicago and Boston are getting their acts together. Washington needs to do the same if they’re to remain in the playoff hunt.

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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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