Racing 1 Wave 3 Post Match Thoughts
Courtesy NWSL LLC
The season is mercifully over and if I am being honest, this season has been the most disappointing (on the pitch) so far in Racing’s brief history. Nothing quite clicked for this group, and the season was poor enough that no single aspect of the team deserves all of the blame.
More in-depth analysis of the season is coming (if I can stomach writing it) but it's hard to read too much into this match. Racing has been prone to bad starts, especially recently so it wasn't surprising that it happened again. However, it was a bizarre set of circumstances that led to Sunday's match so let's just leave it at that.
The most interesting moment of the match was the Beckie offside call. It was obviously a ball call. The linesperson should have waited for the phase of play to end before raising her flag, but the center official didn't have to blow the play dead. For once, I have a tremendous amount of sympathy for the official in this situation. I am fairly certain that when you train to be a line judge you get drilled into your head “stay in line with the offside line” or some version of that. Beckie clearly was in an offside position, but since a Wave Player made a deliberate action to play the ball backwards, her offside position should have been irrelevant. I think the official just saw that Beckie was clearly offside and for a split second didn’t consider the other criteria for an offside offense and raised her flag. The offside but not illegally offside condition specifically like this one is somewhat rare, but something I see a few times and season. My guess is that the linesperson simply lost track of the ball in the phase of play and made an incorrect assumption. Honestly, I did as well, as I too was watching Beckie and not the ball. It was such a bone-headed play by the Wave player that I think it took everyone by surprise.
The officials will surely rewatch the match and kick themselves for missing that call. My hope is that the linesperson carries that mistake with her so that she doesn't make it again. I still remember a bad call that I made in a match refereeing a church league for 7-year-olds. I failed to play an advantage where a player scored, but I had blown the play dead. It was a beginner’s league and technically we didn't even keep score. Neither the players, coaches, nor parents complained. I am probably the only one that even knew that I screwed up. I am definitely the only person that still thinks about it. However, I carried that mistake with me every time I officiated a match after that, and I think it made me a better one in my brief career. I would like to believe that officials hold themselves accountable. Honestly, I think they do. What I wish for is that someday there will be more transparency so that we know what the consequences are when officials make mistakes. Their frequent silence comes off as arrogance and being above the consequences. Kudos to Bekki Morgan for getting us an answer on this one because there are too many times where we get none.
When Sav McCaskill came into the match I turned to my wife and said, “well, she is definitely scoring.” She isn't as beloved as some ex-Racing players, but I for one hate when Racing plays against her.
In case I forget to mention it later, one of the most frustrating things to me during this season was the number of times I watched Racing’s opponents play admirable football and the virtually zero times I could say the same about Racing. Sometimes the football was effective, but the success seemed labored. I am all for winning ugly, but the operative word in that phrase is “winning”. I have less tolerance for boring football when the results aren't there. To my eyes, Racing played boring football this season. I will be the first to admit that personal preference will vary and maybe you think differently and enjoyed the football. My least favorite frequent occurrence was to watch Racing try to play out of the back very deliberately. There were too few line-splitting passes during these build-ups. Again, maybe you like that and if you do there is no judgment here. Just because I could never quite figure out what Racing was trying to do doesn't mean it wasn't effective from a coaching point of view. All that I can say is that I didn't find it particularly entertaining. I am perfectly willing to sacrifice some entertainment for results. Maybe year two of BevBall will yield some better ones.
