Sunday, March 29, 2009

Welcome to WPS!

Women's professional soccer is back in the US, and I'm writing this as I watch the inaugural WPS match on Fox Soccer Channel. The WPS website is billing this as Abby versus Marta--that's Abby Wambach---

GOOOOOAAAALLLLL! LA Sol defender Allison Falk scores the first ever WPS goal in the sixth minute!

As I was saying, that's Abby Wambach, familiar as a forward to fans of the US Women's team, and Brazilian forward Marta Viera da Silva, who I wrote about a little bit a couple of years ago (check out the Alex Bellos article I link from that entry).

Right now seven teams make up this fledgling league: today's dueling LA Sol and the Washington Freedom (who comes up with these names?) as well as the Boston Breakers, the Chicago Red Stars, FC Gold Pride (Bay Area), Sky Blue FC (NY/NJ), and St Louis Athletica. Next year the league will expand to Philadelphia and--Atlanta!--so next year I'll be able to blog some live matches from here in the deep South. This will go some way (only some) toward mitigating the pain of being so very far from my beloved Portland Timbers.

I've blogged off and on about women's soccer and issues surrounding women in the sport, though never as consistently as I've wanted to I'll be doing my best in the coming months to write about WPS, the players, and the matches. If you didn't click my link up above, check out the new league's website here. And now I've got a match to follow.

No comments: