After 8 games, there has been: 1. No game in which both teams scored two goals. 2. No game in which the team that scored first lost. 3. Only 2 out of 8 opening games in which the teams combined for 3 goals. 4. No game featuring 4 or more goals. Is this an ill omen for this tournament and the perception of the women's game?
I don't think having tight games should be called an "ill omen" for the tournament. As for the perception of the women's game, maybe, but considering that Spain won the men's world cup last year scoring only eight goals total, (and the tournament had the lowest total goals scored since the format went to 64 total games,) I personally don't think the complaint holds water at all. It's basically the same complaint non-soccer fans have about the sport, that it's so low-scoring it must not be any good. Complete BS.
That was a tremendous problem with last year's World Cup. There is a reason Holland was a popular team last year until the final - it scored goals regularly. The final merely epitomized the dreary reality that too often the first goal was the only goal and was dispositive. The problem for soccer is not that it is low-scoring, but that it has at the highest levels become distressingly low-scoring even by soccer's standards. Too many games end 1-0. Scoring first should not be an indicator the team scoring first will hold the lead and never lose it 3/4 of the time. The perception that coming from behind is almost impossible, that the first goal is too often dispositive, hurts fan interest. Do you think it is a coincidence that soccer's rise to become the world's game occurred during the 1950s when goal-scoring was relatively plentiful? The possibility of coming from behind, that scoring is realistic, should undergird a great contest. Most of the games considered the greatest ones ever played (the 1986 World Cup final, the Brazil-Italy game in 1982, the France-Germany seminfinal game in 1982, the Italy-Germany game seminfinal game in 1970) involved both teams scoring and the lead changing hands.
soccer has a problem? with fan interest? you could have fooled me. this game is probably the world's most popular - and it is thriving. i for one do not prefer the old 6-0 games.
I must be weird then - I tend to like 1-0 and 0-0 games... ^.^'' Usually lots of tension in that case, any goal/chance for one means more. As long as the teams are trying to go for goals, of course. Seeing one or both teams settling for playing almost entirely defense is dull, I admit. I much prefer seeing great defenses stymieing great offenses rather than average defenses not really need to do much. That, though, we haven't really seen this WWC, so that's good. And a lot of my favorite players are 'keepers; seeing big scores makes me sad.
It could be worse. Out of 8 games, we haven't seen a 0-0 tie yet. Those are quite common in the men's world cup group stage. It seems about 1 out of every 6 men's world cup group stage games, end in a 0-0 draw.
I prefer this outcome to those freaking results of last world cup's which put the quality of Women's Football as a whole under question.
Well, watching C Ronaldo score a goal off of his back in the first round of the mens WC was pretty pathetic. I'll take these results any day..... However, as ...rate has mentioned, scoring is better than not, for the average fan. Here in my little corner of the world, I lose my best players (I coach) regularly to lacrosse. What would you rather do? Score one goal every two games in soccer or play a sport where you can frequently score 3-5 goals a game?
In another thread, someone suggested that scoring has been down this World Cup because team defending is an easier concept to coach than attacking brilliance and cohesion. Players who aren't as technically skilled are still able to disrupt attacks, even if they can't put together seamless passes, dribble through traffic, or shoot accurately themselves. Therefore, teams like Nigeria, Colombia, Equitorial Guinea, and New Zealand have focused on keeping their defensive shape and marking tightly, limiting the better teams' chances. I think there's something to this argument...as well as some terrible finishing.
Are there only two choices? 1-0 and 0-0, or 6-0? Is there something inherently problematic about the lead changing hands multiple times (logically possible in a 3-2 or 4-3 game; impossible in a 1-0 game)? While soccer is still the world's most popular sport (a point I do not dispute), the inroads that basketball has made in recent decades is not coincidental, coming as it has at a time when offense has declined in soccer.
Your point has much merit to it. It probably explains much of the scoring decline. One wise fan's term of "team defending" is another's "tactics" (which, whatever some may say, I am convinced at its heart is nothing more than a short-hand term for, "defend at all costs because defense is easier to produce than offense, and keeping the scoring minimal minimizes the inability to mount comebacks" that, of course, require offense).
I have actually appreciated the lower scorelines. The games have been interesting. The main culprit in the low scoring, as people have identified, has been poor finishing. But that has changed in the second France game with Canada and now the Japan-Mexico game. In both these two games, the finishing has been great; whereas in some of the earlier games the finishing was, at times, criminal. But, overall the games have been great, so no complaints. Still no games in which control passed from one team to another / in which one team staged a comeback. Hopefully that will happen in the near future.
With all the group games completed, my quick count came up with 60 goals in 24 games, or 2.5 goals per game.
