Will women’s pro soccer gain much in way of benefits from World Cup win?

The part of the world that cares much about professional soccer in this country will actually be paying attention to the Chicago Red Stars, if indirectly.

Chicago's new fabulous femme athlete?

For Chicago’s club in the National Women’s Soccer League has four of its players who were part of the team that represented the United States in the Women’s World Cup tourney this year.

OF COURSE, THE next time the team takes to the pitch, there will be even greater attention. Because they’re scheduled on Sunday to play the Houston Dash – the team for which Carli Lloyd plays for.

I’m sure the Red Stars are miffed that this particular match is being played in Houston. There’s no chance of a record-setting crowd for the Red Stars consisting of people who are curious to see what all the fuss is about.

The Dash won’t make their lone Chicago appearance for this season until Sept. 6 – their final regular-season match of the year. By which time, it’s likely that the public attention (some 26.7 million U.S. viewers Sunday on television, including the Spanish-language broadcasts) has passed, and the “Lloyd” name won’t be considered as big a deal.

Although it’s possible that every team in the women’s league will gain a bit of a plus. We’re likely for each team to go out of its way to let us know which of the U.S. team members are actually a part of their own ball clubs.

THE RED STARS (a reference to the Chicago city flag) were quick to put out a statement (picked up on by the Associated Press) letting us know of Shannon Boxx, Julie Johnston, Lori Chalupny and Christen Press.

The same Press who gained her own bit of fame in recent weeks from those Coppertone television ads where she “shows off” by heading a beach ball into the pool.

She may well become the glamour girl, of sorts, of the Chicago sports scene. Unless someone from the Chicago Sky (women’s professional basketball) manages to do something to catch on.

I may come off as a bit sarcastic here. It’s just that I’m fully aware of how fleeting “fame” can be, and how quickly it will be before the Women’s World Cup and the U.S. victory will become just a footnote in the public culture eye.

Lloyd coming to Chicago Sept. 5

SO WHAT ARE the chances that much of anything will happen for the Chicago professional soccer scene as a result of Sunday night’s victory?

I’d be willing to guess that most people in Chicago don’t have a clue where the Red Stars play; even if they were interested in checking out a match or two.

While the Chicago Fire men’s professional team has rose to the point of having its own stadium – and a fairly nice structure at that – in suburban Bridgeview, the Red Stars use the athletic facilities at Benedictine University in suburban Lisle.

I’m not knocking the facilities there. But they’re worthy of a small-school athletic department, not a professional sports team that purports to represent the city of Chicago in its respective league.

WHICH THEY HOPE to move up from someday, just as the Chicago Bandits professional softball team used to play in Lisle until they eventually got better facilities in suburban Rosemont.

Although the small, suburban image will stick in the minds of fans who try to check out the league. After seeing the women’s national team win a World Cup in front of a crowd in excess of 50,000 people, will they take seriously a team that draws a couple thousand people (at best)?

To the point where they will wind up missing out on the quality of play on the pitch. Which is their loss more than anything else.

Particularly for those people who are interested in finding a diversion from the knuckleheaded budgetary activity our political people have been engaging in – and will continue to in coming weeks.

  -30-

Carli Lloyd-3; Japan-2

Oh, by the way, the rest of the U.S. women’s national soccer team also managed to score a pair of goals, which gave us the end result of the United States taking its first World Cup soccer championship in 16 years by a 5-2 final score.

The new sporting hero

I have to admit that Sunday’s championship game between the United States and Japan was one of the most remarkable soccer games I ever have seen.

PARTICULARLY FOR THE play of Lloyd, a New Jersey native and midfielder for the Houston Dash of the National Women’s Soccer League when she’s not playing for the United States.

She managed to score three goals within the first 16 minutes of the match, particularly that third goal that she kicked from the middle of the field – carrying roughly 180 feet right into the goal in large part because the Japanese goal tender managed to lose her footing while trying to block the ball.

That probably will be the moment that lives on in televised sports footage for years to come.

Admittedly, this match would have been more competitive if the Team Japan of the second half had been on the pitch for the entire match. But the U.S. team was able to get overly aggressive (jumping out to a 2-0 lead within the first five minutes) early on, making it difficult for Japan to seriously come back.

ALTHOUGH I HAVE to admit they didn’t quit. There was one point when the score became 4-2 that created a feeling in the gut that perhaps some sort of miraculous comeback was in store.

So now there is a serious sporting moment that took place Sunday – with the women’s team getting its third championship (the others came in 1991 and 1999, the latter at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.) ever. Which is better than men’s squads from the United States have done – no championship ever, even though that tourney has been played since 1930.

 

Will Renee Wronecki (Miss Ill.) get her moment?

Perhaps this could give a jolt to the men’s national squads to do better when they take to the pitch in 2018 in Russia.

And you have to wonder, will anything that happens at the Miss USA pageant next Sunday short of a “wardrobe malfunction” by some unfortunate contestant come close to matching the drama of what took place today in Vancouver?

  -30-