“How come they don’t fly away?”
Photo By Elizabeth Shaw
Stolen The Wire Epigraph
“How come they don’t fly away?”
For those of you who haven’t seen The Wire, think “Miami Vice” but bleaker and just as many “hey, that guy was on Miami Vice. You know…that guy from the thing…” Also, for a bonus Miami Vice story, check out my “As it Happened” piece on Lou City tomorrow.
Games are trees. Seasons are forests.
For the umpteenth match in a row, Racing was left with no other option than to trot at a less than full bench. This could be the case for the rest of the season if Morris doesn’t recover from what is ailing her. I have been thinking about squads and rosters recently. I have come up with this aphorism:
“You win duels and tackles by the one, halves with eleven, matches with sixteen, your place in the table with twenty, and bigger things with twenty-six.”
Essentially, don’t expect to consistently win matches when your twenty isn’t up to snuff or even consistently twenty. You can forget about bigger things beyond that if your roster is paper thin.
I ask you, “How many more points does Racing have if their roster is just two to three players stronger?” None? Three? Ten? It is an unanswerable question, but I think you get my point.
In a weird way, Racing has done itself a tremendous disservice by playing so well. Their effort and flexibility and having a great coach has papered over so many cracks in the wall, that even I believe that this team is good enough sometimes.
It’s all fool’s gold.
Bev Yanez has pulled off one of the greatest magic tricks that I have even seen. She has this team and fans believing that Racing can do big things. It is a terrific sleight of hand. “Look over here! Here is a great effort and a tremendously gritty performance.” “Pay no attention to the nine players on the availability report and the constant switching we have to do to hold a match together.”
Every gritty performance and every “almost” this season has felt different from the same platitudes provided in the past. That’s because Bev can pull wins out of this team that no other coach could.
I ask you to take a step back now and look at the forest:
Nine players on the availability report.
A roster of 28 on the website, but 4 on SEI/Maternity, 3 listed as OUT and not likely to return, 1 on loan, 2 without an NWSL minute in their career, 2 backup keepers, leaving only Bloomer and 15 outfield players to make a up matchday squad and bench you can use to win a match.
The situation above has led to the following number of minutes played by rookies: Hase-1341, Weber-1282, O’Kane-1233. They have been fantastic, the lot of them, and maybe next year it pays off in spades, but they should all be closer to 700.
In addition, Sonis’ and Petersen’s and Ary’s flexibility have put them in situations where they are passable, but not the long-term solution.
In retrospect, how does this team not have 23 points instead of 33?
Racing has seemed unlucky most of the season, but if you take a step back, you can see that this team has done well…really well for the circumstances it has been given.
However, this team’s wings are clipped. The sum total of everything above is the reason why Racing just can’t demonstrate prolonged prosperity. Several players (Sears, Flint, Jean) seem to be thriving in the system but many more (Petersen, Ary, Sonis, DiGrande, Fischer, Balcer, all three Rookies) are being adversely impacted by the squad construction (or lack of it). None of it shows up in tremendously detectable ways, but a sloppy pass here and a misplaced clearance there could be attributed to the mental fatigue of being put in situation where you are not doing what you do best. I don’t know how Ryan Dell continues to fail upward, but he is responsible for a big part of the roster mess and Caitlyn Milby has done a fine job cleaning up his mess, but she is probably only halfway done.
Nobody can nor should fault the effort and performances of this team, but until the roster is constructed in a manner in which all of the birds can fly high, the birds with clipped wings will not be able to soar.
Post Match Moment of the Match
One of the symptoms of the terminal diagnosis “team not deep enough” syndrome or whatever I was trying to say in the above section is that match performances will seem “good enough to win” to those closest to the situation. Bev was pleased with the performance in that “I can’t be upset. We created a lot today.” In a nutshell she said that if you don’t bury your chances and your opponent keeps looking at the scoreboard and its 0-0, you give that opponent hope. That’s what stone-cold finishers are for, and my mortal enemy (she knows why) Bethany Balcer came on and showed what she can do when given half a chance. Okay…I was actually delighted for her to score, so she has been downgraded to frenemy (along with Kaitlyn Whiteside…she also knows why). Bev used hindsight as a legitimate excuse as to why Balcer isn’t getting a few more minutes, and I get it, but I have to think that in this match, you have to bite the bullet and put her on even earlier. She brings goals, 100% fit or not. Some of it is, as Balcer put it, “the life of a forward” but I was done with Fischer’s evening about 10 to 20 minutes before she was subbed off. I asked Sonis point blank about the positional shifts that happened in the match (and an unspoken request to have her comment on the season as well). She did admit that “it can be difficult in game to shift your mindset”, which she had to do when put in attack. I get that under dire circumstances it is necessary, but this match was evidence of the accumulation of the burdensome demand that a substandard roster has put on the players remaining.
Did the stadium have good food?
There was a vegan bratwurst in the club that my all-of-a-sudden-sort-of-vegetarian wife and photographer called “good”, so I will take her word for it. There was also an Italian beef sandwich thing that was quite good. You can be honest with me. You just skip over this section, right? Who cares what I eat? One more match recap and I will bury this section 6 feet underground. They did have cheesecake though so that was bonus.
The Kayla Fischer Honorary Yellow Card of the Match (brought to you by Taylor Flint)
We had a textbook yellow card in this match. Weber went in late and hard on a Stars player. It was proper nasty. Definitely worthy of being “Kayla Fischer” like. Not “Kayla Fischer” worthy on the night? Kayla Fischer. She was bullied off the ball more than once and seemed hesitant for some reason. I don’t know what it will take for her to find some match-to-match consistency. Maybe it’s an offseason of dedication to discipline and focus. I think you have to stick with Weber now, and I am also not sure if I wouldn’t go Balcer for Weber at 60 or 70 depending on the scoreline in these next few matches. Flint will be back next week to get a red card for being tall or “existing” just in time to miss another crucial match. The officials were pretty good last night, so since that was the case let me remind you or how collectively their HORRIBLE INCONSISTENCY continues to ruin soccer. That is all.
“Your dashing horsemen, all gone away, left you the stable bill to pay.”
“Cars and Girls”/From Langley Park to Memphis/1988
The horse is dead, but I am going to keep beating it. How the heck are you supposed to win matches at this point of the season with the roster that Racing has? Most players are contributing and playing up to the best of their abilities, but there are too many square pegs, not quite in round holes, but in rectangular ones. They sort of fit, but loosely. Playoff teams need rosters of 26 serviceable players. Racing carried around 24 this season and not all of them stood a chance of seeing the pitch for meaningful minutes. Maybe another good rookie class will make the roster better next season, but I do go back to my early season assessment of the roster and question its playoff worthiness. I was wrong in my assessment, but not because of the facts on the ground. I just underestimated Bev. Never again.
That doesn’t change the fact that team still finds itself in decent position, but again, how much of that is due to underperformance by other teams. The wheels seem to have fallen off all 3 California teams. Chicago is only good enough to be a nuisance. Utah is only good under no pressure.
I still think Racing is going to sneak in but it will probably have to go to the final day.
On the bright side, with another offseason Bev and Caitlyn could finish the roster reconstruction and be a true force next season. For now, they are still left cleaning up a long-term problem.
