Tag: Christie Pearce

Irreplaceable: 5 Reasons Christie Pearce Should Stick Around

Posted on by RJ Allen
Leanne Keator

Earlier this year Christie Pearce stated that this would be her last season playing professionally. So when it was reported that she was finished for the season because of an accumulation of injuries I felt my heart drop to my stomach. I wasn’t ready for it. In my mind, she was always that constant on the pitch. She has always been around. Ever since I was a kid watching the ’99 World Cup. And then she was just gone. In a second. And I didn’t like it one bit. I still don’t. I thought I had at least six more matches to watch her play. And now it looks like that won’t be the case. But there is a slim chance that she returns next season. In what capacity? I don’t know. And what are the chances of that happening? It’s hard to say. But all I know is that the sport needs her to stick around. Whether that is as a player, a coach, a commentator, or an ambassador for the sport, it doesn’t matter. We still need her…And maybe some of us still aren’t ready to let her go.

Regardless, here are the five reasons Christie Pearce should stick around:

She’s Still Good At Her Job

It’s easy to say that Christie Pearce was still a competitor in the league this year. She was the fastest defender in the league, she was tough to beat in a one-v-one on the back line, and she could help be that steady, calming force for Sky Blue FC. But her job wasn’t simply to be a center back. It hasn’t been for a long time. She is Captain America. She is a leader, and an on-field player-coach when she needs to be. She is a mentor to younger players, and a role model for the league veterans to idolize. She inspires the next generation by being the living legend of the sport. It’s a lot of responsibility. And sure, someone else would step up if she walked away from the sport for a while. But it wouldn’t be the same. No one else could juggle so many roles so effortlessly.

 

Her Soccer IQ Is Off The Charts

There isn’t anyone in the league that has a higher Soccer IQ than Pearce. She simply knows how to win, and how to innovate, and how to inspire a team. So even if her insanely good skillset isn’t utilized on the pitch, it could definitely be taken advantage of off of it. Because I think she still has more to give to the game. She has coached Sky Blue to a championship before while she was playing in 2009. Why not use that knowledge of the sport as a full-time coach? She will succeed in it. And I guarantee it will be much less stressful than the last time she coached. Why not make a run at being the next Alex Ferguson?

 

The League (and Everyone Else) Respects Her

No one speaks a bad word about Christie Pearce. She holds herself to a standard that all athletes should. She is poised and humble, but still commands respect from her peers. And through the years her prior peers have become ambassadors for the league, commentators, or coaches. Now her peers are twenty-somethings that look at her as if she walked on water. Everyone, including the fans, will support her in whatever decision she decides to make for her future. Because she has made some pretty great choices in her career this far. I mean, I don’t see any other 42-year-old players on the pitch with two World Cup wins, three Olympic Gold Medals, and a Women’s Professional Soccer Championship, so she must be doing something right. So if she decides to hang up her boots and call it a day, everyone will respect her choice. And if she decides to stick around, in whatever capacity that is, her choice will be welcomed with open arms.

 

Soccer Mom/Mentor

After the news broke of the end of Pearce’s season, Lifetime reported on it before their Match of the Week. And during their report, they stated that the young players of Sky Blue FC call Christie Pearce ‘Mom.’ And I get it. She is that person that they can always call on for reassurance or advice or a swift kick in the ass. But it isn’t just the Sky Blue women that see her in the mentoring role. It’s almost hard to not see her as that. She has seen more games and more situations than anyone else in the league. And going back to the second reason, she is great at knowing what to do and how to advise these women on the game. So if she hangs around, regardless of her position, she is still going to be looked to for the answers. Because she has seen it all – three separate professional leagues, pay disparities, and a bunch of FIFA politics. To put it simply, her input for these women and this league is invaluable.

 

We Don’t Want To Let Her Go

I get it if she wishes to walk away. She deserves a break. She deserves a happy retirement. She has been playing professionally for longer than any other active player. Think about the players that came and went during her career; how many of her friends she watched retire while she kept going. But then I think about her not being around to mold and shape the future of the sport and I have a difficult time thinking that anyone else wouldn’t want her to stick around. The players, the coaches, the fans, and the league hold her to a higher standard. And it is a standard that no one else has reached yet (and maybe never will). But the real question is if we are ready to let her go. I don’t think that we are. We can if we have to, but like that first Sky Blue match without her, it will be a strange experience.

At the end of the day, the choice is Christie’s. And we will all respect it no matter what, whether she stays or takes her much deserved retirement to be with her family. And maybe this article is a selfish plea to get her to stick around. I recognize that. I also recognize that my opinion undoubtedly holds zero weight in Christie Pearce’s mind. The whole point of this article is to highlight how she still holds a very meaningful place in the sport. One that cannot be filled by anyone else. And it doesn’t matter how she would decide to fill that place if she does. We will take anything that she is willing to give us. Because for us, she is irreplaceable.

Breaking News: Christie Pearce to Miss Remainder of Season

Posted on by RJ Allen

Sky Blue FC has announced that defender Christie Pearce will miss the remainder of the 2017 season due to accumulating injuries.

“I’ve always had a really good awareness of my body and the ability to recover,” Pearce said in the Sky Blue press release. “I feel that I started the season off strong, but I’ve been consistently fighting through injuries, and I’m not able to give to the team what I consider to be my 100%. This decision, while it is hard to swallow, I know is the right thing for me and the team because I just can’t leave it all on the field every day. Something I must do is personally thank all of the fans. I feel so privileged to have their unwavering support, and they have always stood by me through thick and thin.”

Pearce, who earned 311 caps for the U.S. Women’s National Team between 1997 and 2015, has played for Sky Blue FC since the founding of the NWSL in 2013.

In 2009 she was the player coach of the Sky Blue FC team that won the WPS championship title.

A two-time world cup champion (1999 and 2015) and three-time Olympic gold medalist (2004, 2008, and 2012), Pearce announced in June 2017 that her retirement would likely come at the end of the 2017 season.

Route Two Soccer – What Went Wrong with Sky Blue?

Posted on by RJ Allen

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It’s been a strange season for Sky Blue FC. They got off to a strong start, and spent most of the first half looking like serious playoff challengers. That came as a surprise to those who had judged them too young, too inexperienced, and too raw to make a serious push this year. And some of us continued to hold to that position well into the season. In mid-June, for example, I wrote a buy/sell/hold column and recommending selling on Sky Blue.

Immediately after that column, Sam Kerr went full superhero and the team reeled off a run of very impressive results. And while there were still obvious flaws in the squad, it wasn’t hard to see them doing enough to compensate for those problems. There was even a clear analogue between the Sky Blue of 2017 and the Western New York Flash of 2016—who also looked to be a few pieces away from the full puzzle but were able to hang onto the 4th playoff spot anyways.

But starting in the middle of July, the wheels started to come off, and the team is now in full crisis mode, having conceded 14 goals in their past three games (by comparison, North Carolina have conceded 14 goals over the whole season). Now, with the news dropping on Wednesday afternoon that head coach Christy Holly is stepping down from the job, it might be a useful time to reflect on how things got so bad.

However, before we get into the thick of it, it’s worth noting that Sky Blue are not out of the playoff race. It’s possible that was part of the motivation for Holly to make this move right now. Whether the fault rested with him (arguable, but by no means obvious), sometimes a change at the top can be useful to reset the system. And as long as they have Kerr terrorizing opposing defenses, there’s a shot. So it will certainly be interesting to watch the end of the season. They’re unlikely to fix everything that’s ailing them, but even some modest improvements might be enough. There are three key areas of concern.

Goalkeeping: Sheridan has been great, but needs a break

Kailen Sheridan has put together an extremely impressive rookie campaign. Confident, athletic, and decisive – she was one of the best keepers in the league through most of the season. But things have taken a turn for the worse, starting with the epic 5-4 match against Seattle. Sheridan took a number of hits that game and collapsed on the field at the final whistle. And the injuries have only continued to pile up. While she hasn’t missed any minutes, her range of motion is clearly suffering, and she has looked far more tentative over the past few games.

The best long-term approach would be to sit the young keeper for a few weeks to let her build back to 100%. It’s understandable that both Sheridan and the team are resistant – and it’s certainly possible that even at 70% Sheridan is the best option. But it’s far from an ideal situation.

Defense: Age, inexperience, and injuries

The defensive line is clearly the heart of the problem, and it was clearly a foreseeable problem as well. Their first choice back five at the start of the season featured four players 22-or-under and one player over 40. But it was hard to anticipate things collapsing quite this completely.

Relatively early in the season, Kelley O’Hara was brought back into the backline, which did make a huge difference. So her recent absence to injury has been a big loss. Without her movement and attacking quality in that fluid right wingback/fullback hybrid role, they’ve been far easier to pin back and much less stable.

Meanwhile, the other veteran on the backline has held off the march of time far longer than anyone could ever have expected. But time eventually defeats us all. And sadly, 2017 seems to be the year that age finally began to catch up with Christie Pearce. She started the season strong, playing as well in the first few months as we’ve seen from her in a long time. But since then, things have started to slip. The pace is still good, but it’s not quite as explosive. Her tackling is less precise. And while you’d be hard pressed to find a player with higher soccer intelligence, Pearce has finally started to look like a player whose body no longer is able to do what her brain needs it to do.

The youth movement has also hit some speed bumps. Sky Blue were lauded for their excellent draft—particularly for getting the duo of Mandy Freeman and Kayla Mills—and early in the season there were some positive returns. Freeman missed six weeks with injury, and even when healthy has suffered from all the expected problems that come with youth. The talent is clearly there, and she will be a rock in their defense for a long time, but she has not been the reliable presence that they’ve needed. Mills has almost limitless potential, but so far has been unable to translate that talent into consistent match performances. They’ve gotten some solid performances from Erica Skroski, but even she has been less dependable than she was last year—perhaps due to constantly being slotted into new positions with new obligations as much as anything else.

It should come as no surprise that young players would stumble, or that they would fade as the season progressed. The professional game is tougher and longer than their other experiences. It would have been surprising if they hadn’t faded a bit. That’s simply one of the dangers of building on youth. And all things considered, blooding young players, and hoping that they might be able to get you through the season probably wasn’t a terrible gamble. If they manage it, you hit the peak of your success cycle earlier than expected. If not … well, this wasn’t supposed to be a playoff team anyways. But with more experience, they might be ready to truly compete by 2018.

And that’s still a possibility. But it’s hard to look at the past few weeks and see a team building toward the future. With makeshift defenders filling in and struggling mightily to cope with expectations, Sky Blue has looked much more like a team on a downward slope than the reverse.

20/20 is perfect, of course, but it’s hard to look at the team right now and not think that they missed a chance to pick up a veteran defender at some point who could help plug some of these gaps. As it is, they’ve got the group that they’ve got. And it’s an open question whether they’ll be able to sort things out enough to at least close down the spigot of goals.

Midfield: Not enough ball-winning, not enough creativity

Team defensive breakdowns are rarely just the fault of the defense. And that’s certainly the case with Sky Blue this year. While the midfield unit is reasonably solid on paper, at times they’ve looked to be a bit less than the sum of their parts.

Look at the roster and you’ll see creative players, players with pace, players who can dribble, players who can shoot. But they’ve had a very difficult time finding an appropriate balance. And a lot of that has to do with the pairing in the middle: Sarah Killion and Raquel Rodriguez. When they’re both clicking, that can be a very successful combination. They’re similar players—all-around talents who can do a defensive job, hold possession, and make attacking runs. But when things aren’t working, it can break down pretty badly. They both tend to play narrow, and neither has the sort of defensive solidity that you’d want from a lock-down holding midfielder. As a result, Sky Blue haven’t really been able to close down the opposition in the midfield with a good ball-winner, nor have they been able to consistently hold possession once they do get the ball.

Combine those two with a rotating cast of often-good-but-inconsistent players like Nikki Stanton, Daphne Corboz, Taylor Lytle, and Madison Tiernan and the result is precisely what you’d expect: a team that can beat anyone on their day but that struggles to maintain much coherence from week to week.

There is a lot of talent here, and during the first part of the season, the mixing-and-matching worked out well enough. But one of the major themes of the past month has been the consistent breakdown of the midfield. Players have rotated in and out and there hasn’t been much coherence in the process.  Despite the presence of some players with a lot of creative potential (Corboz in particular), they simply haven’t been able to build the structure necessary to let that creativity flourish.

Who is to blame? And where do they go from here?

Under conditions like these, you certainly want to put some of the blame on the coach—whose job it is to develop a system into which players can fit without needing to reinvent the wheel each game. And whose responsibility it was to build a roster that could last over the long haul.

But it’s also important to remember the baseline that this team was working from: “young, developing, probably not ready yet.” So it’s important not to overstate the problems here.

Sky Blue overachieved at the start of the season, and that may have created some rising expectations. But all things considered, they’re right about where they ‘should’ be at the moment. Considering the serious injuries they’ve sustained, I would still rate their performance over the whole season as a modest coaching success.

It’s possible that Holly felt like he had taken the team as far as they could go under him, and he wanted to give them a chance to make the final playoff push with someone else. Perhaps the recent problems generated tension that made his position unsustainable. Perhaps there are other reasons that have little or nothing to do with the performance on the pitch.

But whatever the motivations for the change this week, taking a broad perspective and thinking about his full tenure on the job, there is plenty for Holly to be proud of. Whether or not Sky Blue is able to arrest their decline and make the playoffs this year, they are on far more stable ground than they were when he took on the job.

Can Orlando Pride Capitalize over Sky Blue FC for First Road Win?

Posted on by RJ Allen

With a quarter of the 2017 season in the books, the Orlando Pride sit 8th on the table, three points out of the playoff picture.

Going into Week 7, Coach Tom Sermanni’s side travel out to New Jersey to take on Sky Blue FC for their first meeting of the season. The timing for this week’s match may favor the Pride since Sky Blue is coming off a midweek loss to the North Carolina Courage on the road. Perhaps looking ahead to Orlando, Coach Christy Holly fielded a less than optimal starting XI Wednesday, and had to chase the match late which ended 2-0 in favor of the Courage.

Orlando have finally started to get in rhythm taking points in its last three matches, and have established a sense of identity missing in their first three. The most serious concern going into the match will surround the Pride netminder, more likely to be Caroline Stanley as regular backup goalkeeper Aubrey Bledsoe recovers from a concussion. A full week of practice to rally the Orlando back line will help as the defense looks to clamp down on league golden boot leader Sarah Killion, national team player Kelley O’Hara, and Australian star Samantha Kerr. Another weapon Orlando will be facing is Costa Rican international Raquel “Rocky” Rodriguez who, along with O’Hara and Killion, make for a stacked midfield.

Former Rutgers Scarlet Knight standout Kristen Edmonds is going to need to regain some of her 2016 form on her collegiate stomping grounds and work her way into the Pride attack; however, she’s been pressed to work on the defensive end alongside Dani Weatherholt while Camila has taken up the attacking midfielder role. Edmonds needs to provide better link play to the Pride offense to keep a quick transition, since her contributions so far haven’t been anything to write home about. She hasn’t been able to provide service from her free kicks which helped her last season.

Tactically, Sermanni may feel it more important to focus on the defensive side while on the road with Stanley in the back, but don’t dismiss Orlando’s attacking mindset with Marta leading the blitz against Canadian Kailen Sheridan and Captain American, herself Christie Pearce and the rest of the back line. The Pride need to take advantage of any fatigue plaguing Sky Blue after their rainy midweek game and travel to and from North Carolina. Orlando has demonstrated it can take it to a strong home side to get a result. Sermanni needs to be prepared to face SBFC’s 4-2-3-1 by changing his 4-3-3 formation to something that works to give better match ups for his side.

Orlando will need to be more physical for Saturday’s match without giving up fouls to the home side in dangerous spots. Orlando will need to take the ball up the flanks, and pressure the young Sky Blue defenders with crosses with multiple attacking players making runs inside the box. The Pride can’t push the ball forward with only a couple of players and hope to maintain possession or lob the ball over the top and be successful unless they can break on a quick counter-attack.

I do believe Stanley and the Orlando defense will have enough to keep the Sky Blue attack in check. This is one of the best opportunities to get the first road win of the season, putting to an end an 11-match road winless streak dating back to last year. One of the Pride’s secondary attacking option will need to make an impact to keep defenses honest, and create some space for Marta or Camila who should be taking the ball into the 18 if the Pride play direct or off a cross from one of the backs getting forward. This test will finally convince doubters that Orlando is a legit team. Orlando will get its first victory over Sky Blue and win 2-1.