“…And All the Pieces Matter”

Courtesy of the NWSL

Stolen The Wire Epigraph

“…and all the pieces matter.”

For those of you who haven’t seen The Wire, it is a show much like Love Island except the choice is to “re-couple“ with cocaine or stick with heroin.

For me this match with always exist in delicious dichotomy. The epigraph points to a pure team effort, yet for me, this will always be “The Ella Hase Match”. Some matches are like that. If you are lucky enough to see an individual performance that rates10/10, or a rookie make her breakthrough, you tend to remember those matches associated with that particular player. This is the match where I realized that Hase has “late pace”. What I mean by that is that her speed is evident late in the match as much as the first minute. I am sure that there are biometrics to either prove or refute what I saw, but what I experienced was a player that looks to be a real danger now.

Dichotomy part two…Sears still drives me absolutely crazy and yet delights me. There is something so aesthetically pleasing about seeing a left-footed right winger cut inside and shoot on goal. Emma is not that. It is almost equally infuriating to watch the natural curve of a right-footed shot take it outside of the goal frame, which happened a few times to Emma in this match. Curse your right foot, Emma! I was begging Sears to take a left-footed shot until I wasn’t. Her right foot did the trick on the lone goal of the match. Bless your right foot, Emma!

Dichotomy part three…possession is “the way” until it isn’t. I will take “winning ugly” over “losing beautifully” any day. San Diego completed 89% of its passes having 513 accurate ones. At times they played the beautiful game. It left them with a giant “L”. The expected goals (if you believe in such nonsense) paint another lopsided picture. Almost all of the stats lied in this match. San Diego played exactly the way they wanted to play. We (okay, I) have accused Racing of being stubborn in the past. Stubbornness is easier to discern on a “blue-collar” team like Racing than it is on a well-oiled machine like the Wave, but San Diego mostly looked dangerous when in transition, and yet they refused to let Racing have the ball. That left most of the transition opportunities (but not all because the Wave were definitely dangerous with theirs) to Racing. San Diego loves to construct goals into works of art. When that doesn’t work, the emperor has no clothes.

Dichotomy part four…I almost dare not type these words…let me circle the edge of it…circumstances have dictated that Sonis and Hase now find themselves on the pitch at the same time. It’s something nobody wanted, especially in the way that it happened, but that diagonal combo provides a different look to what Racing offered before it was necessarily enforced. Would we have ever known this was an option without the cruelty of an injury? Maybe or maybe not. However, it is working in the interim and is a viable option now even when the team is at full strength. Lo when healthy goes straight back into the team, but maybe she doesn’t have to do 90 minutes every time and can be substituted for tactical reasons too.

The above quote is the signature epigraph/quote of The Wire. I would never use it lightly. The culture that Bev has built could be summed up as “all the pieces matter” but so could just about every other thing that exists. That phrase is a personal mantra, so I am going to see it manifest in more situations that most. It is a special quote to me. In its context it means one thing, but I like to read it to myself with three different emphases. ALL the pieces matter, all the PIECES matter, and all the pieces MATTER. Is the Racing context: ALL: togetherness; PIECES: uniqueness: MATTER: importance. This is a special, special team now in possession of its signature win. If things keep going this way, it will be their signature win…so far.

Post Match Moment of the Match

Ella Hase was frustratingly humble in her assessment of her performance. She deferred the credit to her teammates, as per usual. I don’t get to talk to Ella very often, but it was twice in a few days this week. She started off talking about her assist with an apology for losing the initial ball. If this team is going to have an Ali Night every year, it would be nice to have a player every once in a while come out and give an Ali-esque interview. Since Hase didn’t do that, I will do it for her. “EVERY DEFENDER IN THE LEAGUE WILL SEE “6” ON MY SHORTS BEFORE THEY SOON SEE “6” ON MY BACK AND THE BALL IN NET.” A guy can dream, can’t he? Regardless she did give the solid quote “We are not a very fun team to play.” I still like my made up one better.

Sears talked to multiple outlets last night, but the best bit was Joe Havelda trying to create a “who’s quicker” debate between Sears and Hase. The demure Hase said it was Emma. The more assured Sears seemed to be at least mildly interested in proving it in practice while not immediately confirming herself as the fastest player on the team.

Everyone loves Bev, so happy Bev is much preferred to sad Bev. She shared that the tweak to the press at halftime was needed and effective. Personally, I think Bev wanted this win really badly. She wants to win every match, but I think she knew that 3 points here in these circumstances would likely be season changing. If Racing doesn’t quite have a target on their backs now, they surely have a “Beware of Dog” sign on their fence. I asked Bev if the burden of expectations would change anything. Essentially…no. Bev will always be Bev and that works.

Were the Announcers Good?

Maura Sheridan was on the call and Jordan Angeli was on the color. They were very good. If we can just get JP to retire, we might actually start to have a decent roster of announcers for this league.

Subsection: How was their “Louisville”?

Louisvillians are persnickety on the pronunciation of their beloved hometown. I will be monitoring the broadcaster’s commitment to getting it right.

Sheridan: A virtual cornucopia of pronunciations. Always 3 syllables with the middle one varying among “uh”, “ih”, “ee” and “wuh”. Still…not distracting.

Angeli: Vacillating between 2 and 3 but always close enough.

There was a misattributed “Savannah” a couple of times between McCaskill and DeMelo. That seems to happen with that name for some reason. They caught one of them. I liked a couple of phrases like “hospital balls” and “flat tire” by Angeli. The announcers across the league are now starting to credit Racing more in broadcasts and this was a good example.

TV Kit Rating

From my kit commentary where we had them ranked last.

“There is definitely a nursing scrubs theme to some of the jerseys this year. The absolute worst offender is the Wave’s kit. It looks like water, which is on brand, but it is such a downgrade from my favorite kit from last year, the Wave Primary. The swoosh is pink which is sort of cool. Maybe when these jerseys don’t sell, Kaiser can hand them out to their nursing staff. Then again, that may be enough to make them strike again.”

No real change in that assessment. Those jerseys look bad, and they should feel bad. 1/10

The Kayla Fischer Honorary Yellow Card of the Match

Ary Borges picked up a nice and crunchy Fischer-esque card in the 22nd minute. I didn’t mind it at all. Sears picked up another for what I assume was a bit of time-wasting, or time-wasting AND arguing about time-wasting. Either way, the card issuance itself wasted time. The irony!

“Are they happy to see you? No, you always bring trouble.”

“Don’t Sing”/Swoon/1984

The late Carl Weathers did one of my favorite ever pieces of wordless acting in the original Rocky movie. As the music swells and Rocky beats the ten count and gestures to Apollo to keep fighting, he conveys so much with a drop of the head and slump of the shoulders.

What he clearly conveys is “I don’t want to keep fighting this dude.” He then immediately gets his ribs broken.

At this point that much be what it is like to see Racing on the schedule. It is a nightmare for opponents, and it is my dream come true.

Racing is never going to be a club that is going to beat teams on paper. Matches aren’t won there. As with the aforementioned Rocky they might not always win, but their opponents will know they have been in a fight. In Rocky, Apollo Creed, at least in the original, functioned as a proxy for Ali. There is dichotomy rearing its head again. Be Ali, or be Rocky? Who’s to say one is more fun to root for than the other. The city of Louisville may have produced Ali, but it is always going to be in the Rocky role in this league.

“The burden of love is so strange” - My expectations for this season were so low that they were underground. I expressed them without remorse or fear. That didn’t mean for one second that I didn’t love this team. I have loved them from the beginning when they were lovable in a way a new puppy is. They were a bit tougher to love in their adolescent and teenage years, so frustratingly and predictably unpredictable but I still did this and wrote when frankly, the less said about things the better. The soccer was passable but uninspiring. You get used to disappointment pretty quickly. In fact, it fit like a glove. For a while, the only way I knew how to write about this team was from the perspective of disappointment. I know that there will inevitably be more of that at some point.

However, at this point and hopefully for the majority of the future, this team is fun, gritty, joyful, and easy to love. Today, there is nothing but joy and hope and excitement for what comes next. It will surely be the playoffs in the short-term future. Past that, maybe even greater things.