The U.S. Women’s National Team’s failure to produce live updates today for most of the Algarve Cup opening match against Iceland was disappointing. I’m writing this blog to share my personal game-day experience, commend those who “came to the rescue”, suggest that U.S. Soccer start covering the U.S. WNT more frequently with Twitter, and raise a few points as to what I believe social media is all about:

– Deliver immediate and accurate information, scores and updates.
– Offer transparent, open and honest two-way communication with fans.
– Provide alternate media coverage (esp. of women’s sports, since we’re often hard-pressed via traditional outlets to get the amount or depth of coverage that men do.
)

Today’s Coverage



U.S. Soccer advertised that the Algarve Cup matches would be covered live via their Match Tracker. When I logged on to ussoccer.com this morning at 5:00am PT to get some information for my pre-trip blog post, I searched and searched for a link to the Match Tracker, but was unsuccessful. I even made a plea to anybody reading Soccer Science to put the link in my comments section below if they could locate it.

 I figured the fact that I was so excited to leave for Portugal, coupled with the few hours of sleep I got last night were surely to blame.

But as the morning continued and I tried to follow along with #uswnt and #algarvecup tags via the Twittelator client on my iPhone, I noticed that there were no updates or information anywhere to be found – on the ussoccer.com website or even on http://twitter.com/ussoccer. 

Confusion started flying around the Twitosphere. Here are just a few posts:

– From @Alondra_h: RT @nscaawomen RT @rt_fail RT @more_is_less: RT @BurningMoon117 @ussoccer your MatchTracker won’t load for USWNT vs Iceland #FAIL
– From @agmendenhall: Apparently @ussoccer is experiencing a “datacenter outage.” All that means to me is I can’t track #USWNT vs. Iceland.
– From @marie_ryan: Dear @ussoccer I didn’t realize #USMNT have won 2 World Cups &3 Gold Medals. We want to know what’s going on with the #USWNT game. #EPICFAIL

I was thrilled when @KarinaLeBlanc tweeted the Cyprus Cup results from Canada vs. Switzerland (2-1 victory for the Canadians w/ goals from Sinclair #101, and CJ). And @thefadotcom tweeted the England Women National Team’s result against South Africa (2-0 to the English) in the same tournament.

With 25 minutes left to go in the USA vs. Iceland match, @bostonbreakers posted that U.S. was leading Iceland 2-0, with the latest goal from their 2010 WPS Draft first-round pick, Lauren Cheney. The Breakers also successfully posted a blog on Fan Corner with real-time updates from the game. Sounds to me like somebody’s got a friend across the pond with insider info. 

Well done to @breakersGM, @ericahunt and the @bostonbreakers for recognizing an opportunity and turning a poor performance by one team into a “W” for the other. @tonysocc, @lcole22: Will this success transcend onto the pitch? ;) 



With about 10 minutes left in the match, some people were finally able to access Match Tracker, while others were still having troubles. @SkyBlueFC was quick on the case as they Tweeted out the live score. I <3 @soccer4mona, who responded almost immediately, of course looking for all the #sbfc action… No Sky Blue FC news gets by that girl!


Anyway, I’m on my flight to Newark now, so when I land I’ll surely figure out what happened for the remainder of the match. But I do have a couple points to raise about this incident, and hopefully by the time I post this some of my questions below will have been answered publicly.



Technical Difficulties



We’ve all been there. The server goes out, you lose power, Internet service drops. About a bazillion things can go wrong when you’re producing live results online, especially with soccer since it’s outside, and definitely when the match is in another country. U.S. Soccer: I feel your pain. As the WPS Web Coordinator, I’ve had to cover dozens of matches where Match Tracker wasn’t working properly – the timing’s off, software malfunctions, user-error, you name it. And it totally sucks to be on the managing end of it. So while most of America is probably over it by now, I’d love to hear the specifics about what happened today, at the very least for my own learning purposes (although I’m sure @alondra_h would be keen to know too).



I’m also curious to learn what the back up plan was, and how that may have fallen through as well. For example, if the WPS Match Tracker has troubles, we use Twitter (well, we use Twitter anyway, but that’s the back up plan too). If Twitter is over capacity or down, we post to Facebook. If that goes down, we post to Fan Corner. If that goes down, we pick up our cell phones and call somebody with an Internet connection to post our updates for us. Oh, and at the league office, we have wireless air cards so we can get a signal from anyplace and iPhones with 3GS coverage. 



Transparency is Key



It wasn’t until about 8:00am that I saw a tweet that U.S. Soccer was experiencing “Technical Difficulties”. What would have been better: A post from @ussoccer on Twitter immediately when the game kicked off telling fans and followers this news. We were all left to sit and wait/wonder/speculate what was happening for about an hour. 



While I’m sure soccer fans would like it, I don’t believe they expect the staff covering matches to be perfect, or for coverage to always go according to plan. (haha, please correct me if I’m wrong guys!) But what I do believe they want is open, honest, timely information. If there’s a glitch in the system, I think they deserve to know that right away. There were literally hundreds (possibly thousands) of people up before sunrise to follow this Algarve Cup game in the states. In my opinion, the least we should get in return for our loyalty is immediate insight into what’s happening – good or bad.



Equality



Simply: Why wasn’t the match covered on Twitter? U.S. Soccer doesn’t seem to miss a minute us U.S. MNT action via this medium. Everything from the sound of the crowd to the color of the U.S. MTN U-17 players’ jerseys (which started today immediately following the U.S. WNT game) gets posted. But what was it like in Portugal today? Listen, I know we’ll get video highlights tomorrow, and the post-match analysis was great, but what about the moment it happens. Half the fun of sports is the live action – and the fact that the women’s team doesn’t receive equal coverage certainly raises my eyebrow as to why.

Wrap Up

Before I close out, 

I do want to say that I am an adamant supporter of U.S. Soccer. They’re nothing but supportive and amazing to work with at WPS. All the people I’ve met over there are true pros. Please don’t take this post in any way as a knock on U.S. Soccer, or diminish the coverage they do provide at all. In fact, I’ve loved the pre-game information, today’s post-game report and blogs. The truth is, I don’t actually have any idea who is responsible for U.S. Soccer’s new media efforts, and if I did I’m sure he/she would fill me in.

More than anything this post is just intended to share today’s fan experience, suggest that the @ussoccer starts covering the U.S. WNT on Twitter with more frequency, and ask a few questions so hopefully we can learn from each other’s successes and failures alike. 



** Update **

I’ve landed in Newark and checked out the Twitosphere to see the final result. Here’s the post-game match report, which I do think delivers a good bit of color.

Match Report | Quote Sheet

Also, from @ussoccer, post-match: The good news is that we figured out the MatchTracker issues, so we’ll be all set for the next #USWNT game on Friday vs Norway