Wambach breaks leg, will miss Olympics

Huge loss for a team coming off a disappointing World Cup.

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=555744&sec=us&cc=5901

 

Re: Wambach breaks leg, to miss Olympics

Was just about to start the thread as soon as I got back to a computer. Huge, huge loss for the USWNT. Fuck.

 

This sucks. Wambach is my favorite player.

 

Same here IJAG. Not sure how they're going to recover from this one.

 

This is just terrible. This, on top of all the other bad luck they've been having with injuries, is the rotten cherry on the moldy cake.

I think they're almost certainly going to have to be exceptional at the back to have a chance at gold. They can do that, they haven't conceded a goal in their last six games, but this is a huge blow.

 

Any footage? Dirty play?

 

Looked on YouTube. Nothing yet. From the story it sounds like it was just a collision.

 

Not from what it appears, just a bad collision. According to the game report, no-one was booked for the challenge.

If there is a positive to anything from tonight for the U.S., despite Wambach's injury, they still won. Natasha Kai has 12 goals in 15 games this year for them, and could be good enough up top to provide some goals in Beijing.

 

This makes me ill. Watching the game Brazil was clearly playing Wambach at a more physical level than everyone else, trying to keep her from getting the 100th goal. The injury play was not dirty, just aggressive. The referee was not frugal with the cards and warnings, so if a card would have been warranted it would have been given. Wambach knew right away, too. She just looked up and motioned to the sidelines. US didn't look great but didn't look bad. Set pieces were nice, as was ball control, they just couldn't seem to move the ball across the field after Wambach left. Chalupny looked good on defense.

 

This wasn't bad luck. Abby was being reckless. I know she was playing hard and that's her way, but once again, this silliness with milestones gets the better of a great player.
There is no way she should have thrown that much of herself at a ball where the possibilities were limited. It was the same as Ribery in the Euros. You have to know when to put all of yourself into a challenge.

 

I didn't mean bad luck as to how the injury occured, per se, but add this to the injuries suffered by Leslie Osborne and Cat Whitehill and you can argue the U.S. is headed to China without three key players from their starting lineup.

 

I want Hope Solo to lead them to the gold to further embarrass the coach from last year's World Cup debacle.