Apparently we had 70% ball possession but couldn't score all day long according to footofeminin....France A, France B same fight...lol....Why football don't reward ball retaintion, we would have been world champion looong time ago. But I have to say I'm not completely surprised by Bosnia, I remember tham against England despite being poor technically they were excellent tactically it was very hard for the Lionesses to break their wall and indeed England won 1-0 only in both leg games. Anyway, for the original squad selection I have posted forward Lucie Pingeon (asse) replaced Mylaine Tarrieu (ol) and goalkeeper Maryne Gignoux (guingamp) replaced Pauline Peyraud-Magnin (om).
Not sure what happened to Taiwan - they went into the tournament as the highest ranked team, but have been absolutely blown away. Slovenia beat them 5-1, and now Northern Ireland is beating them 5-0 at half-time. Perhaps lack of experience playing European teams - but the size of the defeats has been pretty surprising.
You also have to remember that the rankings start losing meaning for cross-confederation comparisons once you get down to 40th or so. One thing with Elo-based rankings is that, lower down in each sub-group of teams, there's a "trickle-down" effect from the top teams in those sub-groups. In UEFA, there are a TON of teams that are competent, so there's well-filled stratification, meaning that the trickle-down gets spread between so many teams that by the time you reach Slovenia or N.Ireland, the trickle-down has been washed out. In AFC, on the other hand, teams like Chinese Taipei are in a sparse middle tier that only generally loses to the top tier (direct getting a good share of the trickle-down points) and generally wins against anyone else (letting them buffer their ranking better). Taking all that into account makes it reasonable to guess that Chinese Taipei's ranking is higher than it maybe should be when you compare it to the other Istria Cup teams.
Good points. There's a characteristic of virtually all mathematical ratings systems, which is that they have trouble accurately rating teams from different playing pools within a single system. The technical term for play of teams from one pool against teams from another pool is "correspondence." The more correspondence among playing pools, the better the system is at rating teams from the different pools in a single system. The less correspondence, the poorer the system. I think of it this way: Apply an Elo system to women's national teams. Then apply the same system to a league of U-11 teams with the same number of individual teams as there are women's national teams. There's no correspondence between these two groups. The national team Elo ratings, essentially, will be the same as the U-11 league ratings.
TODAY Group A Slovakia 2 - Slovenia 1 Northern Ireland 8 - Chinese Taipei 0 Group B Bosnia & Herzegovina 2 - Hungary B 0 France B 2 - Croatia 0
Yes, agreed - Taiwan certainly ranked higher than they should be. In my 'under progress' rankings: Based on an elo system (unlike FIFA's, with iterations) before the Istria Cup, I had: 53 Taiwan 59 Northern Ireland 71 Slovenia After the first 2 rounds of matches, these rankings had become 54 Northern Ireland 57 Taiwan 66 Slovenia Based on a different matrix system, I had: 56 Northern Ireland 61 Slovenia 75 Taiwan After first 2 rounds of Istria Cup: 55 Northern Ireland 58 Slovenia 82 Taiwan So - the second system seems to reflect the actual rankings better - as it is based on a matrix system it deals better mathematically with the "correspondence" mentioned above. Even so, the defeat may not have been a shock, but the margins certainly were, no matter what system you use. Taiwan generally don't lose by such high scores, even against the top ranking Asian teams (who are also proven Top 20 world teams). Northern Ireland don't win matches by 8 goals, not even against the lower-ranked European teams (for example 4-0 v Georgia), while Slovenia also rarely win by 4 goals (with the exception of when they play Macedonia, another lowly-ranked European team). However, last year Taiwan lost 9-0 to South Korea. I think what we are seeing is a recent and quite sudden decline in Taiwan's form. For example, in the 2014 Asian Games, they lost quite respectably - only 4-0 to China, 3-0 to Japan and 1-0 to South Korea. They also had 2 wins in the Istria Cup (5-4 v Slovakia and 2-0 v Belarus - although they did lose 3-0 to Serbia's U-19s also).
TODAY Group A Northern Ireland 4 - Slovenia 4 Slovakia 1 - Chinese Taipei 0 Group B Croatia 0 - Bosnia & Herzegovina 0 France B 6 - Hungary B 0
8th March 2017 7/8 12:00 Umag, Hungary 'B' - Chinese Taipei 5/6 12:00 Umag, Croatia - Slovenia 3/4 15:00 Umag, France 'B' - Northern Ireland 1/2 15:00 Umag, Slovakia - Bosnia & Herzegovina