From FWM 2011: “Bride of Syndicate”
Why watch women’s football? Is it because Vicey is predictably burnt out after another semester of writing everyone else’s piece-of-shit papers and now, through his clamorous craving for catharsis, believes he has the right to badger us with a bunch of nonsensical mayhem? Well….maybe a little. At any rate you don’t have to be a dick about it.
In point of fact, women’s football is a colorful athletic spectacle every bit on par with the major male tournaments. The beautiful game rewards creativity, spontaneity, and endurance. These are not characteristics over which any one gender holds a monopoly.
Frustration at a Women’s basketball game may be understandable. What is it with this dearth of dunks? One may be similarly empathetic towards the observer of a Female Ice Hockey Game. Sure they’re talented, but why are the frequent body checks conspicuously absent? Football (or soccer if you really insist) is not a game in which pure physical prowess reigns supreme. Consider the girl that regularly out-dekes you in your Co-ed League. You know exactly what I’m talking about. She makes you look like a fool. How long will you hold on to such misplaced pride?
Thus began our Sportsbook coverage of Women’s Football tournaments precisely eight Summers ago. Lest anyone think a class of professionally offended self-righteous online trolls is a relatively new phenomenon, I’ll remind the reader that the opening provoked some sanctimonious screeching from a couple of bratty kids even back then.One might have mistaken a humble bookie for Stephen Moore.
To be fair, the statement itself contained its own instigative puerile snark. Sass begets sass. Moreover, ignorant pharisaical sarcasm has always been the domain of the young. It remains the easiest adult behavior to mimic, while simultaneously according the young and inexperienced a ready-made Pecksniffian ledge from which to judgmentally peer down on their elders. We’ve all utilized this tool at some point. No point in pretending we didn’t.
Given that your friendly bookie devoted some space in the Re-Release Section to naming a couple of books he found to be genuinely awful, I’ll use this post to mention one I truly happened to enjoy. Ken Jennings’ “Planet Funny: How Comedy Took over our Culture” counts as an absolute masterpiece.
He literally covers just about every major comedic movement since antiquity, explaining along the way how comedy now drives our entire quest for meaning in the postmodern secular age. He does it all in a smooth, entertaining, and non-linear fashion, unlike the rube who wrote that last sentence.
On the topic misplaced sarcasm, it gets pretty personal. Reviewing a Spy-Magazine-inspired column he once wrote for his High School Paper he makes the following retroactive observation:
“I had read Spy and thought, ‘These people are smart and talented, and are sometimes dicks in print. Therefore, If I’m a dick in print, I must be smart and talented.’ Without a cause or a deserving victim, my work wasn’t satire. It was satire’s eyeball-rolling teenage nephew, snark.”
He expands a bit on the difference between satire and snark.
“Snark is irreverent kibitizing as a way of life—the curled lip, the bored sneer. Snark is too detached and superior to really function as criticism, since it looks to put down everything, but it hates sincerity and sentiment above all. Satire denounces; snark merely dismisses.”
We have notorious 19thcentury Berlin drunk Eckensteher Nante to thank for all of his. The word itself derives from the onomatopoetic chortling sound made as he, true to his namesake, occupied various street corners in the capital, downed Schnapps, and cracked wise at any pedestrian in his immediate vicinity. “Snarken” no longer exists as an active verb in the German language, but it remains essential English for anyone needing to describe the hordes who imbue their lives with meaning by calling out offensive material online, victimizing themselves professionally, and doing their utmost to ruin any customer service experience you already weren’t looking forward to.
How much of your friendly neighborhood betting syndicate is satire and how much is snark? We’ll leave it to the above-mentioned hordes to make that call. The bookie himself admits he occasionally finds his own ratio displeasing. I’ve put in time both on Berlin street corners and at Turbine Potsdam matches. A mite more mature now, I wish had spent more time at the latter. In any event, we’ll take it a bit easy on ourselves (as well as the hordes) and say that, contrary to Jennings’ carefully cleaved definition, a bit of snark can occasionally come from a well-intentioned and sincere place.
Pages upon pages in this Sportsbook extol the virtues of the women’s game. While they were undeniably written by a man, they were also written by a lifelong fan. Europeans have always had women’s club teams to root for. This is because the vast majority of the clubs originated as local community athletic societies. Of course your community club has a women’s team, just as sure as they have a Bacchi Association and a tennis court!
Such was not always the case in the American professional landscape, despite the fact that women’s football has always far exceeded the quality of MLS. Only recently have American women’s football fans had the privilege of following a professional league that lasted for over five years. Drumming up enthusiasm for this beautiful sport in the non-public sphere has always proven difficult. That’s WHY the female stars voluntarily engage in activities such as this:
Accuse a humble bookie of objectifying them as sex symbols? They do that on their own accord!
Anyways, it finally appears that the NWSL (National Women’s Soccer League) is here to stay. This oddmaker couldn’t be find himself more ecstatic! It’s been a long journey, nearly thirty years since your friendly bookie first watched the U.S. Women win the 1991 inaugural version of the FIFA Women’s World Cup and wondered where he could watch the likes of Mia Hamm, Carlin Jennings, Michelle Akers-Stahl, Julie Foudy, and April Heinrichs play professionally.
For some reason the 1991 victory in China didn’t lead to any serious attempts to form a professional league. Semi-pro post-college developmental associations like the USL-W and the WPSL winked in and out of existence. I seem to recall some other pro-ams splintering off from them, then disappearing faster than antimatter particles at the Hadron. Most everyone gave up on the idea in the later stages of the decade. Then came 1999….
Ah yes. Brandi Chastain. “Surely,” said the venture capitalists who among the 90,000+ who watched the U.S. Women claim their second star at the Pasadena Rose Bowl, “We can sell THIS!”
Hence, the “Women’s United Soccer Association” (WUSA) was formed at the cusp on the new millennium. Virtually all the major cable conglomerates poured investment into what looked like a sure-fire market. Folding in some of the pro-am teams would control costs. Coastal hubs would ensure it wasn’t stretched too thin. Some of the top-tier talent from around the globe even bought in. Birget Prinz, Homare Sawa, Sun Wen, Christine Latham, Hege Riise, Katia, Marinette Pinchon, Steffi Jones, Maribel Dominguez, and Maren Meinert all signed stakeholder contracts to play in this league!
Three seasons was all we got. Even the top-market teams couldn't draw more than 7,000 average attendance. The flagship Atlanta Beat couldn’t even keep the stadium half full despite being eminently successful. Players got furloughed or had to miss paychecks. Not that it truly matters, but the Philadelphia team was too godawful to sustain this bookie’s interest. Your friendly bookie recalls watching a young Hope Solo stand in goal for them…and presciently observing that something was about to go horribly wrong.
Following a four-year hiatus, we witnessed another stab at a professional league in the form of simply named “Women’s Professional Soccer” (WPS). Some of the dissolved teams from WUSA reactivated and they tried to plant major market teams in Chicago and L.A. Somehow your friendly bookie knew this one was doomed to fail as interest in the women’s game had been waning domestically. The Germans had won the 2003 and 2007 Women’s World Cup and were set to host and very likely win the 2011 tournament.
While the WPS exhibited some decent ideas, notably some great regional rivalries along the coastal enclaves, attendance figures were even worse than the WUSA Numbers. Eight years without a title had taken its toll on public interest. Then, of course, there was the mater of…..grrr…. “magicJack”. Hard to take a league seriously when it features a team named after a dongle you plugged into your computer. If you happened to be a big Abby Wambach fan, as your bookie unabashedly was, you had to tune into this awkward commercialized mess to watch her play.
“magicJack knows how to plug in!”
Sadly, this happened. We allowed it to happen. I allowed it to happen.
Despite receiving a slight bump after the U.S. Women reached the 2011 Final in Germany, it proved too little, too late. The WPS cancelled its 2012 season. With a four-year-lifespan, the second professional league barely outdid the first. Hopes were abysmally low for the 2013-debuting National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) iteration. It looked to be just a lousy attempt Canadian, Mexican, and American Federations to weakly prop up another semi-pro developmental league.
Not without its problems—folding teams, poor broadcast rights negotiating, and three commissioners to name a few—the NWSL did get a lot right. Partnering with MLS teams turned out to be quite smart. Taking advantage of the Portland-Seattle rivalry was even smarter. Expansion has largely been a success and the North American player quotas have worked well for the rosters. Bookie really likes the Portland Thorns and Seattle’s Reign FC. (Klingenberg and Rapinoe remain my favorite active players). It certainly beats watching the Timbers vs. the Sounders!
Beyond the thriving NWSL, there’s a whole slew of good news for those who appreciate women’s international tournaments. Outside of the FWM and the FEM, we used to only have Portugal’s Algarve Cup (a genuinely goofy competition), the Cyprus Cup (which the best teams often opted out of), and China’s Four Nations Tournament (which usually lasted all of two days). Thanks to the USWNT’s championship in 2015, the U.S. now has its very own annual international invitational: The SheBelieves Cup.
All four of iterations of SheBelieves have been wildly entertaining. For now, it’s simply a round-robin group bracket, but it always features top tier European teams like England, France, and Germany. Brazil made their debut this March. Attendance has been fabulous and expansion is likely on the way. Elsewhere, the AFC has recently introduced a new four-team-pacific tournament and CAFU unveiled a West African Women’s Championship. Times are indeed fantastic for fans of the women’s game.
Before moving on to the other two tournaments we’ll be covering in during this Summer’s festivities, your friendly female-football-loving bookie must, of course, weigh in on the USWNT collective bargaining dispute. It’s actually not a new issue in the sport. The Norwegian and Spanish Football Federations have already faced similar protests from their players.
Do the ladies deserve equal pay? Of course they fucking do! They deserve more pay than the men’s squad who couldn’t even qualify out of CONCACAF last Summer. They have three legitimate stars atop their crest. Just give the girls their damn money!
Here are our two other ancillary tournaments:
2) 2019 Copa America (Kickoff June 14th)
Brazil or Argentina get a chance to win something for a change!
(Be advised that bookie’s European bias might rear its ugly head when covering this tournament for the first cycle)
2) 2019 African Cup of Nations (Kickoff June 21st)
Having covered this tournament extensively in 2013, 2015, and 2017, I’m almost sad that it’s been moved to the Summer. Fourth cycle coverage might be diminished somewhat due to the change. Africa also joins Asia and Europe in officially expanding to the “24-team-Super-tournament” structure.
Bookie remains tepidly okay with this insofar as football is concerned, but did the Democratic Presidential Candidates really have to follow suit? Yikes. Syndicate regulars know of my disdain for prolonged election cycles. They’re horrible for democracy. The overly-sensitive outrage machine gets fuel. Voters get bored. The outrageous rise to the top as people seek to be entertained. We began this post with some thoughts on humor. Perhaps we should return to Papa Jennings.
“For the most part, Western civilization has chosen to maintain a careful line between government and comic entertainment. In the United States, this bright line even has a name: Corwin’s Law. Thomas Corwin advised future president James Garfield, ‘Never make people laugh. If you would succeed in life, you must be solemn, solemn as an ass.’
In [gradually] repealing Corwin’s Law, we created a culture in which everyone is expected to be entertained by politics all the time, and when we finally did it, when we finally voted in the showman whose candidacy had seemed the funniest, no one felt much like laughing at all.”
…..
…..
Well shit. It’s time to watch football, gentlemen. There’s never been a better time. Treat yourself to some true entertainment.
(Hopefully, that statement comes across with as little snark as possible)
