I think the French WC cities are dying to get the Orange Lionesses in their stadium. They see the sold out stadiums the Orange ladies filled and remember the Orange flood in the WC 1998.
I wonder how many fans will actually go to France. Too bad it's really early (Jun 7 - Jul 7), so way before school vacation. However, if the girls end up in the north (especially Valenciennes) it could be made into a day trip (or 1 night stay).
I can't help wondering way they choose so early dates, compared to men's WC or even to U-20 WWC last summer. I guess it would have been easier for many people (me included) to attend the matches if they had been scheduled in July-August instead of June-July...
Traditionally most FIFA and regional tournaments run in Jun- early Jul. I think they don't want to cut into the (preparation and) start of the next season too much. Clubs don't want to be without their key players during that time.
Indeed, no one watches tennis or cycling so they had to squeeze the dates, plus ground availabity as pitches are relaid during the Summer break.
For lodging in Lyon for the semis and championship, anyone have suggestions? Stay in Lyon? If yes, any recommendations? Stay in a small nearby city? If yes, recommendations? At this point, we're working with two other families/friends. Parents and two players (teenagers), parent and player (teenager), and we two old geezers. All, obviously, women's soccer fanatics.
We are nearly there : 🇫🇷🇨🇳🇹🇭🇦🇺🇯🇵🇰🇷🇧🇷🇨🇱🇪🇸🇮🇹🏴🏴🇳🇴🇸🇪🇩🇪🇨🇦🇺🇸🇯🇲🇳🇱🇦🇷🇳🇬🇿🇦22/24 🔜🏆#FIFAWWC— FIFA Women's World Cup (@FIFAWWC) November 28, 2018
Answer will be revealed on the 7th in the afternoon. FIFA are doing a pre-draw press conference, I will be live tweeting it probably plus a couple of posts on French and English websites
just speculation, but for those wanting the tournament expanded to 32 teams, these would be the additional 8 that would have qualified if the tournament was at 32 teams. UEFA(+3): Denmark, Switzerland, Belgium AFC(+1): Philippines CAF(+1): Cameroon/Mali loser CONCACAF(+1): Panama CONMEBOL(+1): Colombia CONCACAF/CONMEBOL play-off(+1): Mexico or Paraguay
...yeah, I'd say we're not ready to expand to 32 yet. We're already getting one or two minnows in the field of 24, and this would add at least 3 more. And none of the non-minnows on this list, aside from maybe SUI or COL, have shown they consistently deserve to be in the field of 24.
Well, Denmark couldn't be defined very "consistent", but in the latest years they weren't actually much worse than Switzerland: on the contrary they were in general marginally better: they lost the semifinal of Euro 2013 to Norway at PSO (Switzerland haven't even qualified), they have beaten #1-ranked USA by 5-3 at Algarve Cup 2014, they've got the Silver Medal at Euro 2017 (Switzerland out at group stage). Of course Switzerland did better in WWC qualifiers (they qualified in 2015 by winning their group, eliminating Denmark itself in the process; they were the last one to be eliminated from play-offs this year). But I'd put Denmark and Switzerland almost at the same level of consistency (and I'd say FIFA World rankings quite agree with me, currently putting Denmark at #16 and Switzerland at #18: this could shift a little with the upcoming update, but anyway the two teams look very close). By the way, Denmark and Switzerland are actually the 2nd and 3rd higher-ranked team among those that didn't qualify for WWC 2018 (1st.placed is #11-ranked North Korea).
Wow. The United Passions movie has a paltry rating of 2.1 on IMDB. That's horrible. "The film... is now considered to be one of the worst films of all time. The film was also a major box-office bomb, losing $26.8 million worldwide and failing to obtain a theatrical distribution in many markets."
And the draw presentators are as follows : Draw moderators: Denis Brogniart and Amanda Davies Draw conductors: Alex Scott and Louis Saha Draw assistants: Didier Deschamps, Marie Bochet, Kaká, Mia Hamm, Michael Essien, Aya Miyama and Steffi Jones
My mocking draw !! go to FIFA.com and have some fun USA won't be in group D, because they would have to play in the same bracket of France. Anyway France and Spain are really favorites in Group A. Group B looks very even. C a piece of cake for Germany and Netherlands. USA the real favorite of group D, with Nigeria as the runners up. E belongs to England and Brazil. Japan would win group f without problems, meanwhile the second placed team is like a question mark , Chile included !
Well, considering that they've said the seeded teams will still be randomly drawn and it'll be done live, it's totally possible for USA to fall into group D. And I'm highly amused that, even with this user-generated mock draw, USA still got Nigeria! It goes back to my point that sometimes a matchup is just how things fall. (Though I personally wouldn't put Nigeria over Norway, especially with Nigeria's struggles to defend their CAF title recently). I gotta play with this draw simulator myself later today and see if any interesting patterns emerge...
The field is set CONCACAF: USA, Canada, Jamaica COMNEBOL: Brazil, Chile, Argentina AFC: Nigeria, South Africa, Cameroon UEFA: Germany, Norway, Sweden, France, England, Scotland, Spain, Italy, Netherlands AFC: Japan, Australia, China, South Korea, Thailand OFC: New Zealand
Alright, I did five simulated draws - which isn't enough to really draw out huge patterns, but I'm methodical enough with these that I'm tired of running through the motions now. X-D Anyway, first draw I did wasn't very random, as I tried doing my best to give the hosts France the easiest possible path, not just in their group but through the first two rounds of the knockouts too. Interestingly, it gave me the "USA conspiracy" group as well! (Although that wasn't fully given, since the fourth member of each group was semi-random because they don't really affect the KO stages.) Next up, I decided to give hosts France a difficult group, and otherwise used Random.org to decide the remaining five slots across each pot. Here, random.org still toyed with me and gave me another "USA conspiracy" group, interestingly in position C as well: Aside from the USA conspiracy group C, the only other repeated group matches between these two are NOR-CHN and CAN-CMR. Other three all-random.org-generated draws coming in the next post!
Draw 3: Draw 4: Draw 5: And holy shit, random.org gave me two instances of identical groups between these three draws: 3D/5F and 3E/4E Maybe unsurprisingly, there are a lot of pairings that happen at least twice, even just among these three draws. But gimme a second while I try to count up what the most popular pairings among the seven posted draws here are...
Pairings that happen more three or more times out of our seven: FRA -- none USA -- NIG, RSA GER -- CHN, ARG ENG -- THA, KOR, CMR CAN -- ITA, CHN, CHI AUS -- SCO, NZL, ARG, JAM (no pot 1 team faces a pot 2 team more than twice in our draws, interestingly, and faces no team ever more than 3 times. That second point breaks down later...) NED -- CHNx4, CHI JPN -- ITAx5(!!) @blissett SWE -- ARG BRA -- SCOx4, JAM, CMR ESP -- THAx4, JAM NOR -- none (only pot3-pot4 pairings left to say now) KOR -- none new CHN -- CHI (reflects on CAN, kinda) ITA -- none new SCO -- none new NZL -- NIG (reflects on USA, kinda) THA -- none new I may try three more random.org-fueled draws tomorrow to see if any pairings get to 5-out-of-10 levels.
I don't think I've mentioned this previously here (maybe I have?), but there's a reasonably good chance that during the WWC we'll see a new record for all time international goals scored by a player.