Athletica’s 3-3 tie with the Washington Freedom hurt plenty — it was a game the team thought it should have won — but an injury to midfielder Daniela’s knee could be the worst of all.
Daniela scored two goals and assisted on the third, but she got hit by Abby Wambach on the restart after a Washington goal and went down in pain. Daniela spent two minutes on the field in pain and, according to the Washington Post, later passed out from the pain after leaving the field. After the game, she was taken to a hospital in an ambulance.
“There was no excuse for it,” Athletica goalkeeper Hope Solo told the Washington Post of the foul. “I know Abby means well, I know she has a good heart and she would never want to see a player go down, but in the emotions of a game, it was right after the kickoff after they scored, and she went in two-footed.”
Said Wambach: “She took a long touch so I charged and slid into it, slipped a little bit. She came in late, I came in late, I definitely think I deserved a yellow card, but I don’t think it was malicious. I wasn’t intending to try to take her out. I was going for the ball. That’s not my game.”
Athletica players had said they thought once they got one goal, more would follow, and after Daniela put in a rebound for a goal in the seventh minute, they did. But a two-goal lead, no matter what happened to Daniela, they should have been able to hold on to.
“We feel like that was one we should have finished off well,” Athletica’s Lori Chalupny told me by phone after the game. “We should be walking off with three points. To be up 3-1 late in the game, we should be able to finish it off and keep the lead.
“We went into a defensive shell early on (up 3-1) and they were able to keep the pressure on so much, you kind of felt one was going to go in. They had so many chances. Their wing play was really good in the second half. They got so many services in and with someone like Wambach in the box (that’s dangerous).”
On the bright side, Athletica did score three goals — “three really great goals,” Chalupny said, “we just have to build on that” – and at the end of the weekend, they were no longer in last place in the league. They and Sky Blue FC (that would be the New York team) are both 0-2-2 with two points and both have a minus-3 goal difference, but Athletica’s three goals two more than Sky Blue FC have scored, have pushed them into sixth.
Athletica’s next opponent, FC Gold Pride, beat Sky Blue 1-0 on Sunday night.
On the Athletica payroll? What a joke. Wambach runs over Solo and didn’t get a yellow card. She takes out Daniela’s knee on an obvious red and only gets a yellow. Daniela’s out for the season and Wambach gets a slap on the wrist. If the ref was on Athletica’s payroll, he was scr**ing his employers royally. Yeah, there were missed calls on both sides. Several offsides calls missed, including on the of the plays Hildreth was boohooing for the Freedom and Sawa was off on the Freedom’s second goal. Yeah, we really got the calls in that game. Nice observation.
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Poor Shane… Just like players, refs can have bad games too. I have had Shane in the center many times, and he is one of the best. It just wasn’t his day…
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I didn’t see the entire game, but is anyone going to talk about how bad our defense looked on the goals? Between Solo’s slow reactions and unmarked opponents we didn’t look so hot. I was really optimistic before the season and have been disappointed by the start. Of course this is a expansion team in an expansion league so things will change, but I was really expecting our defense to dominate. Because we have only looked good in what one, maybe two games?.
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Obviously, the referee was not on the Athletica payroll (what payroll), but I do think that he did a poor job of officiating that game. He let too many dangerous challenges go unpunished early on, and that set the tone for a very aggressive game. When you’ve got players going really hard into challenges all over the field, and the game is heated, and the field is wet, you’re setting yourself up for some horrific injuries, and that’s ultimately what happened. Wambauch went in hard. Wambauch is probably the biggest, strongest player in the league. She also had taken some tough hits that weren’t whistled, much less given yellow cards for. Maybe if the game had been called tighter all day, she wouldn’t have gone into Daniela so hard, and the Athletica–and the WPS–would still have one of their best and most entertaining offensive players.
To be blunt, I think that referee Shane Butler did a terrible job, and he’s partly to blame for the Daniela injury. You have to keep your employees safe, WPS.
Daniela, here’s to a full and relatively speedy recovery.
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This was a great game on FSC but the ref was clearly on the Athletica payroll for ignoring so many obvious fouls on Freedom players. Ellertson and another defender kept knocking bodies over without going for the ball. Without the ref’s help the Athletica would’ve lost this one.
Great goals by Daniella and Bompastor and great saves by Solo despite the 3 goals scored on her.
WPS is better than MLS!
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