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Glad we won but yeesh, some non-ideal finishing in those highlights.
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Standard American finishing right? lol
I wonder why they don’t sell the Nike UVA shirt at the bookstore or, anywhere for that matter. The navy shirt is especially cool. You can buy baseball, basketball, football jerseys, anyone know why you can’t get soccer? Soccer jerseys are popular, don’t see why they wouldn’t be for good college programs.
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The skill level on display in this arsenal Fulham match is freaking absurd.
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Palhinha!
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Man, I thought they threw it away after that silly challenge that led to the penalty. No reason to even challenge there, just run next to the player.Good to get a point, however. Palhinha back is HUGE! Although, I’m not dure if Ream got a 3 match ban from his red last game. If so, they now have two center backs out. C’mon Fulham, C’mon Fulham!!!
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It’s only one game…
I use this page to track…
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Really annoying game from Arsenal perspective. Gave it away. Fulham will be good again this year, but shouldn’t be dropping points to them at home.
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I’d agree… Fulham lucky to get a point out of that game.
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But at least the women got the win, despite dealing with a slew of injuries
https://twitter.com/UVAWomenSoccer/status/1695952932418547921
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Liverpool with the crazy win … playing with 10 men the last 65 minutes and down 1-0 - score 2 in the last 10 minutes to pull out the improbable.
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Plus they barely won the last won. So, this seems bad.
Its funny, though. The women’s team has been a metronome, consistently elite but not quite able to break through. While the men’s team the last few years has seemed wildly erratic from year to year and even within seasons.
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My hot take - which I said a year or two ago on here as well - is that the Gelnovatch era has likely come and gone. I know he got us multiple additional national titles, so I’m almost certainly in the minority and he deserves a ton of leeway, but when I’ve watched the past several years, I just don’t think we’re putting a particularly good product on the field. Feels like the game has passed us by. But I guess we shall see.
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I certainly don’t know enough about soccer to judge the effectiveness of the strategies. But looking at the numbers, I’m surprised to see the variability of the men’s team is, if anything, more dramatic than I’d thought.
On the one hand, we just had back-to-back losing seasons for the first time since 1967-68.
On the other hand, that’s just kinda how the Gelnovatch era has gone. In 2019 they went 21-1-2 and lost in the NCAA championship game, but that season was sandwiched between a 10-4-3 season and a 7-8-1 season. In 2009, the team went 19-3-3 and won the natty, but the seasons around it were 11-9-1 and 11-6-3.
Every 5-6 years he puts together a championship-grade team for a season or two, but spends the rest of the time mediocre (albeit they tend to overperform in the NCAA’s. Teams that go 11-10-2 or 11-9-1 usually don’t advance in the NCAA tournament).
edit - So, the game could certainly have passed him by. Its been a LOOONG time since UVA had back to back losing seasons (also noteworthy, UVA has had 2 coaches since 1978). Has the volatility lately been more pronounced than it used to be? I could be convinced either way.
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I’ll also say - and this may be controversial - but even when we won our last national championship, I didn’t necessarily think we were playing great soccer. All approaches are valid and I’m not one to judge teams for taking one approach or another, but we won that tournament with good goal keeping/defending and scraping through 1-0 victories plus winning multiple penalty shootouts. A win is a win, but that’s generally not sustainable in the long term and not how top tier clubs remain dominant over longer periods of time.
I don’t remember the last time we felt truly consistently dangerous offensively or looked clinical finishing. And the string of mediocre performances the last few years could maybe be partially due to COVID disruption, but I think it’s more that we’re just not at the top level anymore.
But in fairness, I haven’t watched them too too much, so this might be a somewhat ignorant take.
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That 2019 team was awesome, really painful end to the season. I’m no expert, but it just seems like we’ve never gotten a good grasp on losing players early to the pros. Just non-stop roster instability.
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That’s very true. That was a really good team and recent. I’m probably being too harsh.
Great day of futbol … Matt Turner with the shutout of Chelsea! Brighton - so entertaining.