PBP: Matchday 5: F12.USA - Thailand

No. That's not an accurate summary of my thoughts

 

I find this team to be more likable than the 2011-2015 version. Abby Wambach was the master of gamesmanship, constantly trying to gain some advantage, complaining, etc. Alex Morgan frequently seemed petulant to me, and Tobin Heath was sometimes a menace to opposing players. Hope Solo? Enuff said.

Thus, the present team seems pretty likable to me. Heath and Morgan have matured; and all the players seem gracious. There's no obnoxious Abby nor obnoxious Solo.

Regarding the celebrations, I do recall how irritated the US team was at the celebration of the Norwegian team in, when, 1995? So, maybe they were excessive -- but I don't think they were vindictive.

 

I don't really care so much about the "virtues" of unwritten rules in sports, etc. It's a little too uppity-up for me. These women are pros, and if they can score 13 goals against other pros, then it is what it is.

I suppose what bugged me about the goal celebrations was that they just felt awkward. Kind of forced in a show-offy way. Was there really THAT much energy and excitement over goals 8-13?

I definitely didn't feel it as a spectator. And usually as a fan you get more emotionally frenzied up in the heat of a game than a pro athlete does.

 

After what I saw today, I have little desire to support the Americans, not anymore. I just do not swallow their lack of class and sportsmanship . It's a shame .
Rapinoe was really vulgar. In short there is a saying that says : "Aunque la mona se vista de seda, mona se queda" : "Although the monkey dresses in silk, it will always be a monkey".

 

With topics like this, thought and listening or any human communication rarely happens. But this connected with me. Thank you.

 

Annoyingly whiney to complain about over-celebrating. While it was completely unnecessary, and pretty stupid, no harm was meant by it.

Do think most of the moral outrage is just disguised anti-American sentiment.

 

Pretty fresh bait. Perhaps a hint of offside though in light of the mod warning.

 

I think Rapinoes showing off/ego right before the 4th goal was rude and unsportsmanlike, and i think it set the tone for every goal afterwards. Players are gonna celebrate a goal no matter if its their first or 100th. I dont think thats rude, its part of the game...it's not often you see that many goals scored in a game but to turn this game no matter how lopsided into a PC issue instead of just keeping it as a WC game is more classless, rude, disrespectful or whatever else you want to call it. So many matches in my lifetime i've seen, i've seen some high scoring games close to this one and in some cases they stopped celebrating...in some they've celebrated just as much if not more. There is nothing wrong celebrating your goal....some are saying that not letting up in a defeat is unsportsman like but theres been games were teams have let up and in some views its even more disrespectful to not take your opponents seriously or start treating them like children to keep it a more fair game. It's a matter of perspective but watching a game then nitpicking such minor things that are part of the game trying to create rules to your liking, or worse, when talking about the team start talking about their whole country where the team is from in a generalization is about as low and classless one can get in this day and age. I value every ones opinions whether i agree with them or not...but some of yall take things to far and make a situation out of nothing, you cant blame people for bringing up anti-sentiment towards a country. Now i am new to this forum, i dont have many friends or many people in the area to watch/talk about sports with, let alone soccer or football...but the past few days quite a few people,while not all but theres been enough, have a tendency to talk bad about other countries/people from certain areas, appearances of players not looking like their nationalities (like it or not there is a lot of immigration and mixed races in the world, and many countries allow duel citizenship). None of this matters, why bring it up even if no ill intent is meant? The whole point of tournaments like the World Cup is to leave politics, racism, nationalism, pretty much everything that the world has too much of these days andd to instead bring people together and face adversity and have a good time. Not to bring in other issues because you have a bias, a preference or just come from an affluent area and can't handle not getting the way you want in the results. Its hard to share good times and speak of opinions on performances, whos gonna win, progression of teams players and general sports talk when you got people bringing in hatred and quite honestly being disrespectful. If you honestly feel US women's team was being rude, that's fine....if not that's fine too...but this childish and CLASSLESS talk about about how someone should be acting or how they should be doing something is counterproductive to the whole point of the WC in the first place. If you've literally got nothing else to do but then to complain about how someones winning too much, or they didn't win enough or putting down other teams saying they don't deserve to be there you should take a good look at yourself and figure out whats truly making you so upset to spawn negativity in an unproductive, nonconstructive way.

 

1. Discussion how players conduct themselves in an unusual (and embarrassing - for FIFA, Thailand, AFC, even the US) situation is in no way out-of-bounds.

2. Please consider using paragraphs. That wall of text is difficult to read.

3. Having been on both sides of a nasty result like that, anything more than a few high-fives and a hug or two, then straight back to the halfway line is instigation. If Thailand were capable of it, they could have easily decided to take matters into their own hands.

 

Isn't it weird that people can casually talk about violent retribution for celebrations as if that were justified while in the same breath saying the celebrations themselves are over the top?

 

Hasn't the US team complained in years past about how other teams celebrated scoring goals against the US (usually after knocking the US out of the competition)? It would be karma this world cup if another team knocked the US out of the competition and the players started crying about over-the-top goal celebrations. Kettle meet pot would be a good analogy.

 

No, it's not. You cannot predict the reactions of your opponent to them getting shown up.

 

Well I can see that my opinion is an unpopular one here. I just feel it's incredibly soft of people to get twisted up about this and need to grow up. But obviously that doesn't seem to be a shared view here. I saw nothing classless about celebrating world cup goals, however enthusiastically. I'll just leave it at that.

I did see quite a bit of anti-American sentiment in this thread, no matter how much you deny it. Just because a few Americans are being critical constructively doesn't disregard the fact that it's there in other posts. Things like: I hope America gets destroyed in the upcoming world cup games. I lost respect for the US team because of these celebrations. Why because they enthusiastically celebrated a world cup goal? Well, we didn't need your kind of support anyway, good riddance.

I'll be rooting for the USA, enthusiastic celebrations and all because their was nothing wrong with them, grow up! I've said all I'll say, I'm out - enjoy the rest of the world cup!

 

Those are the best words I've read all day on the topic of this match. That's how it should be done when goals keep going in even though the result is out of reach for the losing side.

On the other side of this massacre, I really wonder what the Thai coach's stance is right now regarding the team's effort (or massive lack of). It's one thing to have a huge gap in skills and experience with the opposition team, but to just simply give up like the Thai girls did is something I would be boiling over with. No matter what my players' level is, showing a blatant lack of fighting spirit would be worthy of a Sir Alex Ferguson-type of hairdryer treatment.

 

Not too long ago, North Korea used to have that 5th spot and they showed better fighting spirit than this Thai team. How could they screw up their qualification process so badly?

 

So we're supposed to shrug and go, welp, I expected that cause you guys totally suck right now?

The growth of the women's game ain't for the faint of heart. The USWNT have been told over and over again by analysts that nobody is afraid of them. Well, I think some teams coming up are a tad concerned they may not go through now. I'm sure France isn't looking forward to facing us anymore than we are of them except now, they know that every single US player can potential score a goal and it was proven tonight.

 

No. You trot back to the halfway line and don't make a big deal out of it, like normal people dishing out pain to terrible teams.

 

I bet when the men showboat, they don't get nearly as criticized, and it's probably interpreted as "boys being boys". When professional female athletes get their time in the spotlight and celebrate their bombardment of another team, it's interpreted as incredibly negative and classless. I guess they should have just apologized for being too aggressive and promise never to do it again and invite them all for tea time afterwards to sooth their poor poor broken hearts.

 

I don't think this is fair. There are tons of male athletes that are despised by fans for being egocentric showboats.

As I said in an earlier post, the celebrations didn't necessarily offend me. They really just seemed awkward and a little cringy. Like they were forced or staged.

I didn't sense much genuine rush of emotion or energy for goals 8-13. Seemed like some of the players were just hamming it up for whatever reason.

 

Not even the 5th - they were roughly 2nd in Asia before Australia showed up and Japan got consistently good. And they didn't really screw anything up in this qualification cycle. Due to being banned in the '15 qualification cycle, they were an unseeded team during the AFC Cup qualification this time around (despite being the highest-ranked team to not get an automatic berth into the AFC championship groups) and then were drawn into the qualification same group as South Korea, the next-highest ranked team to not get an automatic berth. They didn't make it to the AFC Cup on goal differential after drawing the Korea derby match. AFC has a tendency to do draws in credibly poorly, and is screwed over North Korea in that stage of qualification - indeed, during the AFC Cup itself, one group had all three of the remaining top-ranked AFC teams (AUS, JPN, and KOR) with the other group's strongest teams being China, South Korea, and Jordan. Talk about imbalanced!