All White Kit recently tackled the topic (the only appropriate alliteration for the player in question) of Leslie Osborne’s present absence from and uncertain future with the U.S. national team under Pia Sundhage. After not covering the WNT for a couple of years, I didn’t feel qualified to offer much of an opinion when given the opportunity to put together a feature on Osborne recently (nor would that have been the best venue for one). But even to someone who only recently discovered All White Kit, it’s obvious Jenna has a good feel for Sundhage’s roster machinations.
To me, Osborne is the perfect kind of player for the national team, almost without restriction relative to system (almost, but not completely). To delve into the dangerous language of intangibles, she’s a world-class grinder. As in, she plays like someone who has to rely solely on effort for her soccer survival, but she does with enough natural skill and athleticism to survive on the field against world-class players. As someone put it well recently, she’s going to win the challenge and play a square ball. And then do it again. It’s not fancy; it’s just effective.
Regardless of the sport, you don’t win titles with rosters comprised entirely of those sort of players. You also don’t win titles without a few of them. Lest we forget, this is a player who scored 44 goals in four seasons at Santa Clara and had 17 assists in one season. But as she expressed during the interview process for the feature, she has completely embraced the role of holding midfielder and made it her own.
“I love it,” Osborne said. “Tony [DiCicco], I think, brought me here to play that position. He thought last year that’s what they needed. I love it — but with the national team, [Sundhage] doesn’t play with one holding midfielder. So for the national team, that’s something that doesn’t really fit in with her. But I love playing holding mid. I hope what people would say is I’m a pretty good holding midfielder in this country.”
It’s also worth noting that Osborne said she still has a good relationship with Sundhage, despite her absence from the WNT roster.
All of which is why one paragraph, in particular, in Jenna’s post really caught my eye. If I can borrow from her text:
Again, it’s hard to argue against a system that is continuously tested and is continuously proven it works. The team has collected just one loss and two draws under the Sundhage era which began in 2008. And the USWNT has defeated Germany three consecutive times, once in America, once in Portugal and once away in Augsburg. So why fix something that doesn’t appear to be broken?
It’s the reasoned devil’s advocate position in a post otherwise encouraging Sundhage to reconsider Osborne. It also reminded me a great deal of a lot of things I wrote about Greg Ryan’s team leading up to the 2007 World Cup. Lost amidst the disappointed of that tournament in China and all the surrounding keeper controversy was the fact that the United States entered the competition with an almost unblemished record in more than 50 games under Ryan. Sure, they didn’t always play the most free-flowing offense and leaned very heavily on Abby Wambach to create goals, but they could sure play stingy defense.
Surely that long undefeated streak had to mean something, right?
Then they struggled to earn a 2-2 draw against North Korea, held on with but one goal against Nigeria, survived against England and fell flat (down a player for most of the match, to be sure) against Brazil in the semifinals.
I don’t know if any of this applies to Sundhage’s team. I watch the games that are televised, but I don’t go back and watch them multiple times, and I’m not there to see the team practice or play in person. And as the post points out, beating Germany three times, even if it’s not Germany at full strength, is undeniably impressive.
But holes in a lineup affect the outcome of games a great deal more than past results do. And as much as it’s nice to think about the United States imposing its will on opponents and dictating the flow of play, I can’t help but think watching Sundhage’s team play Germany with Osborne as an extra line of defense would be comforting, like sacrificing the feeling of the wind in your hair on the ski slopes for the safety of a helmet on a particularly steep run.
To go back to Jenna’s post, answering her own hypothetical from above:
Because the team hasn’t played a match that was meaningful in years and that Germany was not the Germany. The Germany will have their Turbine Potsdam players back in the squad, in addition to a smattering of U-20 players that had excelled at the U-20 Women’s World Cup. The Germany will assuredly play with a holding midfielder, if not two. But it won’t look like it because the team’s attack will be so fluid and so forceful. Again, that’s what a good holding midfielder allows to let happen.
Ultimately, of course, it may be as much a numbers game as a tactical decision. The first half of the Brazil game notwithstanding, Boxx and Osborne played well together during the 2007 World Cup (particularly the second half of the Sweden game, after Boxx came on as a substitute, and during the 3-0 win against England, when Osborne’s cover allowed Boxx to get forward), but is there room for the two friends (“She’s still kind of a mentor for me,” Osborne said) on the plane to Germany?
Unlike a lot of players on the World Cup bubble, Osborne isn’t about potential. She’s not going to magically transform into something she isn’t. What you see is what you get, and what you get is a world-class holding midfielder.
The only question is if what Pia Sundhage sees is what she wants.
“I think that’s just like my true position,” Osborne said. “I do miss scoring goals — I can finish pretty well. I do miss that side of it, but I think for a team’s success, I think that me kind of sitting behind the attack and ahead of the defense is probably where I’m best — and what I like to do.”
Graham Hays 