I’m going by the Solo scale and she looked slow to react. I don’t know if she could’ve gotten there or not, but her reactions are what I was judging
41' 1-1 Lavelle drives to box left foot, low cross poked away. Pugh distributes to O'Hara at box top right, backpass. Dahlkemper crosses high to 6-top left, Rapinoe dinks a square pass into the scrum, England win a header and clear. Pugh has clearly been instructed to pivot the ball around. 43' 1-1 USA ping across the back, preparing for the inevitable longball. Whoops, ball rolls right over Lavelle's toes, into near touch. 44' 1-1 USA promptly regain. Rapinoe finds Dunn overlapping up left touch, to 25m mid-left. Dunn drives a low cross to O'Hara in behind at 8m mid-right. O'Hara dinks a cross through 5m center, Morgan(?) is tied up, England clear over endline left. Even when we do get one player open, our spacing is so wide we don't have obvious targets.
Underwhelmed. If we had to go into the half with an even scoreline, I would have been much happier if it had been 0-0. I'm starting to think the U.S. has forgotten how to hold a one-goal lead. They'd better refresh their memory soon. On the silver lining, I'm holding out hope that the U.S. is saving their best performance in the tournament for the match I'm attending.
One thing to remember is that every keeper must make every mistake possible at least once. The really good ones do not repeat a mistake. The hope is that she or he makes the mistake in practice or a meaningless match or situation. I remember Scurry letting a slow weak ball through her legs and into goal. Of course the US was up 7-0 at the time but it was a ball you would expect a U10 to save. Of course she never made that mistake again.
The one England goal came on a bonehead mistake. I’m more concerned that there doesn’t seem to be any kind of plan for teamwork or movement once we gain the offensive third to actually put the ball in the goal.
46+2' (of +1') 1-1 England mis-hit a ball past midfield wide right, directly to Dunn(?), one-touch rebound to Rapinoe. USA switch right, O'Hara passes to Heath. They do a somewhat tentative run-around (making it up on the fly), Heath keeps dribble alive at 25m while O'Hara runs an up-and-in route. Heath snipes a ground pass to box top right, cleared off O'Hara's foot back to Heath. Heath drives a high cross toward 6-top left, well beyond Rapinoe backpedaling, over endline left. HT 1-1. Well, the speed is keeping England off-balance, and they're not exactly creating entries into our box. But we're only attaining a cross-and-hope level of play so far.
Sorry, I missed the action that led to indirect free-kick in the box because my feed had freeezed and I could only watch the FK itself. Despite @Gilmoy's description, I am not sure I understood what exactly Franch did and why it was an infraction that had to be punished with an indirect free-kick. Wouild someone care to explain (I hadn't had a chance to see highlights either so far)?
Boom. Perfection doesn't exi—💥 @mPinoe 💥 pic.twitter.com/0Zgdrmq1Zi— U.S. Women's National Soccer Team (@USWNT) March 2, 2019
I don't care what caused the England goal. We won the 2015 World Cup because we only gave up three goals the entire seven-match tournament. We've just given up the same number of goals in one and a half matches. I don't care if we only score one goal per match; as long as it's more than our opponent scores. You can't win a championship trading goals one-for-one the entire time. Very frustrated with this team right now...
An intentional pass from her teammate and she picked up the ball. It's an indirect kick from that spot
I was impressed by Morgan's play in the midfield. Wait a minute! She's not a midfielder. But she's trying to cover for a weakness in the center of the field as Ertz seems to be a 3rd center back. Did Ertz move back to center back because of lack of confidence in Franch? That has the virtue of allowing O'Hara to go forward which she's doing effectively. Where the hell is Sam Mewis? Did she pee in the gatorade or something?
Don’t look at the score, look at the game play. England barely had the ball. Naeher doesn’t make that mistake. We’ve done a good job controlling the midfield. We’ve just been sloppy with the ball and haven’t been very creative
Lets see: The US puts one unblocked shot on goal (there might have been another but I don't remember it) and it scores and England puts one unblocked shot on goal and it scores. What does that say might be a good place to put some effort into for both teams?
Please forgive me for obsessing over the score, but I can't stop thinking about the fact that in 100 days it will be the only thing that matters.
Bull crap. Go back and look at her positioning and her pre ball movement. She is OUT of position in the first place...a full stride too far to her right. And she kept leaning to her right prior to the kick. That was pathetic keeping. Period.