re: #219 austin_blue

Actually, the goalie is often an active offensive player, especially when a team is behind, playing at a high level in the field distributing passes back up to midfielders to build an attack.

In hockey, goalies are pulled to add an attacker at the end of games. It’s just a flavor of that concept in football. The Most Valuable Player for the US just took advantage of it and scored a goal for the ages.

Exactly, we saw Bardsley and Angerer come out at various points in the third place match. Solo came out several times today to take free kicks FAR outside the box. The thing is you can’t stay out very far unless you’ve forced the entire opposing side into the bottom half of their territory.

re: #225 austin_blue

She was also falling as the ball came in. There was a fair amount of slippage on that field tonight. The pitch may not have been in the best of shape.

In any case, Lloyd took full advantage of the situation and launched a shot for the ages.

This will be the last time FIFA makes women play on artificial turf. They actually mandated it for reasons that nobody quite understands except for cost and the fact that Blatter and the management don’t show much respect the women’s game. They don’t make the men play on that shit and there was quite a bit of noise about this as the tournament began.

Artificial turf ups the injury rate all around. Also unlike real grass it doesn’t reflect IR, contain water or respire, so the midday matches were like playing on a hot plate.