Rough and Tumbly

In the last couple of weeks one of the most interesting secondary stories in sports has been the case of Elizabeth Lambert, the New Mexico soccer player who is seen on video being--what's a good word here--"aggressive" with other players. She punches, kicks, charges, and yanks, among other things. After she was suspended, she apologized and said she got carried away. You can see the video of what she did here or watch it below:





Added bonus: you get to watch Julie Foudy, one of the greatest American soccer players of all time, and probably the funniest (though not in this clip).

In Tuesday's New York Times, there is an interview with her by Jere Longman. Here are a few of her comments, and I'll give my thoughts at the end:

1) "At the same time, she said other moments of aggressive play — in which Lambert elbowed a Brigham Young player in the back, received a yellow card for tripping, seemed to throw a punch at an opponent’s head and made a hard tackle from behind — came during the forceful, insistent play that routinely occurred in women’s soccer but might be misunderstood by casual fans."

2) "And she said she believed that the incident was blown out of proportion because it occurred in a women’s game. "I definitely feel because I am a female it did bring about a lot more attention than if a male were to do it,” Lambert said. “It’s more expected for men to go out there and be rough. The female, we’re still looked at as, Oh, we kick the ball around and score a goal. But it’s not."

First item: Now, as longtime readers of this blog--both of you--know, I'm a big fan of women's soccer. I've been paying attention to the US Women's National Team for at least twenty years. I played with and against girls growing up. I can vouch for the fact that play on the field is often "forceful" and "insistent." I don't have a problem with that. But to try to say that throwing elbows into other players standing in front of you, punching them in the head--I don't believe that was accidental like she says--and yanking ponytails are not routine occurrences in women's soccer. Well, maybe the elbows.

Second item: There is no doubt in my mind that this received so much attention because she's a woman and not a man. Not because it's okay for men to do these things, but because it's so rare for us to see women doing them on the field of play. Female basketball players don't rack up technical fouls yelling at referees like the men do. Softball players don't get ejected from games for arguing balls and strikes with the umpire. There's very little staring down your opponent after a hard tackle in women's soccer. The level of aggressiveness in the game is comparable, but there's just a lot less theatrics about it in the women's game.

An added bonus to women's soccer is that diving is extremely rare. A youtube search for "soccer dives" returns over 2,300 results. It's one of the least attractive parts of watching men's soccer. There's even a mocking wiki page for "How to Dive in Soccer" that tells us:

Things You'll Need

A soccer game
Opposition players
A referee
No sense of fair play

I don't think that Elizabeth Lambert is really that terrible, but what she did on the field is pretty bad, and she should have been thrown out of the game long before she ever got to execute the ponytail takedown. The referees need to control the game, and her coaches need to tell her to cut that stuff out.

For her to claim that people criticizing her don't understand the physical nature of women's soccer is a bit silly. I played soccer for ten years, and throwing punches and pulling hair wasn't part of the game. If you don't want to take my word for it, then listen to Julie Foudy, whose right pinky knows more about soccer than Elizabeth Lambert ever will. If she says there's nothing like this in the women's game, I believe her.