SLACKISH REACTION: As regular readers know I spend a lot of time at youth soccer. I see some lopsided scores. I’ve been a parent coach of a team that went undefeated, and would often be up 6-0 at which point our coach would tell the players to work on connecting 25 passes, or put in rules like you can only score on corners.
I’ve also been on the bad side of blowouts, including one last Friday where as a parent I yelled “you’re up 10 coach” after the opponent scored to make it 11-1. I have no tolerance for that at the youth levels.
Now I’m sure we aren’t going to tell the best players in the world that they have to connect 25 passes…but you also don’t have to do obnoxious celebrations after you start scoring your high number goals.
Nobody makes you shoot on goal, but if you do, you definitely don’t have to do a big celebration.
This team in particular are role models foe young soccer players. The model should not be obnoxious celebrations.
Some of the sharpest criticism came from current and former members of the Canadian national team, including Clare Rustad, who called the displays “disgraceful.” Speaking on TSN’s World Cup show, Rustad told viewers that she “would have hoped they could have won with humility and grace, but celebrating goals eight, nine and 10 the way they were doing was really unnecessary.” (via Washington Post)
I wonder if he USWNT accidentally destroyed their own sport last night. My wife and soccer playing daughter whose favorite player is Alex Morgan were both turned off by this.
An unlikeable team being perceived to have no real competition….that does not encourage tune in. Winning 5-0 may have gone a lot further than this result did.
I feel UNfavorable to the USWNT this morning.
We’ll see how the soccer gods respond to this karma.
As for baseball, I dunno – a Tuesday afternoon game makes no sense to me. As for the nightcap, I watched it until like 9:40 but the kind of baseball played in Fake New Yankee Stadium (aka Home Run Ball) is boring, so I turned it off. Baseball, if the Subway Series isn’t even interesting your sport has a problems.
Props to Gary Cohen for talking about how a suspicious number of players (my words) are going to hit 50+ Home Runs.
Vargas got it done. That’s what he does.
Todd Fraizer appeared to violate MLB Rule 3.03(b) last night.
