Who knew soccer’s eccentricities go well beyond heading the ball?
The game of soccer flows, but its professional seasons do not.
It’s been seven weeks since San Diego Wave FC played a match that counted. Soccer being the world’s sport, players are loaned to national teams for a variety of international events such as the recent Paris Olympics. Leagues take breaks when bigger tournaments take place.
You’ll get no complaints from the 10th-place Wave, who return to the regular season Saturday afternoon with a home match against 11th-place Angel City.
During the seven weeks away, Wave defender Naomi Girma and midfielder Jaedyn Shaw collected gold medals — something the Americans hadn’t done in the prior two Olympics.
A few other Wave players represented their countries in those Paris Games. Others stayed in San Diego, working out under their offensive-minded interim coach, Landon Donovan. They’ve been adapting a style “based on attacking” as mandated by Jill Ellis, the team’s president and a former World Cup-winning U.S. coach, after she fired defense-first coach Casey Stoney on June 24.
The pink-slip dividends Ellis sought didn’t arrive in the immediate aftermath of Stoney’s dismissal.
The Wave lost a pair of winnable games under Paul Buckle, who replaced Stoney and coached the club until last week.
Still, I believe that if Stoney had been retained, her defensively sound team would have had a good chance — no less than 80 percent — of reaching the playoffs.
After all, her second team rallied to get there after falling into a dry-as-Gila Bend stretch, one similar to this year’s rut that preceded her dismissal.
Whoever coaches them, however, these Wave should reach the playoffs.
ittedly, that level of confidence seems bizarre. The club is 3-7-6 and winless in its past nine games.
Fortunately for Donovan and San Diego, there are advantages baked into San Diego’s closing stretch.
These include several opponents who aren’t formidable, more regular rest and more games at home, where Stoney’s club went 3-1-1.
Ahead, there’s no road trip nearly as strenuous as June’s three-city, condensed, hot-weather junket in which the Wave went 0-2-1 and led a visibly angry Stoney to blast NWSL schedule-makers soon before Ellis canned her.
There’s another factor assisting the Wave: the NWSL’s expanded playoff format.
Eight of the NWSL’s 14 clubs will make the playoffs starting this season. That’s a whopping 57 percent of the league.
Postseason inclusivity is a big thing with this country’s top soccer leagues.
Over at Major League Soccer, whose San Diego entry begins play next year, 18 of the league’s 29 clubs reach the playoffs, ensuring below-average teams will be rewarded. That’s 62 percent of the league.
(In case you’re wondering, 12 of its 30 MLB teams reach; the NFL sends 14 of 32 teams.)
The Wave already have a top-tier defense led by Girma, described recently by the women’s game’s top coach, Emma Hayes, as the “best defender I’ve ever seen.”
If Donovan had a defender as transcendent as Girma in his four years as coach of the San Diego Loyal SC men’s team, he likely would’ve fared better in the postseason than his 0-3 record, losing by scores of 2-0, 3-0 and 4-3.
The well-rested offense that Donovan inherits figures to improve, if only because things can’t get much worse.
The Wave have gotten zero goals this season from two of the NWSL’s better playmakers.
Alex Morgan, who had 23 goals in 35 Wave games entering this year, has yet to score. The same goes for Savannah McCaskill, who earned or shared Angel City’s scoring honors the past two years.
Also, wing María Sánchez is scoreless after amassing six goals and nine assists in the two years before ing the Wave in a trade she requested early this season. (Sánchez scored in Tuesday’s Concacaf W Champions Cup win, but results and stats from the tournament don’t count toward the NWSL standings.)
Midfielder Melanie Barcenas, 16, stands to contribute down the stetch, too. After returning in June from a hip injury, she has shown improvements that nearly netted her first career goal.
The measure for Donovan and Ellis isn’t whether the Wave make the playoffs.
It’s whether they can improve upon the two NWSL semifinal appearances the Wave made under Stoney.
In other words, anything less than a trip to the NWSL final would be a disappointment.
