i think the connection of football (soccer) into the overall story of yellowjackets is intensely interesting to me
there's a lot of discourse about positions and formations. i think this could be a tricky thing to pin down when you consider the huge differences in football in the 90s between europe and the US. women's football has had this interesting positional player known as a sweeper defender, this seems to be where the idea of a sweeper keeper/ball playing defender from and seems to be heavily influenced by the european libero known by its originator Rappan as a verrouilleur. the libero saw developments across switzerland, russia and most prominently italy where it gained the name 'libero' to mean 'free man'. and interestingly enough in italy the libero typically wore the number 6
the uswnt functioned with this sweeper defender, carla overbeck, in the 91 and 95 wwc. only changing to a european style of a 433 for the 99 wwc.
how this relates to the yj for me is that we have to make these assumptions about how 'woke' was football at this time. was 96 too close to the 95 wwc that the coaches would've stuck with a sweeper defender, or had they swapped to a more conventional formation like the uswnt?
it makes me wonder what shauna's role could have been if she had been this sweeper player. in the short clips we get from the pilot we do see her pushing forward and with how fluid positions could be in the 90s if the coaches knew how fast she was, they would probably have this implicit trust in her to function similarly to a box to box midfielder (think foudy 99 or venturini 95) going back to the role of the libero, her intervening and stopping tackles, free from man marking strikers and expected to 'sweep up' the ball and then start counter attacks would make a whole lot of historical and cultural sense
if we look at how guarded she can be, shutting down and believing she has to 'sweep up' the mess as the only one brave enough to be the butcher. even the idea of her claiming they had fun out there shows the duality in the role of the libero, finding the excitement in the defence as much as the attack, being allowed to be a more aggressive player in the russian version of this sweeper role. she is the last line of defence and the one that people rely on whether she wants it or not.
i think there's a lot of merit of making assumptions in the yj functioning as a 433, but when you look at how culturally significant the 1333 formation was across europe and then into the uswnt the positions, ideologies and significance can shift to something ever so slightly different
