Word: soccer
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Tiffeny Milbrett is standing wide open on the right wing, impatiently calling for the ball. The player who has it looks up, thinks abou dribbling for the briefest of moments and then realizes that when the best women's soccer player in the world is open, you'd have to be an idiot - or a journalist - not to kick the ball to her. So I do. She disappears down the field to attack the goal, something she does regularly for the New York Power of the WUSA, the women's professional soccer league, and the U.S. women's national team...
...experience. She doesn't accept that loser rep: "We've been saying, and I'm still saying, that this is a better team than our results indicate. We outplayed five teams and ended up losing. That's why dealing with the record is a little easier." Soccer can be that way. The Power don't seem dispirited as they warm up. "Make sure you put on your shin guards," warns Ronnie Fair, a ferocious defender who, like the rest of these pros, is an advertisement for fitness...
...Women play soccer a little differently from men. In some ways, it's a better game; it's definitely more fun. The emphasis is on the positive aspects - passing, positioning and ball possession - which is what we work at on this stifling morning. With men, it's first about not losing, about destroying the opposition's game, with vicious "professional" fouls if necessary. That's not to say the Power can't mix it up. In one-on-one drills, there are enough hard tackles, jersey pulling and takedowns to qualify for the Italian league. And the girls can certainly...
...Soccer is played on a huge field often made small by the speed of Defenders - get the ball and the field suddenly shrinks. Great players can exploit those small spaces, creating room for themselves with their physical skills and their intuition. They can think a few moves ahead of other players. A few minutes on the field with Milbrett and it's clear that she has that gift. At one moment she makes a completely unexpected turn away from teammates, away from help ("Tiff, I'm open!"). Yet with everyone heading in the direction where the ball ought...
...Football League. Its 72 clubs inhabit the three tiers of competition beneath the country's Premiership and are still reeling financially after the League's three-year, $448 million deal with failed broadcaster ITV Digital collapsed last March. (Financial hiccups caused by shrinking revenues are familiar across European soccer these days: earlier this month, for example, Fiorentina was thrown out of Italy's Serie B division for failing to arrange cover for its $22 million debt.) Last week Football League CEO David Burns and chairman Keith Harris were forced to resign after the English High Court threw out the League...