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Tiffeny Milbrett who? Defense wins out on opening day for Atlanta, New York
Updated: Monday April 23, 2001 6:01 PM
By Jeff Green, CNNSI.com
ATLANTA -- WUSA founding player Julie Foudy: "Knock, knock."
Young WUSA fan: "Who's there?" Foudy: "Tiffeny Milbrett."
Fan: "Tiffeny Milbrett who?"
Foudy: "Exaaactly."
It's the best of the first line of TV commercials from the Women's United Soccer Association, and it also poses the question Atlanta Beat goalkeeper Briana Scurry could have asked of Milbrett, her longtime teammate on the U.S. national team and now a foe with the New York Power.
The Power and Milbrett, the 2000 player of the year for U.S. Soccer, were held in check by the Beat in the opening game for both teams, which ended in a 0-0 draw.
The Beat took control of the match before halftime, allowing just three shots in the first half, and only one of those on target.
One of the most dangerous attacking players in the league, Milbrett saw very little of the ball in the first half, summing up her WUSA debut this way at halftime: "High frustration."
She said that Bobby Dodd Stadium's 66-yard-wide field limited her running room.
"The field is a little bit narrow, so it gets a little bit congested."
First-game jitters also disrupted play, she said afterward.
"I didn't get the ball enough in the first half," Milbrett said. "A lot of that had to do with how that first half went -- scrappy, it was the first game, and there were nerves, and it wasn't pretty soccer."
New York coach Pat Farmer agreed.
"She needs more of the ball," he said. "We're going to have to play around with how we set that up, with the two people in the middle [of midfield], and then maybe do a better job of getting the ball from the middle of the field in the center circle out to the wings."
To what did Atlanta coach Tom Stone attribute the team's success in shutting down Milbrett and her fellow forwards, Sara Whalen and Tammy Pearman?
"Kylie Bivens, Sharolta Nonen, Dayna Smith and Lisa Krzykowski," he said, listing his four starting defenders. "Overall, you've got to give our back four an A, maybe an A+.
"We talked a lot about Tiffeny," he said. "We know her style, and we wanted to fight for every ball that she wanted to go get, and then retreat on balls that she wanted to run through for."
However, Milbrett and the Power came out energized after halftime, tilting momentum in favor of the visitors. "You can't contain her the whole game," Stone said of Milbrett, who helped the U.S. win an Olympic gold medal in 1996, a silver in 2000 and a World Cup title in 1999.
"What happened with our team is that we settled down in the second half, first of all," Milbrett said. "We were able to pass the ball around a little bit more."
Credit the New York defense, also, for shutting out a high-powered Atlanta attack that had made the team a popular preseason pick for the title.
Though left with nothing to show for it, Atlanta outshot New York 14-9, 6-3 on goal, with U.S. national team forward Cindy Parlow and Canadian international Charmaine Hooper supported by the dynamic attacking-midfield pair of Homare Sawa and Nicole Lamb.
The match also featured two of the world's top goalkeepers in Scurry and Chinese national team mainstay Gao Hong, though neither of them were kept under sustained pressure.
Sawa forced the day's best save when she took a pass from Lamb and broke free in the penalty area, only to see her shot stuffed by Gao.
"Now I understand that it wasn't the United States and China tying each other" in the 1999 World Cup final, said Tony DiCicco, who was the U.S. coach then and is now the WUSA's chief operating officer. "It was Gao Hong and Briana Scurry.
"The offenses are the last thing to click," he said. "Both teams went out and played to attack... No one was playing negative soccer."
Waiting in the wings for the Beat was the FIFA co-player of the century, Chinese forward Sun Wen, who has not yet fully recovered from knee surgery in December. Despite playing her first competitive match since her surgery, she was instantly the most dangerous player on the field when she came on in the 78th minute. But 12 minutes was not enough time for her to find the net.
"These teams haven't played together very long," said Parlow. "It takes a lot of hard work to put the ball in the back of the net. As the season goes on, you'll see more and more goals."
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