Reality Check

Courtesy USA Today Sports Images

Saturday mornings are a bit of a wasteland in terms of sports viewing in late June. This past Saturday, I found myself watching a U12 tournament held in Orlando on ESPN Plus. One of the teams featured was the Barcelona boys U12 team. By the time I had watched 5 to 10 minutes, Barcelona had scored twice and completely dominated possession. What was more striking to me was just how “Barcelona” this Barcelona team was at the ages of 10 and 11. It dawned on me that it would likely be possible to recognize a team as a Barcelona team without jerseys regardless of age or gender. The Barcelona Femení team of 2021-22 probably played the most “Barcelona” style of all of their teams this year. Every club in the world would love to be Barcelona (or Real Madrid or Liverpool or Man City on the right day), but most of these other clubs have the self-awareness to realize that they aren’t.

When you are one of the biggest clubs in the world and you have a history of being one for multiple decades, you get to decide what style of play you want to use, and you typically get good enough players to play in this style. And when you miss and some player doesn’t fit in, you can write off your losses and go out and spend millions of Euros to correct a mistake. For the rest of the rational world, you mostly have to compromise and play with the hand you are dealt. Sometimes I think Soccer Holdings thinks it is Barcelona. They only want to go with Plan A, and therefore aren’t ready to play with Plan B. One of my biggest pet peeves in sports is “winning the right way”. What does that even mean? I just want to win. The three points count the same if it’s a 4-3 win or a 1-0 win. I really do think Racing can’t come to grips with who they are vs. who they want to be. Does it make sense to anyone to want to have a pressing team that will spend the dog days of summer running its legs off with less players than most other squads? How are you going to attract players with allocation money when it seems like you can go from star to benchwarmer on a whim?

I think it’s time to examine the dichotomy of how Louisville City’s early success, have been both a boom and bane to Racing Louisville’s very short existence. First, and make no mistake about this, Racing would not exist without the overall success of Louisville City and Soccer Holdings LLC. The fact that there is even a top tier women’s football club in Louisville is amazing. The success of Louisville City’s early campaigns accelerated the growth of soccer in this city. The club figured out a way to win (not just compete) immediately. However, they did so in a bit of a free market environment with much fewer restrictions than are placed on Racing Louisville. The club pretty consistently turned over huge sections of its roster while maintaining a select core of key players. From the outside (the only perspective we as fans are afforded), the club seemed to know what they were doing. I don’t think it’s too much of a leap to assume that the club took a “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” approach when it came to building Racing Louisville. Based on a year and a half of operation, I think we can assume that the idea behind building a roster for Racing was similar to Louisville City: Find a coach who will coach the “Louisville City” way and find players that fit the system. There isn’t inherently anything wrong with that idea, but it is greatly aided by the fact that Louisville City got to bully around a bunch of teams that weren’t really concerned with winning while being able to build their initial roster without many restrictions or concerns about transfer windows. Here is where I think the club underestimated how different it was going to be to construct a roster. First, in the case of Louisville City, at best you would be getting marginal MLS level players who frankly are a dime a dozen. I mean no offense, but does anyone think Louisville City’s management was sweating losing Paco Craig a few years ago? Of course they weren’t because they knew they could find a player of equal skill for equal cost. There hasn’t ever been a player on Louisville City that could be considered “world class”. By contrast, Racing’s has world class players. Teams typically tend to try to work around world class players vs. trying to fit them into a rigid system. That’s not to say that any of Racing’s recent departures are national team level starters (yet), but they were either top draft picks or fixtures on U19 or U23 national teams. Second, Louisville City doesn’t find themselves to be too restricted by the European transfer windows, because for the most part they aren’t really after players not already on American soil. In Racing’s case, the NWSL mid-season transfer window coincides with the summer European transfer window. Racing has chosen to do most of its business in the summer window. That means that if the club is going after European players, they either have to convince a player to move in January and miss out on the second half of their club season in Europe, or wait until the European season is over, which has been the case in every instance so far. If that is the strategy, I can live with it, but the club could be more transparent about it. I think many casual fans who are unfamiliar with the idea of transfer windows may have been taken aback by the rush of activity. Lastly and perhaps most importantly, I think the club way overestimated the value of the name on the badge when compared to the name on the back of the jersey when it comes to NWSL fans. For Louisville City, none of the players on the team have a national or international level following like many of the names on Racing Louisville. It took me a while to get it, but the NWSL operates in a manner where the name on the crest is currently secondary to the name on the back of the jersey. The football world is frankly split into two camps, those who favor club football over international and those who favor country over club. I don’t know that either of these is wrong, but the overwhelming majority of NWSL fans were first fans of the USWNT or some other national team. This group is the current core fanbase of the NWSL. It might not always be and in my opinion, the sport will never reach the heights it deserves if in 10 years this is still true. However, that is the reality in today’s world. Alex Morgan is a bigger brand than the San Diego Wave and Megan Rapinoe is a bigger brand than the OL Reign. I think Racing has deluded itself that it is a bigger brand than Emily Fox. It definitely wasn’t a bigger brand than Tobin Heath or Christen Press. Barcelona is bigger than Lionel Messi, and Real Madid and Manchester United are bigger than Cristiano Ronaldo. That shift hasn’t occurred yet in women’s soccer and maybe it never will. Who am I to say that is a bad thing? I will say that it creates a different environment for the men’s and women’s games, so maybe in retrospect Racing should have approached things with a little more curiosity and humility.

So today we end up with another player leaving for a wad of cash. The allocation money is piling up but unfortunately Racing can’t start $200,000 of allocation money at left back in a couple weeks when both Holloway and Fox are on international duty. There is a derogatory label applied to teams that continually have to sell its best players. They are referred to as a Selling Club. I’m not saying Racing has sold its best players (I would be at the front of the mob with a pitchfork and a torch if Racing were to announce that they had sold DeMelo), but you have to have enough incoming players of value to avoid getting that label. I am assured that help is on the way, but will it be here in time to help during the loss of international players for the Euros and CONCACAF? The fact of the matter is that I am OK with each of these decisions to move players, bar one. Kizer was going to see her minutes pulled back and Racing has cover at her spot. Merrick wanted to move home and wasn’t getting minutes. I will have more on Ebony later, but she also wasn’t getting minutes and there is cover for her too. The baffling one in my mind is Erin Simon. She always seemed like a good team player and I am sure she would have played to the best of her ability every time she was on the pitch. Why release her when a) Racing definitely could use her in the next few matches, and b) she didn’t have a club lined up and if that club is in Europe, wouldn’t start play until August? Each of these decisions in a bubble is not hard to understand. Collectively they make it look like Racing has a problem.

James O’Connor said the only thing he really could today when asked if Racing were trying to win this year. Of course he answered that they are, and it’s not impossible that they still can make the playoffs. However, these moves confirm what I think most of us thought anyway: that building Racing is a 3 year plan. That reality might sting a little when you look at how San Diego and Angel City have done in the first third of the league season. Those teams were built to win now at the extent of mortgaging a bit of their future. Only time will tell if that works out for them. To me, Racing has to start to navigate the following items better:

• Be ready for roster building for 2023 the day that the 2022 season ends. I think Coach Björkegren’s arrival in January was too late to reach its full impact in year one. There isn’t anything that leads me to believe that he won’t be back for next year.

• Stop letting the European team’s take advantage of you in the transfer window. Salmon’s and Bonner’s moves meant that they weren’t with the club on day one last year. If this club is going to be looking to Europe, it needs to get its business done in January, not June. There will surely be incoming players this year from Europe, but again they have missed half of the season. Either force the hands of the European clubs or look elsewhere.

• Turn the allocation money into players and fast. I think Racing’s fanbase has run out of patience on seeing only money and draft picks as returns for players.

• Realize that stockpiling assets may be good for the balance sheet, but there is also a line on that sheet that accounts for good will and I have to think that it (and maybe tickets sales) has taken a hit while the club is in asset building mode.

Here are a few final thoughts on Ebony. Her contributions to this team were valuable. She averaged a goal contribution (assist or goal) every 190 minutes. For comparison, CeCe Kizer averaged a goal contribution every 243 minutes, Jess McDonald every 162 minutes and Nadia Nadim a spectacular every 94 minutes. When she was on the pitch, she found a way to contribute to the score line. On the flip side, Racing has had 3 head coaches and I have heard every single one of them instruct her to press harder on defense. Be assured that it isn’t her goal scoring that doomed her, but how she did or didn’t fit into the pressing system preferred by Racing. I’m not sure Racing is at the level where they should be deciding that a goal contribution every 162 minutes is worth tossing away a player over not playing in the club’s and coach’s preferred style. But, as we all know I am not in charge. Salmon only had 6 months left on her contract and you would have to be willfully ignorant to say that there was any chance of Racing resigning her. She wasn’t a good fit, but I will let the reader decide whose fault that was. Perhaps the most troubling item (from her perspective) was that there was a breakdown in communication. The club insists that she was communicated with often and given instructions on how to improve. That message was either ignored or not communicated effectively enough depending on your slant. This isn’t the first time that communication has been brought forward as an issue with Racing. I believe communication problems are the root of many of the world’s problem, so I don’t discount that communication is hard especially for players that aren’t getting minutes. Many of Racing’s players (mostly starters) have said that Coach Björkegren is an effective communicator with them. Hopefully this is just a case of two parties unable to get on the same page.

Again, O’Connor reiterated that Björkegren likes a smaller squad. I wonder if it will be big enough to fill out a bench over the next few weeks.