Spirit v Racing Preview
Courtesy EM Dash Photography
Racing (I believe) traveled directly from Cary NC to the DC area to play their second road match in 4 days. This would be a tough trip under any circumstances, but with the players minds rightly on issues other than soccer the trip has to be extra rough. I want to say a couple of things about the fans general response to the calls for change. I know that nobody wants to hear the word patience, but some of the changes that need to happen can't happen overnight. In fact, I would argue that in some cases, quick fixes are only band-aids. The things that can happen quickly should happen quickly like the firing of all abusers. What worries me a bit is that if you only fire the people in the system, the system recovers and persists. And guess what…systems cannot be fixed overnight. You can implement policies and procedures quickly, but convincing bad people to follow policy doesn't work. So I would ask for patience for some of the things that need to happen. Included in this is the desire for the public to know what happened in every situation. If the victim wants to come forward publicly then I am all for that, but there can not a priority put on the whole truth becoming public at the expense of the victim. Secondly, do not boycott this team. Only the players suffer in this scenario. Betos and McCaskill said publicly that they want fans at games. If this last week has soured your appetite I get it, but don’t take it out on the players. I believe and hope that the NWSL's investigation of Racing will prove them to have handled all situations appropriately.
Now on to soccer stuff. I don't yet know if the injury report is any different for Saturday, but I will post on Twitter as soon as I find out. With the club trying out a few new things on Wednesday, I expect to see some of the players who were rested (Betos, Nagasato, Baucom) back in the lineup. This late in the season I don’t think any injury will be risked, so I expect Kizer and Bonner to get rested again unless fully healthy. In these last few games I am less concerned by the score than the performance. After an uptick in the middle of the season, the passing accuracy and shots have dropped again. Over the last few matches in the season, I believe the focus will be on cleaning up the passing and creating more opportunities.
No predictions for the rest of the year. I might psych myself up for player ratings if there is a win, but if not I will probably forgo those until the season is over. Good luck to the team vs. Washington!
