The Female Galacticos

Galácticos (or superstars) is a Spanish term used to describe expensive, world-famous football players, having either positive or negative connotations. This term came into use to describe the policy pursued in the first tenure of Florentino Pérez's presidency at Real Madrid, where he purchased at least one galáctico in the summer of every year.

Perhaps I'm overstating things slightly to say that my new home town team, the Atlanta Beat, are the WPS version of Real Madrid. After all, the Beat are so new they have yet to even hold a practice. So, I'll agree I'm overstating things. Slightly.

From where I'm sitting the Beat appear to be about to take over the world. As I described in my recent post, Atlanta Beat, or Umeåtlanta Beatrottsklub?, the Beat front office had successfully signed three players from the Swedish women's football giants, Umeå IK. Among these newly signed players is a nineteen-year-old with realistic ambitions of being the best player in the world: Ramona Bachmann.

Why be content with only one superstar, though? Why not have two? At the recent WPS main draft in Philadelphia, the Beat had the first overall draft pick. It was a surprise to no one that they selected three-time All-American Tobin Heath. Although only twenty-one years old, Heath has an impressive array of accomplishments. During her four years playing for the North Carolina Tarheels she helped them to win three national college championships. She won her first international cap at age 19, and was the youngest member of the gold-medal winning US Olympic team in Beijing. Basically, she's awesome.

Since the majority of my readers are not American I'd better take a moment to explain what a 'draft' is. Rather than just let teams fight over young prospects with little regulation, most professional leagues in America have a system for distributing young talent to the teams that need it most. Because high-school and college sports in America is not only very competitive, but also well financed, elite athletes normally stay in these programs until they are about twenty-two years old. At that point, if their prospects are good, they will enter themselves into a professional 'draft.' Each team selects players in turn, normally with the weakest team going first. As the Atlanta Beat are a brand-new expansion team they got the first choice of this year's crop of college seniors. They would not confirm in advance who they were going to pick, but nobody had any doubts that Tobin Heath was going to be their choice.

What does this mean for the Beat then? Are Heath and Bachmann going to be the Gerrard and Torres of the WPS? Well, maybe. It's too early to say, and as Real Madrid have shown repeatedly, it takes more than just the best players in the world to win a title. Head coach Gareth O'Sullivan still has a huge challenge ahead as he tries to fashion a group of players who have not even met before into title contenders. At least he now appears to have the right ingredients to do it with.

Heath also offers the Beat something else that all professional teams need: a player with star quality off the pitch. For the Beat to succeed long term it is more important that they conquer the hearts and minds of the Atlanta sporting public than the teams they face on the pitch each week. This won't be easy. Atlanta's main paper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, shows little interest in the city's new team. They declined to even cover the draft at all. It's going to take someone with charisma and charm to get the Atlanta media to take an interest, and Heath is probably the Beat's best shot.

The Beat also picked up six other players in the WPS draft. Blakely Mattern, a two-time All-American defender from South Carolina, was their second pick. I'll admit that as a relative newcomer to women's football, I didn't know who Mattern was, but she is well known to Coach O'Sullivan. 'Blakely is a very solid defender,' he said, 'who I have seen play on a number of occasions.' She was the only pure defensive player the Beat took in the draft, so I hope she is solid. She sure was excited to be drafted, though:

'I couldn't be happier. I'm just on cloud nine right now. It's literally a dream come true to even have a chance to be here, and to think I'm going to be playing professional soccer is unbelievable to me. It still hasn't sunk in yet. It couldn't have worked out any better!'

The Beat potentially set some sort of sporting record (I'm sure someone keeps up on this sort of thing) by selecting twin sisters in the same draft. Shameka (defender/midfielder) and Shaneka (forward) Gordon originally hail from Old Harbour, Jamaica. They both played together at the University of West Florida.

The Beat also selected three more forwards (O'Sullivan has said he wants the Beat to have an attacking style of play!): Jill Hutchinson from Wake Forest, Kasey Langdon from Okalhoma State, and local girl Carrie Patterson from the University of Georgia.

With twenty-one players now signed or drafted, the Beat must be coming close to completing their squad. The only obvious opening is another keeper to back up Allison Whitworth. Will the Atlanta Beat fulfil their promise to be 'the best in the world?' I think they might just do it.