Various and Sundry
There are a several topics that I didn’t feel like were full articles, but I wanted to touch on them. So I’m combining them all into one melange here. The topics are ACLs, World Record Transfer Fees, Lindsay Horan, and thoughts on Rocky and Press, if you want to skip ahead.
ACLs
Seriously, what is going on? It feels like the ACL epidemic is getting worse, not better. I was devastated to hear about Jun Endo going down, as I thought this could really be the season when things clicked for her, and now Mia Fishel is out too. And this is just a short while after Sam Kerr went down. The thing that especially bothers me is that these all happened in training, and while no club shared specific details about what happened, it seems pretty unlikely that these were the result of some horror tackle. It also concerns me to see younger players like Endo and Fishel rupturing their ACLs, because that’s not the result of a long career of wear and tear, although I do understand that this isn’t uncommon for high schoolers. There are a variety of ideas about what is causing this, but no definitive answers. FIFPRO published a report attributing the rise in injury to workload, although they were also looking at injuries in general, in which ACLs made up 14% of the cases they were looking at. Still, it’s worth noting that they followed 139 elite women footballers in Europe for two seasons, and during that time 58 of them (or 41.7%) were injured. There is also a concern about boots, as traditional boot design is based on a generic white, male foot. In a survey done by the European Club Association in 2023, 82% of the 350 players said that they experienced some discomfort on a regular basis from their boots. 82%! Emma Hayes also highlighted “big changes,” e.g. travel for international breaks, as a cause, which fits into the recent cases, with Fishel having traveled to California from London for the Gold Cup, and Endo and Kerr having traveled for preseason camps. In an NIH study, they found that “Female athletes have a two- to eightfold higher incidence of ACL injury than their male counterparts,” and they estimated that 38,000 women tear their ACL each year, mostly in noncontact mechanisms like cutting, or landing from a jump.
I certainly don’t have the answers, but all of these different areas can and should be improved. Puma has announced participation in a study to design better boots, but as shoe companies are some of the biggest sponsors of female footballers, I’m surprised that more companies aren’t stepping up their efforts too. Travel also seems like a concern, and underscores that the NWSLs prohibition of charter flights, except in very limited situations, is putting athletes at risk. I’ve said it before, and I’ll continue to say that that is a very stupid, and arbitrary, rule, and it would be easy to change. Injuries are going to happen in football, but let’s at least try to prevent as many as possible.
Bay FC Break the World Record Transfer… By A Lot
Bay FC have really made a statement in their inaugural season, and honestly, I’m kind of jealous. They held onto their 2nd overall draft pick and selected Savy King from UNC. Then, they went and signed Venezuela captain Deyna Castellanos from Manchester City, 6 time African Women’s Footballer of the Year Asisat Oshoala from Barcelona, and Scottish international Jen Beattie from Arsenal. But arguably the biggest signing was for Rachael Kundananji from Madrid CFF, because it shattered the world record transfer fee. Just in January, Chelsea had set that record with $544,000 for Mayra Ramirez, but then Bay surpassed that with $862,000 for Kundananji! That’s extraordinary. The rumor was that Madrid CFF had initially turned down an offer of $400,000, before Bay came back with their record bid, which I think was a release clause in Kundananji’s contract that Madrid probably didn’t expect anyone to actually trigger. But it’s a new world. The move also gives them the 2nd and 3rd highest scorers from Liga F last year playing together, which should provide a decent indicator of how well success translates between the leagues. They are certainly being more aggressive than Angel City and San Diego when they joined the league, though it helps a lot that the salary cap has gone up considerably, even though that was only two years ago. I think it is a sign of growth in the NWSL, as well as women’s soccer becoming increasingly more global, both of which are positives for the sport. I’m looking forward to seeing who becomes the first $1,000,000 player. I bet it will happen this summer.
Lindsay Horan and US Soccer
Lindsay Horan gave an interview with Meg Linehan of The Athletic in January with the headline, “Lindsay Horan, USWNT captain, just wants to talk soccer.” It’s a great read, and covers a lot of different topics. Later that same day, ESPN released an article without a named author covering much of the same interview. It had the headline “‘Most U.S. soccer fans aren’t smart’ - USWNT captain Horan.” This struck me as needlessly inflammatory, and to be fair to ESPN, many other publications released similar articles, though I think ESPN were first out of the gate. Yes, she did say that most U.S. fans aren’t smart (though it should be noted the very next words she spoke in that interview were, “But it’s getting better and better.” Unsurprisingly, there was a bit of an uproar that caused Horan to issue an apology. Some people did actually examine her statement, with Steph Yang particularly writing a good piece, again for The Athletic. But the majority of what I saw was outrage. I don’t think that enough people actually stopped to question if she’s right. For the record, I think she’s definitely right, and it’s hard for me to believe that anyone would actually think that the American sporting public is as knowledgeable about soccer as the French are, where Horan plays professionally. I also definitely think that we do need to talk more about the football. One of the main reasons that I started writing Goosecat was the lack of articles out there that actually just discussed the football. I’m actually going to go even a step further than Horan was willing to. I think that the lack of understanding in general is at the root of the current state of the USWNT.
I think that the US has been so dominant for so long because we had the best soccer players, not because we played the best soccer. Mia Hamm never met a defender that she couldn’t turn into a pylon. Abby Wambach only needed the ball passed within about three feet of her, and anywhere from ground level to about 7’ in the air, and she could score. When Julie Ertz was in her prime, you didn’t need any particular defensive strategy, you just deployed Ertz, and no attack was going to make it through the center of the field. The US won time and again due to the individual brilliance of amazing players. When I look at the current Spanish team, however, I see a lot of great players, but more importantly, they play as team. They all have different roles, and they all understand their roles. They can break down a low block, because they have a strategy to pull the defense apart. In contrast, the US often looks very static to me when playing better opponents. They tend to just repeatedly try to win individual duels, which I suspect is something they’ve been doing since youth levels, and it probably worked up to this point. And it also works against lesser opponents, like the Dominican Republic, or Vietnam back in the World Cup. I think that Emma Hayes will make progress in this, but I still believe that this is a systemic problem. The crux of this, for me, is that I’d be hard pressed to describe what the tactical identity of the USWNT is right now. I think that we will have better teams when players grow up in a culture where they are immersed in conversations about the football. After the World Cup, there seemed mostly to be conversations about things like “not having a winning mentality” or “a lack of focus.” I’m sure that things like mentality and team dynamics played a role, but I also think that the USWNT needs to play better team football, and all of us talking about what that actually looks like is an important step. I’m curious if any of you agree with this.
Rocky and Press
Two Angel City news items that were seemingly innocuous, but caught my attention were regarding Rocky Rodriguez and Christen Press. First, Angel City social media had a post on February 26th highlighting Rocky Rodriguez, I think to kind of introduce her to fans that don’t know her yet. All well and good. But it included the following quote from Becki Tweed: “What separates her from a lot of (No. 10s) in this league is she knows how to win. On the field, Rodriguez is a quintessentially NWSL-style No. 10: a skilled, ball-playing creator who can take opponents ono-on-one or put a through pass on a pinhead, while also having the strength and cussedness to hold her own in the rough and tumble of an NWSL midfield.” This caught my attention, as I never thought that Rodriguez was an option to take over the No 10 role. In her four years in Portland, she always played much deeper. I was entirely certain she was brought in to be a ball-winning midfielder, taking over the vacancy left when Ertz retired. And frankly, the stats don’t support Tweed’s assessment (all stats are from FBRef). Rodriguez hasn’t had an assist in over two years. Her very best season was in 2019 with Sky Blue in which she recorded 3 goals and 3 assists. Last year for Portland, she only had .3 Total xAG (Expected Assisted Goals), 13th on the team, and behind even Becky Sauerbrunn. Addressing Tweeds specific praise, Rodriguez only had 3 through balls, and 4 key passes last year, though those stats do look better on a per 90 basis. Compared to other NWSL midfielders (there wasn’t even an option to compare her to attacking midfielders) she was in the 93rd percentile of through balls per 90. But in terms of what happens with those passes, it’s not much. Here’s her position for the following stats: Key Passes - 44th percentile, Passes into Final Third - 35th percentile, Passes into Penalty Area - 18th percentile, Shot Creating Actions - 56th percentile, Expected Assisted Goals (xAG) - 44th percentile, and Expected Assists (xA) - 12th percentile. There’s not a single stat there that makes me feel like she’ll be a good No 10, and these are just compared to other midfielders, not even actual attacking midfielders. Rodriguez does rate well in take-ons, in the 99th percentile of Attempted Take-Ons and Successful Take-Ons, but only 48th percentile in Take On Percentage, meaning that her high numbers seem to have more to do with volume than anything else. I was definitely not a fan of McCaskill, but Rodriguez is nowhere near the player that I would have picked to replace her. And maybe this is just somehow a breakdown of the social media team, identifying Rodriguez as a No 10 (repeatedly). And since Rodriguez has been playing with Costa Rica, we don’t actually have any other indicators about how Angel City plan to play her. But if it’s correct that they tabbed her to replace McCaskill, and spend $275,000 to acquire her, and they’re now trying to sell her to fans as a No 10, then I’m extremely concerned. This is probably the top thing I’ll be watching on March 17th.
The other piece of Angel City media that concerned me was the release of the 31 player roster on Feb. 26th, as required by the NWSL. Very quietly, with no fanfare, they included an SEI, or Season Ending Injury, designation for Christen Press. So my initial reaction was horror and catastrophe. justine.hall8, on Angel City’s Instagram, pointed me to some additional information that shows this isn’t so bad. A player with the SEI designation at the start of the season does not count against the roster limit, nor does her salary count against the cap. She can be activated at any point in the season, pending approval from the team physician, at which point the salary and roster help disappears. It makes sense that Angel City would give her that designation, because even a month or two of keeping Press’s salary off the cap would be a big help. I’m personally still of the opinion that we’ve already seen Press play her last game for Angel City, but her current SEI designation is not actually proof of this. So, officially, nothing to worry about. But it also means that if they decide that she’s never coming back, there won’t be any change in her status.