Week #21 NASL Players of the Week: Etienne Barbara & Jeff Attinella
CARY, N.C. – (August 29, 2011)
Carolina RailHawks forward Etienne Barbara has been named the NASL Offensive Player of the Week for Week 21, the league announced on Monday.
It is the fourth time this season Barbara has been selected Offensive Player of the Week.
Barbara recorded a hat trick in the RailHawks’ 4-2 win at Atlanta on Saturday. With the RailHawks trailing 1-0, Barbara netted the equalizer in the 28th minute. One on one against Atlanta’s Felipe Quintero, Barbara pulled the Silverbacks goalkeeper off his line then placed the ball through the legs of defender Mattias Schnorf, who’d retreated to cover the open goal. In the second half, with the match tied 2-2, Barbara put the RailHawks ahead for good when he converted a penalty kick in the 79th minute. He hit another spot kick in added time.
“Etienne has consistently been scoring and to score 20 goals in a season is a big accomplishment,” said RailHawks Head Coach Martin Rennie. “He has done an incredible job working hard for the team and we will see how many more he can score to finish out the season.”
The hat trick was the first in the NASL this season, and the fifth in RailHawks history. It was also Barbara’s fourth multi-goal game of the season. He now has scored a league-leading 20 goals, and with eight assists, he has a staggering 48 points. He is the only RailHawks outfield player to have appeared in every match this season, and he ranks third on the team with 1,898 minutes played.
TAMPA, Fla. (August 29, 2011)
FC Tampa Bay goalkeeper Jeff Attinella has been named the North American Soccer League Defender of the Week.
A Clearwater native and graduate of the University of South Florida, Attinella made four saves in FC Tampa Bay’s 2-0 win at Ft. Lauderdale on Saturday night. The shutout was the seventh of the season for the club, including Attinella’s team-high fourth of the season. The four shutouts for Attinella rank fifth in the league in 2011.
“It was a big three points for us as we head into this long road trip,” said Attinella. “I feel like I am starting to settle in and this is certainly a great honor. Hopefully we can keep playing well.”
Attinella leads the NASL with 106 saves this season and ranks fourth in the league for fewest goals allowed among goalkeepers who have played at least 1,500 minutes.
The award marks Attinella’s second honor this season, including the seventh time an FC Tampa Bay player has received a weekly NASL award. The seven weekly awards are the second-most for any league team this season, trailing only Carolina. Attinella first earned the award on May 24 after posting his first career shutout in a 3-0 victory over the Montreal Impact on May 21.
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I’m out of the loop, but whatever happened to the NASL Podcast? Is it shelved, on hiatus, what gives? Thanks.
I thought my strong performance at the NSC Minnesota fantasy camp put me in contention for Offensive Player of the Week.
Same question has been asked several times in the last week via Twitter.
Bottom line was it was taking a lot of time to produce and execute and the numbers started out great, around a 1000 per show. By the last several weeks we were doing it that number had dwindled to under a 100 listeners nation wide. Even though I thought and was told the show was getting better as we went, I made an executive decision to pull the plug as I could think of a lot better ways to spend my time both on the site and in my personal life that spending basically two full nights per week putting together a podcast that under a 100 people listen to. We did do one other show during the summer and have threatened to pull it out again with the playoffs coming up. I know we had some very loyal listeners and I appreciated them but I’m sure you can understand the dilemma. This league is still having a hard time finding a decent following. It’s going to take time.
@BQ
And that, my friend, is why even the viewing is down this season for this web page. The D2 model, as managed by NASL, is simply not sustainable without a large multinational company (can you spell Traffic) funding the vast majority of the inevitable bleeding with these teams.
Your podcast should have been increasing, not decreasing. it was getting better and better, as you got familiar with what you wanted to do.
I suspect that the 2012 season will have some serious changes within NASL, especially if Traffic pulls the plug on funding.
Leave it to Bart to slip one of his usual shots at the NASL into a discussion about IMS. Without the two teams that jumped from D2 down to D3 this year in Rochester and Orlando (coincidence they won the divisions?) USL Pro would have a rather bleak outlook for next year beyond Wilmington, Charleston, and Richmond. You want to say Traffic is propping up the NASL, and in a fashion there is some validity to that at the current time. But I’d counter with, despite some pretty stupid looking decisions, the USL Pro “model” manages to survive another year because it is propped up by a few strong organizations that succeed DESPITE the USL’s ridiculous manuevers. Somewhere around here leading up to the season I predicted that 2012 would start with the USL having lost far more teams than the NASL will have. So far it’s NASL 0 and USL Pro 3 in that statistic, with Antigua, LA, Dayton, and FCNY all looking like they could increase that total at any time. So tell me Bart, if NASL’s model is not sustainable, how in the heck do you describe USL Pro’s?!? Holt, Big Papa, Marcos and the rest of the gang better hope USSF doesn’t decide it’s ready to make up those D3 standards before too long……….
@BQ – Well I was one of your loyal listeners each week, and I too thought the shows were very good. If you do another show for the playoffs, I’ll be listening! Lower division soccer may or may not grow over time, and by proxy all things about it will wax or wane as it does I suppose. For those of us that love our teams it’s a tough pill to swallow. When you look at a situation like Portland’s, you can’t help but be, no pun intended, green with envy. I’d kill to have Lockhart rocking like it was back in the days of my boyhood idols of Nene, Ray, and Gerd, never mind standing there and feeling what it must be like in Jeld-Wen today.
But it seems that every market that is capable of this (whether they show it at lower levels – Portland – or not – Seattle) they all are getting scooped up by MLS. I’m a believer that as pro soccer continues to grow in fan interest in this country, this scenario will continue to play itself out. We’ll eventually come to what I like to call “settling points.” When MLS stops expanding, IF interest in the game doesn’t stop growing in the US with it, that’s when D2 and D3 will have their biggest opportunities to stabilize and grow themselves. If you’re in a city that has a fanbase that can be tapped, but MLS has closed its doors to expansion, at least for the foreseeable future, then what do you do? Seems like NASL or USL Pro would be the answer. Then those leagues start to fill in with that next tier level of markets that either weren’t big enough for MLS, or just didn’t make it in in time.
Either something like this will happen, or, we’ll just keep seeing these same issues with lower division teams and leagues every single year, and we’ll all hold our breaths and hope somehow our team survives. For now, I’m just looking forward to the rest of the season, hoping the Strikers can stay in playoff position, and I’ll keep coming to the places like IMS where I know my fellow pro soccer fans feel the same! Keep up the good work BQ!
@ Strikers Return
The 2012 season has not started yet for either NASL or USL Pro, and from what I have seen, no announcements have been made by either side as to what the 2012 team line ups will be. To translate, neither you or I know if any growth has occurred in either NASL or USL Pro for 2012.
You love to give credit to Orlando (a new team, with a new location, meaning a new business) as having formerly been D2. It don’t work like that. Rochester made the decision that NASL was not the model for them, therefore, in 2011, they were a D3 team. Nobody got skanked by anyone here.
And yes, any league below MLS will have a difficult time attracting sponsors and fans, and BQ’s podcast audience clearly showed that.
And as it relates to a shot against NASL, that is not entirely correct. IMS exists largely on the news of NASL, and the discussion was the downward trend of listening fans. NASL teams suffer from this.
I think you might be surprised which teams at NASL may in fact not be coming back. You certainly will not know as long as there is a $750,000 bond they want back.
Bart, my only counter to that at the moment is do you think things would be different if I was writing about USL PRO. I am sure they wouldn’t be. The big question that needs to be asked by both the USL and the NASL, is how do I make my league relevant. Right now neither are particularly relevant to Europe, MLS or to the US National Team where the majority of interest lies in this country. The player movement from NASL to MLS this year is a start, but only a start. Promotion/relegation of some sort would help but we know that won’t happen for most likely decades if ever in this country.
Brian, I would offer that the player movement from NASL to MLS is an anolomy, not the norm. Only time will really tell what happens.
I don’t think things would be any different if the majority of the content was about USL Pro, by the way.
@BQ – You are right on, as you usually are! I think you have to drill a little deeper though, and the initial question needs to be – How do you become relevant in the individual markets first. Once you accomplish that, then you can focus on a more national relevance for the entire league. The league is only as strong as its teams in the end, so they need to be stabilized first. This is even more crucial at this stage for NASL with no room for error in the number of teams they currently have. They don’t have the “luxury” the USL does of passing out franchises like they’re buy one get one free coupons to whoever happens along. Although I think eventually that is goign to catch up with them if they don’t cut it out.
I think the USL Pro with its “national tv package” is attempting to put the horse before the cart. Meanwhile, they lost 20% of their teams not even halfway into the season. Forget a Fox Soccer broadcast that has lower ratings than a 20 year old episode of Matlock, and put that money into helping your teams market more effectively in their areas!
And I agree that the player movement from NASL to not only MLS, but other leagues around the world, is a positive. The league is at least in some form showing it can be a source for players at higher levels. Whether or not it is an anomaly as Bart suggests, or the norm, only time will tell. Since this is their first season, we have only it to judge by. I think the list of players NASL.com has up currently that national team call ups is another positive. Sure there are none for US, but do we really expect that to happen from D2? I certainly don’t.