SheBelieves, Algarve & Cyprus Cups have all announced their entries for their 2018 tournaments. The Istria Cup will also be held during the same time. Assuming they have the same entries from 2017, here's the breakdown by rankings(Dec. 15) of who is playing in what tournaments. The Africa Cup of Nations is also having their qualifiers during this time as well, but most of their participants are ranked below 80 or not currently ranked. 1. United States (SheBelieves) 2. Germany (SheBelieves) 3. England (SheBelieves) 4. Australia (Algarve) 5. Canada (Algarve) 6. France (SheBelieves) 7. Netherlands (Algarve) 8. Brazil 9. Japan (Algarve) 10. Sweden (Algarve) 11. North Korea 12. Denmark (Algarve) 13. Spain (Cyprus) 14. South Korea (Algarve) 14. Norway (Algarve) 16. China (Algarve) 17. Switzerland (Cyprus) 17. Italy (Cyprus) 19. New Zealand (Cyprus) 20. Iceland (Algarve) 21. Austria (Cyprus) 22. Belgium (Cyprus) 23. Scotland 24. Colombia 25. Russia (Algarve) 28. Finland (Cyprus) 34. Czech Republic (Cyprus) 35. Wales (Cyprus) 38. Portugal (Algarve) 42. Chinese Taipei (Istria) 43. Hungary (Cyprus) 47. Slovakia (Cyprus) 49. Trinidad & Tobago (Cyprus) 51. Croatia (Istria) 54. South Africa (Cyprus) 55. Northern Ireland (Istria) 59. Bosnia and Herzegovina (Istria) 60. Slovenia (Istria)
don’t know what to think of SheBelieves Cup this year considering that I don’t find USA, France, Germany or England to be at their best atm due to poor coaching and choices
IMO, it needs to be an 8 team tournament. Include Brazil & Mexico. Invite Colombia, too, & another team(Costa Rica? Australia or Japan?).
The 3 years contract for the Sheba cup is up at the end of this year, so I certainly would expect to see different teams next year.
It would be nice if ShibaLeaves expands enough to take the place of what Algarve was for years, but I would be absolutely shocked if it ever expands to more than four teams. The current setup allows for 3 cities, 1 day each, and every ticket can be sold as a USWNT double-header. Can't do that if you increase the total number of teams, so there's no way that U$$F goes for that decrease in ROI in my eyes.
Now, it wouldn't be nice: we, Europeans, campaign for a big interesting Algarve Cup to keep thriving on our soil! We challenge you to steal it from our hands!
apart from being in more experimental mode(since there no real major woso tourney's this year) , all four teams got now women coaching them & they seem to get to keep their jobs no matter how terrible they coach! But loose just one game & BINGO a male coach gets fired! the you got to wonder if they stick to together: the French coach disastrous coaching vs Germany might of been to save Stefi's butt?
Yes I think the France/Germany game were rather strange, it actually looked like France didn’t give a damn shit to make sure that Steffi got to continue lol
I think, some experiments failed on the day, newbies not up to scratch, senior players also performing badly. Some players clearly lacked motivation. I agree that game saved Jones' ass.
Would be fun to see for sure, though that makes me wonder what happens to Brazil and the summer "Tournament of Nations".
Maybe they're just going to switch coasts for the two tournaments. You know, just to make it harder for European teams to reach the Pacific coast and harder for the Asian/Oceanian teams to reach the Atlantic coast. Something along the lines of "Ha-ha, we have two Oceans and you don't: let's move out of your comfort-ocean, guys!".
Are we doing separate threads for each tournament, or all the March FIFA window tournaments are here? Never mind, I see there's an Algarve thread already started, so I posted the schedule over there. SheBelieves Schedule: March 1: England v France, 4 pm ET in Columbus, OH March 1: US v Germany, 7 pm ET in Columbus, OH (televised on ESPN2) March 4: US v France, 12 pm ET in Harrison, NJ (televised on ESPN2) March 4: Germany v England, 3 pm ET in Harrison, NJ March 7: France v Germany, 4 pm ET in Orlando, FL March 7: US v England, 7 pm ET in Orlando, FL (televised on ESPNews)