We’re In Your Semis, Creeping To Your Finals

Mini vacation is now officially over, I’ve removed my Out Of Office Reply, and I’m finally back to “work” covering our Women’s National Team. And I guess I picked a foolish time to take off, because while I was gone, we shook off our initial loss to Norway and won our Group which guaranteed our semi-final knockout games weren’t against Germany or Brazil. So whew to that. Let’s prolong the potential slaughter as much as humanly possible. Am I being a little negatory here? Yes. But I like to be a bit of a pessimist in these situations so the defeat will be less devastating or the win will be more awesome.

And admittedly, I am terrible in the armchair coach role, but I have two observations on our performance so far. Feel free to agree or disagree in the comments.

1. Compensating for Abby: Pia’s decision to start Rodriguez over Kai is what Graham Hays calls Rodriguez’s “offensive rhythm” over Kai’s “naturally gifted” but “not predictable” style. Namely, that Kai has all the raw talent yet none of the “consistency” the players get from Wambauch. So Kai becomes our Olympics “jolt of energy” second-half sub and Rodriguez becomes more of an offensive anchor. Is this working? I’m not entirely sure but I feel the newness of the lineup is a factor when we see our offense fall a little flat at times.

2. Breaking down our offense: Pia’s coaching has certainly changed our strategy and when everything clicks, we see that pretty, possession football, she wants us to see. I do wonder if it’s relatively easy to kill our attack by simply neutralizing our fullbacks. Which, in turn, also maybe helps explain why we’re seeing Heather Mitts almost score a bunch of goals this Olympics (it’s only a matter of time grrrrl).

Criticisms aside, we are getting the job done and today’s beat down of the forces of nature as well as Canada, keeps us in the semis and set us up to take on Japan. I don’t really know too much about Japan (except that we already beat them like last week) so any preview I write will basically consist of me typing “we’re gonna kick their asses” over and over again. But after reading the posts from more qualified writers, I do wonder if Japan’s recent win over their rivals, China, is a lot like when our US Men’s team plays Mexico. Our men will certainly play their hearts out, or as I like to say, “bring it” against El Tri, but we don’t really see the same determination, passion, drive, etc etc etc against other National teams. But again, Japan smoked Norway in the group stages. So, I’ve still got nothing.

I’ll leave you with one last thing I read over at Dave Zirin’s Edge of Sports blog. It’s actually a quote he quotes (very meta) form Joan Ryan’s book, “Little Girls in Pretty Boxes.” I watched the women’s gymnastics competition last night/this morning while waiting to catch my flight home and couldn’t shake the feeling of utter creepiness and total displeasure when I watched the gymnasts. They looked like tiny and muscular porcelain dolls jumping around. Their bodies were so deformed and irregular, I was a actually kind of grossed out. Well, I think Ryan perhaps explains why:

In 1956 the top two Olympic female gymnasts were 35 and 29 years old. In 1968 gold medalist Vera Caslavska of Czechoslovakia was 26-years-old, stood 5 feet 3 inches and weighed 121 pounds. Back then, gymnastics was truly a woman’s sport….[In 1976] 14-year-old Nadia Comaneci clutched a baby doll after scoring the first perfect 10.0 in Olympic history. She was 5 feet tall and weighed 85 pounds. The decline in age among American gymnasts since Comaneci’s victory is startling. In 1976 the six US Olympic gymnasts were, on average, 17 and a half years old, stood 5 feet three and a half inches and weighed 106 pounds. By the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, the average US Olympic gymnast was 16-years-old, stood 4 feet 9 inches and weighed 83 pounds, a year younger, 6 inches shorter and 23 pounds lighter than her counterparts of 16 years before.

Wow – If there ever was an argument for a female athlete to choose football…

(Hope Solo bobble head available here. Other select USWNT player bobble heads also for sale. Collect them all!)