How bout them building blocks?

By: Billy | September 16th, 2008

Well, we finally know the three players who will form the foundation of our 2009 Washington Freedom! The WPS announced today that Abby Wambach, Cat Whitehill and Ali Krieger will be the (first and hopefully not last) three national team pool players suiting up for the Freedom.

I think we did really well with this allocation. Obviously, Abby is a big-time player who will be a great anchor for the team. She is one of the most well known players on the WNT and she’ll put butts in the seats, plus I’m sure she’ll score goals in buckets. Cat is very solid on defense and has a cannon for a leg that will be a fantastic weapon. She’s great on set pieces, both with her booming and accurate free kicks and her dangerous head on corners. Did you know: Cat has more goals, with 11, than any other defender in the WNT pool? (Christie Rampone is second with 4). Her international experience (she has 129 caps at age 26!) will be a huge asset.

Ali Krieger is a little bit more of an unknown in the US as she only has two caps with the WNT, but don’t confuse this with a lack of talent or experience. I think Krieger might just be one of the hidden gems from this allocation. Consider this: Krieger spent the 2007-2008 season with FFC Frankfurt of Germany’s women’s Bundesliga, playing alongside German superstars Birgit Prinz and Renate Lingor and winning the league championship, the German Cup and the UEFA Women’s Cup. She also played for the Freedom W-League team in 2006 and 2007, winning the W-League championship in 2007. What I take from this is obviously she knows success (and, like Wambach and her 2003 WUSA Championship, knows what it’s like to win in DC). Also, while she hasn’t played a lot for the national team, she has a lot of experience playing with and against the best players in the world. Ali Krieger

Also: It seems like the powers that be actually did their best to allocate the players based on their previous ties, as Abby played for the Freedom in the WUSA, Ali played for the Freedom in the W-League and is from Virginia, and DC is the closest team to Chapel Hill, which works well for Cat because of course Chapel Hill is magnificent (and her husband is in med school there, too…) Cat Whitehill