Something doesn't add up with Greg Ryan's keeper decision

Oh No Romo Joke of the Week: What's the difference between Greg Ryan and Norv Turner? Not much

She was suspended one game for insubordination, what's so hard to understand? Coach says sit, you sit. Case closed.

Greg Ryan is a decent motivator, poor coach and a shambolic tactician. He's tactics we're so poor in every world cup game that I turned two of them off midway through. He plays there rediculous D2 tactics that could be broken down by a D1 asst. coach, not to mention world class managers. He's a shame, I could rant more but screw it, he isn't worth the trouble, point is that he never deserved the job, did a bad job with it, and then when the shit hit the fan he threw Solo under the bus and implored his Captian to stand by him shutting Solo outta the squad.

Ryan might be the most ball-less member of that team.

<pc font>This is the problem with sports. Not everybody gets to play all the time. If both goalkeepers were allowed to play in the game at the same time, there would be no need for this debate.</pc font>

Something doesn't add up indeed.

Is it possible a certain coach was spurned by a certain young lady? Wouldn't that be a juicy twist!

Stay tuned, this soap opera isn't over yet.

I've said it before, if Hope Solo were a guy calling out his manager, he'd be getting heavily criticised for post-game complaining about playing time. Right or wrong, the coach made the decision. You can attack the decision, but don't attack the coach for defending himself.

Couldn't have said it better myself:

Players Need To Mend Fences

By: Roy Fuoco

The U.S. women's soccer team has been the leader of promoting women's athletics on the national and international levels for a decade now.

I've been a huge fan of the team from the beginning. It once boasted the best two players in the world in Michelle Akers (a UCF alum) and Mia Hamm. The toughness Akers showed playing through injuries in the 1999 World Cup was a great story. America had every reason to feel tremendous national pride.

Until now.

Today, they're an embarrassment and have a lot work to do to regain respect.

It's not because they finished third in the World Cup. Hey, it happens. Good teams get outplayed. It's called sports.

No, all the goodwill and respect they rightfully earned since the late '80s took a step backward last week, but not because of a boneheaded coaching decision or an overly opinionated player.

The embarrassment was caused by the decision to shun Hope Solo by of a bunch of thin-skinned players who acted like little girls with hurt feelings instead of real athletes.

Let's start at the beginning. Greg Ryan's decision to bench Solo, now persona non-grata, was overcoaching to the extreme. It's been compared to Grady Little keeping Pedro Martinez in too long in the 2003 playoffs and the benching of Vladisov Tretiak in the 1980 Olympics. However you want to describe it, it was just plain stupid.

To be fair, Brianna Scurry is a veteran goalkeeper, the starter on one World Cup-winning team and two Olympic goal-medal teams. But there was nothing to gain with a change in terms of skill and everything to lose in terms of team chemistry.

Solo, of course, blasted the decision before and after the match. She can't be faulted for being upset, nor for speaking her mind. But she went too far. I can believe her when she later claimed that she wasn't criticizing Scurry, who was caught in the middle, because on first listening to her comments, I felt she was just blasting Ryan. But the more you listened, it did sound a little like she was ripping Scurry, too.

So on Saturday, the team voted to ban her from the bench for Sunday's third-place game against Norway, which the U.S. won, 4-1.

If there was a way they could have handled all this any worse, I can't think of it. Solo might not have shown herself to be the best teammate, but the rest of the team didn't show any more class. Solo let her emotions get the best of her, and nothing else that she had done for the team mattered anymore. She apologized too, and it still didn't matter.

You would think the veterans would have shown some leadership and brought the team together. Instead, they lived up to all the worst stereotypes. They behaved like a high school clique. Scurry was one of them, a veteran. Solo was the youngster, the newcomer, easy to abandon when she breaks some unwritten rule.

The team was simply outplayed by Brazil. It didn't matter who was in goal.

And Solo's comments became a handy excuse. The team could have rallied around each other in spite of Ryan's decision and in spite of Solo's comments. They didn't. They simply folded.

It's easy to see why this women's team finished third. It had no real leaders who could unite the team during difficult times.

There's a commercial that's been airing recently where female athletes step up to some sort of megaphone and shout, "I'm an athlete." The point is, they want to be viewed not as female athletes but simply as athletes.

Perhaps those athletes should pass on to this women's team what a real athlete is.

Real athletes expect each other to put aside personal issues when they get on the field.

Playing goalkeeper at the highest levels, takes tons of skill and supreme reflexes. All the way up to the semifinals, the choice was Solo. Hit the semifinal, and put in your 36 year old former star veteran keeper. Even Scurry would probably admit to you that she was at a higher level 4, 8 years ago. Strange decision by Ryan.