neat sh!t: nwsl week 2 edition

The fluidity of a soccer game means that there’s always something happening, but this can also mean that without a goal nearby to encase a moment of creativity, magic or marvel, they can be lost. Well, not on my watch dammit. I’ve made it my duty to collect these moments from the NWSL weekend so we can relive them together, and give them the shine they deserve.

This week we’re reliving a scything dribble, nutmegs, an exquisite first touch, and players feeling aggy (or something else). Let us bear witness to…

Cece ‘Keeps a Z in My Last Name’ Delzer was on one against San Diego.

She had multiple slick moves that created opportunities for others, but I really loved this chance she created for herself. Creating is often about angles, disguise and misdirection. Delzer does all three here. The lateral touch she takes along the top of the box gets the defender’s hips turned and feet pointed away from the space Delzer wants. Once she sees that the disguise worked, she immediately chops the ball into the box to run onto—all while being chased by two other Wavé defenders.

Goalkeeper Leah Freeman read the move and quickly charged out of her box, otherwise Delzer gets a free rip at goal after some extremely quality ‘scuse me, pardon me, just gonna scooch right by’ work. The collision looked brutal, but thankfully no NWSL players were harmed in the creation of this moment.

I didn’t expect another Utah highlight either but the world is full of surprises.

Admittedly, it’s here because there’s a bit of a personal connection. My on-pitch soccer career started very late—I was 25 before I played any organized soccer since being 6-years-old on a team called The Ninjas that lost every game—and was very short. I have precious few highlights with none of them recorded, they just live within my brain folds and make me happy when I remember them.

One of the funniest highlights I can remember is accidentally bringing a ball to a complete stop the moment it fell form the sky to reconnect with the grass. Problem was, I straight up did not intend to do it at all. I panicked, stuck my foot out, and deaded the ball with nary a bounce. It falls into the funny category because it was so accidental that it surprised me, I froze, and another player immediately took the ball away. I wanted the game to stop so we could all talk about what I’d just done and how cool it was, and instead I had to chase the newfound nemesis who ruined my moment.

Anywhoodles, Ana Tejada is a professional footballer who very much meant to do this and was not surprised at all. A thing that’s hard to comprehend about soccer until you play it is all the different textures the ball can possess. Sometimes a pass is feathered with spin and touch that it feels like a pillow hitting your feet, other times gravity is yeeting it back to earth with the force of a fallen meteorite. The latter can be terrifying, and one of the trickiest moments to regain control of the ball.

So when a first touch is so good that it turns a meteorite into a feather, I am contractually obligated to show respect.

Sweet Mother Mary Josephine Baker.

Nutmegs are one of my favorite non-goal things in the sport. They require technique, control, creativity, quick feet, timing, and a healthy portion of disrespect. I love them. Of all the nutmegs, one of the rarest is the Jedi Mind Trick Nutmeg, in which a player forces another to nutmeg themselves without even touching the ball. It’s beyond disrespect, it is dastardly.

I love a quality turn that open space, and usually a touch and turn combination is worthy of a rewatch regardless. Here, Kiki uses her body shape and tempo of the ball to sell a complete different reality to the defender. In that reality, she’s in a great position, applying pressure and pushing an attacking player into limited space along the sideline. That reality never existed, and Van Zanten eroded it in the cruelest of ways, turning suddenly to force a nutmeg and meeting the ball in the exact space the defender thought they were protecting.

Kiki scored her first brace as a professional in this game, but this move, to me, is far more important. I can’t stop watching. I simply refuse to stop watching.

Can a whole team be press resistant?

Trying to accurately identify and count these passes took a lot longer than it took them to execute the nine (I think?) passes in the sequence. I love how there’s a good mix of passes to feet and passes to space. Then, to cap it all off, they threw in a nutmeg as a little treat. The whole thing is fun to watch, and it made me cackle in my living room live.

All the sharp movements in tight spaces are amazing to watch, and necessary to make this sequence happen. If you ignore the ball and watch for a couple loops it looks like stage choreography. Everyone rotating and getting to a spot before they’re signaled to switch around once again. When I talk about watching this sport for all the moments it provides, this is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. None of this led to a goal or assist, but it delivered a dose of pure joy concentrate to those who noticed.

Alright, this isn’t exactly neat but it sure is something. I can’t really tell what the root cause might be just yet. Are players across the league feeling extra aggy this season? Are players still in preseason mode so their timing on collisions is off? Or has Professional Referee Organization (PRO) told its referees to turn NWSL games down a notch or two from the thunderdome that’s been its standard? I hope it’s the latter.

The league already requires an elite level of physical attributes and exertion, so there’s never really been a need to tack ‘what if Wrestlemania but women’s soccer’ onto it. If the High Impact Player Rule taught us anything, it’s at least that the league—rather openly and manipulatively—is hyperaware of the marketability of some players, and wants to exploit capitalize on them. But it’s hard to do that when they’re broken. Last year’s playoffs featured zero minutes from Barbra Banda and Temwa Chawinga, and a total of 35 minutes from Trinity Rodman—all due to injuries suffered during NWSL play.

Injuries are part of the game of course, but as the league adds teams and makes seasons longer (and for the playoffs that cap each season to continue meaning something), a primary predictor of success can’t be winning the war of attrition.

Having said all that, it would just be really funny if players were already peak-mid summer, midseason aggy. Listen, [looks around at the state of the country] I’d understand if some players needed to do a bit of yeeting as self care. ■