The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: USWNT’s Success, Suarez’s Arrest, and a New Kit

What a week it’s been. I don’t know if you missed me Monday morning as our own Marcus Mitchell did an outstanding job filling in for me with Lion Links (which was greatly appreciated), but I spent the weekend camping in Tallulah Falls with the family. If you haven’t been, I absolutely recommend it. The waterfalls, the trails, and the views are spectacular.

It was nice to be away from everything, but that just meant I had more to catch up on once I was back. Let’s see what caught my eye this past week.

The Good

Alex Morgan subbed into the final match of the SheBelieves Cup against Argentina and finally scored a goal. The U.S. was already dominating the match 4-0 at that point, but it was still a well-deserved goal given the difficulties she and others had scoring during the early matches of the competition against Canada and Brazil. Christen Press added another late goal to make the final score 6-0. The U.S. only needed a draw to win the SheBelieves Cup for a second straight year, and a fourth overall, but Argentina was outmatched from the start, and the Yanks made a statement.

The win keeps all U.S. National Teams undefeated in Orlando’s Exploria Stadium. In fact, the clean sheet means the U.S. women are yet to give up a goal in the friendly confines of Exploria Stadium. It is a fortress for the purple of Orlando City, but also for the Red, White & Blue.

The Bad

Orlando City’s new defender, Jonathan Suárez, was arrested for sexual assault on Tuesday. The investigation is ongoing, and in the eyes of the law all are innocent until proven guilty. However, in the court of public opinion that is not the case, and it may be that we will never see Suárez play for the Lions. Pending the investigation, MLS suspended the defender, and Orlando City put out an appropriate if typical statement.

“Late Tuesday night, Orlando City SC became aware that defender Jonathan Suárez was arrested in Osceola County. The club takes these allegations very seriously and is currently gathering more information. No further comment will be provided by the club until additional investigation of the alleged incident is complete.”

Óscar Pareja is not just building a roster, he is building a culture, and I seriously doubt that this will end with Suárez still playing for Orlando City.

The Ugly

It seems that a potential third kit for the U.S. National Teams was accidently leaked.

How to describe these kits? Bold? Disjointed? Ugly? Third kits are often quite bright and/or flashy, but in my opinion these look like someone accidently cut up the original design and then tried to put it back together in the dark. I’m open to being convinced that they aren’t that ugly, so if you like them, let me know why.

This was a weird week, and I really look forward to hearing your thoughts on all of the above. In fact, vote in the poll on the 3rd kit.

Polling Closed