Women's Soccer Needs Another High Profile Tournament Between The Olympics And The World Cup

3 times a charme,so maybe a healthy and viable football league will finally emerge in the states. Grow the game naturally,like everywhere else in the world. A Superduber pro league which finacially isn`t substainable will fail again.I hope the us federation has learned its lessons.
As for the ops wish for a new tournament ..it doesnt make sense. Europe has enough competitions and qualifying games. The Euro is next year and even more important than the Olympics from a european point of view. Regional rivalries fought out, more teams that participate,more exposure for developing euro countries and just a quality tournament.
All what is needed for the Concacaf nations is to have the Gold Cup to determine the concacaf champion and a seperate qualifying round for the world cup and olympics. That should be enough football for the national teams and with other teams in the region slowly getting better, the uswnt will have to work harder,which will also benefit them in the long run. That`s how you grow the game.

 

Because
A) it's a lot easier to get domestic ownership groups working together regularly than many/all of the federations of the top national teams (and costs the federation MUCH less to run)
B) it's easier to justify organizing a top club competition than trying to justify another international competition that by definition will not be worth more than one of the main two competitions
C) it's obvious that the US Cup wasn't a worthwhile competition (or they'd still be doing it) and trying to fabricate something "bigger" would just fail that much harder

 

.....

 

DaveBrett

They are ready have 2 Cup competitions yearly, the Algarve and Cyprus Cup. Those to competitions just need to tweak, to attract more interest from all the soccer federations to partictpart in it yearly. They also need more sponsors to back it, and it needs to be avaivable on TV or stream for the world to have interest in womens international soccer year round.

The scheduling of them needs to be tweaked also. During WC or Olympic or Euro years, those competitions should be a couple a weeks apart(obv there may be some overlaps between Algarve & Cyprus). In the other year, there could be a (4-6 week gap) between competitions and the number or entries could be slightly larger in that year partictular year.

 

Actually, by pure luck* Algarve Cup is rather well situtated for the Nordic countries.
It is to cold to play soccer here at that time anyway (except perhaps in Denmark and Scania ), And while Scanidnavias roll in women's soccer will diminish in time when the traditional soccer power seriously get money and media behind their teams. I think we talk decades not years before our womens teams are reglated to the secondary roll our men's team play and therefore before Algarve is out of date.

* Algarve Cup was created as a training/kickoff/seassonstart event forand by the Scandinavian WNTs so it is not surpising that it is held at a from Scandinavian point of view optimal timepoint before the leagues have started (or restarted) after the winter, and snow still is covering most of our fields.

 

Why is it the men use the Conferations Cup as a trial run for the World Cup but on the women's side they use the U-20 World Cup for the same purpose?

 

As long as we're dreaming, I'd like to see...

Extended US league. Start in February, end early November. One extended break in the summer.

A CONCACAF - CONMEBOL - AFC - OFC women's tournament 2 years before the WWC held in the summer alternating between confederations as host. 4 from CONCACAF, 2 from CONMEBOL, 5 from AFC, 1 from OFC. If it's expanded to 16 teams, add 3 teams from CAF, add 1 team to CONMEBOL so that they have 3 spots.

A Women's Club World Cup during the summer before the WWC. Participants: The winners of the leagues from Japan, Australia, US, Germany, France, Sweden, England, UEFA. If the UEFA champion is a domestic league champion in one of the leagues listed above, their league will determine the second team to send.

 

A club WWC should start small. Just four teams the winners from UEFA CL, Copa Libertadores, NWSL and either the League of Australia or Japan (for AFC to decide or arrange a play-off, just one team/Confederationas a start)

 

Well obviously it works out much better for the men having Olympics and WC on alternate years. The two year dead spot sucks. Whatever it is it should prolly happen this year as the year before WWC usually is used for qualifying. Maybe u make it based on FIFA rankings, top eight teams, double elimination or something.

 

Umm.... to everyone saying there should be a women's club world cup, there kinda already is, the IWCC. It's not entirely official, but the JFA (who's currently running it) is in talks with FIFA to make it official. Lyon won over Canberra United, INAC Kobe Leonessa, and NTV Beleza in the inaugural one in November.

 

There seems to be two topics...a yearly women's club tournament (Mobcast) and a major tournament for internationals to break up the two year gap.

 

And to be honest Mobcast although a good first try was more of an AFC-cup (or a Japan/Australia cup) with OL as an internationall touch.

 

I thought of the perfect tournament, to feature "B-Team" players from each nation.
This gives these players a chance to play for their national team.
To qualify as a "B-Team" player, you must have less than 50 caps for your senior national team, and must have not played in a single match for your senior national team for at least 365 days. Each player must also be under the age of 30 to qualify.
Many B-Team players may have zero caps with their senior national team.
An example of a B-Team player (right now), for USA, would be Camille Levin.
Kealia Ohai would be another example. As would Nikki Krzysik.
There are plenty of exciting "B-Team" players that many nations have.

The tournament would be held by FIFA, and it would be called:
The FIFA Development Tournament of Nations: (Women's B-Game)

There is a U-17 and a U-20 WWC.
I've been pushing for a U-23 WWC, but essentially this tournament would replace it.
The exception would be a player can be up to 29 years old and still qualify, if good enough.
The tournament would be held in February every four years, and the first setting would be in Australia (which is plenty warm in February).

16 nations would qualify.
Group action as normal, and a knockout (where 8 of the 16 teams make the knockout stage).
To allow for balance among confederations, FIFA would construct a qualification format like this:

FIFA Development Tournament of Nations: (Women's B-Game)
Host: (1.0) (Australia is the first ever host)
CONCACAF (3.0) (USA and Canada qualify based on merit. Mexico vs. Costa Rica to qualify)
CONMEBOL (2.0) (Brazil qualifies based on merit. Colombia vs. Argentina to qualify)
UEFA (4.0) (Germany and Sweden qualify based on merit. Other nations have qualification)
CAF (2.0) (Nigeria qualifies based on merit. Ghana plays South Africa to qualify)
AFC (3.0) (Japan qualifies based on merit. Both Korea's, Australia, China, play, to qualify)
OFC (1.0) (The Ferns auto-qualify, as it's determined a waste of money to have OFC qualifying)

This tournament would be held every four years, and would be held in February of the odd number year opposite of the WWC (2017, 2021, 2023, etc).

 

Germany on merit? Quarterfinals and not qualifying in the last two largest tournaments does it?

Mexico is a shoe-in on merit then, also.

 

Three ways to earn Merit (auto-qualify):

-Be ranked in the Top 4 teams in the world (USA, Germany Japan, Brazil, all qualify)
-Be the highest ranked team of your confederation (Nigeria, New Zealand qualify)
-Be the defending 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place finisher of the most recent two major tournaments (Sweden and Canada qualify) (most recent two major tournaments = most recent WWC and Olympics)

Host is automatically in as well of course (Australia)

 

Might want to modify that to your ranking based on the last two years. It takes about four years for your ranking to roll over.

You want the teams who re good now, not four years ago.

Also, by the criteria you list, there is no justification for 4 UEFA teams.

 

I already submitted the idea to FIFA. I told them to invest in the women's game more, starting in 2017, with more than just a couple major tournaments every four years (WWC and Olympics). I mentioned that over 50.000001% of the people in the world today are women (which is true).

I also mentioned a FIFA women's indoor tournament.
I'll let you know if I hear back.

 

FIFA should invest in the neglected women's scene more....?


Don't you have another league now to distract you from all the crazy?

I'm sure UEFA, the AFC, and CAF, all have decent regional/continental women's championships?

Doesn't FIFA already have exact same amount of age group and senior men's and women's world finals, even though they don't currently have enough quality women's sides to back up the highly progressive approach to developing the sports global movement?

And didn't another unofficial women's Futsal WC just take place, in an era the men's (1989 FIFA governed) Futsal WC still has parity issues of double digit differences in ability of it's own to worry about?

lol. Even at a time the women's side of the sport as a global entity is looking beyond any nut job quick fix schemes, by taking the right steps for serious well planned longevity, you can still guarantee a decent amount of brain freeze inducing idea are just over horizon...

 

Nothing ever wrong with wanting better, but forcing FIFA to take over the work of separate confederations just isn't very fair (or very smart) to the many other up and coming national programs who will all be needed to validate the future expansion of elite competition.

Plus pushing for more artificial/fake elite international events would seem to go against the grain of an increasingly important club culture too, where the sports best players are now thankfully able to develop together outside of the parity issues of highly expensive national programs.

I mean just look at the current sometime-ish importance of the once necessity Algarve Cup, and you can already clearly see which direction the wind of change is blowing.