04/19/24
April 10, 2014
Abby Wambach: Players Didn't Get Coach Fired: The surprise firing of U.S. women's national team coach Tom Sermanni was not orchestrated by the players, star Abby Wambach said. "Everybody out there who may think the players made this happen, none of it's true," she said. The team finished seventh in the Algarve Cup last month.
I would have favored a constitutional amendment that forbid Pia Sundhage from ever leaving the job.
posted by rcade at 12:32 PM on April 10, 2014
Nah, the player revolt is happening down here. The conspiracy theorist in me suspects they want Tom back.
On edit: we won the second match against Brazil so maybe it's cooled down again.
posted by owlhouse at 10:48 PM on April 10, 2014
It's a weird situation to have a league that's very much an afterthought to the international setup and only just emerged (in semi-pro fashion) from the ashes of a failed league. You have players whose profile is defined by being in the national starting 11, no real benchmark for new selections other than international games, and not that many friendly matches.
US Soccer might want to focus on building a proper professional league for women first, and micromanaging the national team later.
posted by etagloh at 11:33 PM on April 11, 2014
Women's international soccer is a success. Women's pro soccer recently failed and is a longshot now that it has returned as the WPSL.
I want the WPSL to succeed, but I wouldn't want to see U.S. Soccer put any USWNT development on hold to focus on the fledgling league.
posted by rcade at 12:48 PM on April 12, 2014
I think the last sentence is the only explanation needed. Seventh for a team that has made or won pretty much every final since the late '90s and hadn't lost a game in about two years is not acceptable. The explanation that Sermanni is trying to develop a new generation of players doesn't work well since I couldn't see any consistency in selections; I read elsewhere that he averaged one new player every time he called the team together.