The following items merit much more expansive quips but it’s Saturday, it’s late and it’s going to take a decent night’s sleep to digest everything that has gone down tonight. Yeah, it was one of those kind of nights.

But here’s the nitty-gritty: the Washington Freedom are through to the WPS play-offs after defeating the Atlanta Beat 1-0 in a pretty wild game. FC Gold Pride steam-rolled the Philadelphia Independence 4-1. Philly’s loss cements Boston’s second place finish. Philadelphia will host the Washington Freedom next weekend in the First Round of the WPS play-offs.

Women’s World Cup qualifying: Sweden defeated Denmark 2-1, Norway squeaked past Ukraine 1-0 and France and Italy played to a 0-0 draw. England host Switzerland tomorrow.

- The Washington Post’s Steven Goff is reporting that Tonya Antonucci is stepping down as WPS Commissioner. WPS is not commenting. The league did send out a press release tonight and Antonucci was mentioned but not for those reasons. She presented the Regular Season trophy to FC Gold Pride tonight and it was probably a little awkward. Beau Dure has quotes from a few WPS players about the rumor here. *This is yet another concession of defeat for a league that seemingly gotten quite good at that this season. No word on whether the owners had a hand in this or if Antonucci resigned on her own volition. Either way, it’s scary. And with no further details on the matter, we’ll leave it at that.

+ Expansion. A sign of life! Or maybe it’s just one of those twitches before a dead body enters rigor mortis (but hopefully not). The 2011 expansion bid for a Buffalo/Rochester franchise has been approved by the league. Yay for more dispersal drafts, more opportunities to gain new awesome tweeps and another team for players to be allocated to. The Buffalo/Rochester thing is a bid puzzling but with no further details on the matter, we’ll leave it at that.

- Hope Solo. WPS drama isn’t only reserved for the front office, it seems. If one was to take Hope Solo’s tweets as the gospel truth, one would be led to believe that Solo is joining Tonya Antonucci on the way out of WPS. Solo took to Twitter again to complain about the refereeing. She insinuated that the officials had assured the Freedom’s entrance into the play-offs. She then threatened to leave WPS. In fairness, the Beat did seem to get a goal wrongly called back after a phantom foul on Cat Whitehill. But perhaps Solo forgot that even if the goal had stood, the Freedom still would have advanced to the play-offs with a 1-1 result and a 0-0 draw in the SBFC/Boston game. *Even if there is no league office anymore (in a sense), fines could be doled out for this one. Solo’s latest rant was preceded by a cheap-shot directed towards WPS PR consultant Robert Penner. Insulting the refs is one thing, insulting the credence paid to STATISTICS is another but insulting a member of the front office who has worked painstakingly hard to raise the profile of the league that employs Solo is simply out of line.

- Christie Rampone. The Sky Blue FC captain has rivaled Solo with some candid/borderline angry tweets of her own. Tonight was no different as she tweeted “Free at last!!!!!!!!!!!!” after her team’s 0-0 result. The score line ended SBFC’s title defense run. Maybe it’s not what it seems. Perhaps she was rejoicing after successfully navigating her way through Jersey’s notoriously terrible traffic. She surely couldn’t have been dancing on her team’s grave, right?

+ Positive things that actually took place on the field! Finally! For starters, how about Abby Wambach and that lovely chip? It was her quality finish that saw the Freedom through to the play-offs. They’ll the only 2009 play-off team returning to the postseason this year.

- Kari Seitz. For all of Solo’s carping, the official referee (as well as her A.R.’s) did have a shocking game. Washington had two penalty shouts that would have been awarded by more lax referees. Then there was Aya Miyama’s goal that wasn’t actually a goal because Cat Whitehill apparently got pushed in the box. Then the Freedom had a goal pulled back after it was determined that Allie Long was offside despite the fact that there was a Beat defender as well a Beat goalkeeper on the goal line. The game was overtly physical and Seitz never seemed to get a handle on things.

+ Marta. My pick for Player of the Year seems awfully silly now, doesn’t it. Marta had yet another great game in her team’s 4-1 win over the Independence. A-Rod, on the other hand, was anonymous throughout. Marta was involved in all four FCGP goals, tallying a goal and three assists.

- The Philadelphia defense. The team’s back four looked out of sorts for the entire game and it wasn’t for some solid goalkeeping by Val Henderson, we could have had another 6-1.

+ Kelley O’Hara. O’Hara’s goal was stunning. The rookie forward strolled the ball down the left wing before sending a cross into the box. Except it wasn’t a cross. The ball looped over Henderson’s head and nestled its way into the far corner of the net for her fifth goal the season. She then played in Marta for FCGP’s second goal a minute later.

- Kelley O’Hara’s crutches. The good vibes didn’t last long as O’Hara came up lame with a quad?/groin?/hamstring? injury shortly after. Crutches are never a good sign but at least she’ll have two weeks to recover.

+ Boston. Philadelphia’s loss gives Boston the right to host the Super Semifinal on September 22 or 23. The team’s second-half turnaround is nothing short of extraordinary and they must be the in-form team entering the play-offs next to FCGP.

- Philadelphia. This is not the time to lose steam. With the Independence’s disoriented 4-1 loss tonight, the team is now on a four game losing streak. This is also the first time ever that the team has conceded four goals. They’ll need to get it together by this time next week.

+ HD! FCGP/Phiindy’s FSC game was broadcast in High Definition tonight and it looked absolutely beautiful.

- The regular season is done. After nearly 20 weeks, the 2010 WPS regular season has concluded. We bid goodbye to the Chicago Red Stars, the Atlanta Beat and Sky Blue FC and hope to seem them next year.

+ Kyndra de St. Aubin. That’s an awesome name and Ms. de St. Aubin proved to be a wonderful color commentator on tonight’s FSC broadcast. She didn’t try to fill the natural lulls of the game with incessant babbling. That’s a trap that befalls many a North American soccer commentator and Kyndra skillfully avoided it.

+/- France, Italy. No damage was done tonight as both sides escaped with a goalless draw. It all comes down to Thursday.

+ Sweden, Norway. These two countries have been to every Women’s World Cup and it looks like that streak is going to continue. Both match-ups are much closer than they appear, however. Linda Forsberg opened Sweden’s account with a goal in the 12′ before Lotta Schelin doubled the lead in the 61′. Catherine Paaske-Sorensen got one back for Denmark three minutes later. The Danes have that ever-important away goal entering the team’s home leg on Wednesday. And Norway squeaked past Ukraine with a 1-0 result thanks to a Maren Mjelde goal in the 32′. Norway had a golden opportunity in the 47′ but Trine Bjerke Ronning had a penalty kick saved.

- No live streams. Women’s soccer is pretty unlovable at times. Despite some helpful links, none of the three matches were viewable from an American IP address. That makes following the games a bit difficult. These are World Cup play-off game. They’re some of the most important games of these players’ lives. And they’re not getting seen. Tragic.

+ Wolfsburg. The team recovered from last week’s shocking defeat at the hands of Bayer Leverkusen to earn a massive 2-1 win over league-leaders Turbine Potsdam. Wolfsburg are now tied with TP at the top of the table with 12 points.

- Turbine Potsdam. Just when it looked like the team was never going to lose again, they went ahead and lost. For the record, their last loss in any competition occurred on April 24. That’s nearly five months ago.

- FF USV Jena. Come on, my darlings! Jena suffered a horrible 0-4 result against Bayern Munich and have now slipped to eighth place and are tied with…

+ Hamburg. The team earned a big 3-1 win over Saarbrucken (whose only goal scorer, btw, was American Danielle Sweeney). A 20 year-old, another 20 year-old and a 19 year-old scored Hamburg’s goals. After a woeful result, Hamburg look to be climbing their way out of the relegation zone.

- Duisburg. Duisburg conceded an 88′ goal to veteran Conny Pohlers to lose 2-1 against visitors Frankfurt. The team has dropped to third place while Frankfurt have risen to fourth.

+ This: http://tv.dfb.de/index.php?view=2123

- This: (video of Bobby Zamora’s broken leg should be here but let’s just be spared of the horror.)

And that just about does it.

View Original Post at allwhitekit.wordpress.com

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• Soccer, Sports, WPS

This post is related to the following ongoing stories:

• Tonya Antonucci Stepping Down as WPS Commissioner