Team USA Women’s Soccer Coach Benched
October 23, 2007 by Jyle Dupuis
Filed under FIFA Women's World Cup
Greg Ryan will not be returning as the coach for the United States women’s national soccer team next season, U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati announced Monday.
Team USA were just just a short victory away from clenching the World Cup. But their dream was crushed with a shocking Brazil win. Well, someone needs to take the blame, and right now the interogation light is on coach Greg Ryan.
In a contrevesial decision, Ryan benched star goalkeeper Hope Solo with Brianna Scurry who proceded to let in four goals. The players immediatly blamed Ryan, who defended his decision. His explaination doesn’t seem to cut it for the Team USA board who have decided to not renew his contract that will expire October 22, 2007.
This decision will mean that Ryan, who had maintained a 45-1-9 record, will not be coaching Team USA in the Olympic games.
Source: Yahoo Sports
Tags: soccer, team usa, coach usa soccer, soccer coach, greg ryan
Ryan’s decision (if it was his) to change the keeper at the time he did, in the manner he did was just the tip of the iceberg. His titanic team was headed for disaster the moment he declared the possession game “history” and began implementing his strategy of boot and run. From there it only got worse.
But the part that is unforgivable (no Abby, I don’t want to think that I might like to forgive him sometime) was his choice to incite and/or collaborate with the “team leaders” to shun and humiliate Solo in order to deflect criticism and scrutiny away from his lack of strategy, courage and vision.
As the entire soccer world began to voice their incredulity at his announcement of the keeper change before the match with Brazil, he stood by his decision and said he would bear the consequences. If he had really done that, it may have blunted some of the criticism. Instead he hid behind the “team leaders” (who have been in more polite terms been dubbed “sorority” brats) as they continued to publicly punish Solo.
Ryan is not being unfairly punished for just one loss in the face of the teams 50+ wins and draws prior to the WWC. He is being held accountable for every single decision and misstep he made that resulted in a team that was not prepared or ready for the challenges they faced in China.
Hats off to Brazil by the way!!!!
Well said Zhatso. Things just went from bad to worse for team USA. Plus, I don’t think there is any shame in loosing to Brazil, especially the way they were playing that night. They just seemed to have the magic that team USA didn’t.